Should Medium Change Its Algorithm And Acknowledge The Importance Of External Views?
Why don’t external views influence the Medium algorithm to show content?
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We know that member revenues are generated when members read your content.
But you need to be seen to receive engagement.
Claps are an algorithm influencer, the more claps you get the more you are shown, and the more your seen the more your posts are read.
But it is a bit of a catch 22, you need to influence the Medium algorithm to be seen and you can’t influence it without being seen unless of course, you can build up a following, and then maybe you can get a few views.
Partner program posts can generate good revenues if seen by members
The vast majority of earning posts however do very badly on Google and get very few external views and still earn.
On the other hand, some posts can do really well on Google, ranking on page one, amassing thousands and thousands of external views driving visitors to Medium, and helping to grow the member base and still not make a single cent.
The Medium algorithm for some reason doesn’t put traffic-generating posts into member feeds because external views are not an influencer for being seen on Medium. Traffic does not generate revenues for members.
Let's look at an example
I wrote a post back in December 2020 called Is Moff Gideon a Sith Lord? and below you can see the sats for the last 6 months up to now, 9th of June.
It has so far received 2400 views and actually made some money at $2.37.
If you look at where the views have come from you can see that there have been just 35 internal member views and the remaining 2365 have come externally.
A minuscule amount of members have seen this post, just 35.
