Why do I close down my Medium publications and what’s coming next?
And a FREE 10-Day crash course on how to set-up your Substack and grow your first 1000 subscribers.
I’ve been contemplating on this for some months now…closing down my publications on Medium.
It’s 2025 and I already decided to let go more than 3 side hustles. I’m optimizing for efficiency.
Medium is next.
It’s FINAL: The CREATIVETECH Publications will no longer accept writers or publish stories. I’ll continue to help writers grow online on Substack.
There are many reasons why, but I’ll start with the most obvious:
1. Community
My intention was to build a community where we help each other grow.
It perfectly aligned with what was (at that time) my understanding of the Medium’s new pricing tier “Friend of Medium”, and Medium’s strategy in general.
This worked really well, until Medium changed in May last year.
Building a community is now considered a “crime”.
Engagement with one another is simply considered an attempt to artificially inflate your earnings. Maybe there are some people who engage with that sole purpose. But there are tons of other who seek meaningful connections.
The problem is that Meidum (once again) created a rule that can’t properly execute.
Because the line is thin.
There’s a difference between:
Fraud engagement (when someone engages with another agenda, f.ex. fraud — we all got these invites to Telegram channels, right?)
Automated engagement (when you plug your account into an automation tool and engage like crazy to boost earnings)
Inauthentic engagement (when you intentionally engage with people leaving shallow comments aiming to invite them to read your stuff)
Artificial engagement (when you plug into a Chrome extension with AI and start posting AI-generated comments like crazy)
Novice engagement (when you’re new and you don’t really know how to engage so your comments look a lot like the above)
and a simple moderate engagement, where you leave few words in the comment section just because you feel like it today…
But Medium seems to fail to distinguish them clearly, so the whole community gets punished.
For the last 9 months tons of authentic writers vanished from the platform — banned or revoked from the Partner Program, accused of some kind of crime they never committed.
With the start of every month Medium cleans a portion of accounts. So every month you wonder whether you gonna be next.
Being on Medium became a toxic experience for people (like me) who are into community building.
Although Medium acts as some kind of prosecutor, the real problem is not in the fraudsters. Not on the Internet. There always gonna be fraud.
The real problem is internal.
Last year Medium opened the Partner Program to 77 new countries, some of them popular with their creativity in growth hacking, automation and more.
I knew what’s coming.
Now would be a good time for me to say “Medium, I told you so!”
Many times I have tried to warn Medium staff. Especially when I started to see the signs.
But Medium doesn’t listen (most of the times). I got accused of rules violation, my story got flagged and I was threatened with a permanent ban.
The real problem is in Medium’s tech readiness to face automated traffic and Partner Program fraud.
See what’s happening to Medium’s traffic for the last 2 years:
From 57m in July’24 to 67m in August’24 when the new Partner Program rules entered into force. That’s 10 million monthly visits more!
But in November the traffic decreased to 45m. That's 20 million a month!
A lot of it is from India (about 10m), see how India’s traffic develops on the platform:
It’s not rocket science to figure out what might be happening. It’s good that Medium deals with potential fraud, but it seems to me that a lot of authentic accounts have burned along the process. Simply because the current traffic is less than what was the level before the Partner Program changes announcement.
But look at what’s the traffic distribution by countries now: only 40% US traffic!
For a US platform that’s odd.
Opening the Partner Program for so many new high-risk markets without a proper control system is suicidal.
But Medium struggles with cash. And tech is expensive. So what’s left?
Manual curation of stories (the new Boost nomination program)
Manual assessment of who’s authentic and who’s not
Manual cleansing of fraudsters
“Human” they call it, but I read it as “biased”.
Because we (humans) are all biased.
Biased = Lack of transparency.
So writers are leaving.
The whole business world is implementing AI to optimize and improve, Medium goes back to manual work.
The whole creator economy is moving towards communities, Medium bans them.
So, community…
Because of the above, Medium is simply not the right place to build one.
Funny how Medium still calls itself a community…
Maybe we have a completely opposite understanding of what community is all about.
That’s why I decided to close down the CREATIVETECH Publications.
But I’m not stopping.
I’m continuing to help writers grow on Substack.
You can build whatever community or collaboration you like.
And the best part: it’s welcome and supported by the platform.
It’s a no-brainer.
The second most obvious reason:
2. Business Model
It’s a broken model: When you make more money, Medium makes less money. This creates a huge conflict of interest.
One that never works in favor of writers.
Medium is still a great platform to grow your skills if you’re a new writer. But not the place to build your business around. Not anymore.
It’s ok if you don’t earn money directly, but you need to be able to build a community at least.
And especially now, with the recent changes of the payment calculation, which were (again) never announced or explained by Medium…
Writers have become investors in Medium but without a proper outlook on potential returns.
Just look at the comments of this story: “Why we’ve suspended some Partner Program accounts this week”
This gets me thinking if I should even exit the Partner program and downgrade my Friend of Medium membership to a standard or even go free?
I mean I can invest the money elsewhere and get proper returns…
I’m a business person.
I started writing on Medium daily, about one year ago. Back then I never thought about the business model. Lesson learned.
That’s why I moved to Substack. The business model is one that works for you: Substack makes more money when you make more money.
It’s crystal clear.
The third reason:
3. Artificial Intelligence
I simply can’t stand the attitude toward a technology that changes humanity forever.
Although I understand the position, it’s normal to avoid change.
It’s default human behavior.
But it only leads to failure.
We have it in Nature, and we have it in business too. There are many examples of companies who refused to adapt to the new technology and failed. Take Xerox and Nokia as some recent examples.
On Substack, you can use AI as much as you want as you like. And if it’s crap, your engagement will suffer. So it’s really up to you to aim for high quality.
That’s the true regulation — the reader. Not some policy.
Funny, there are examples of AI-generated stories on Medium that got boosted. It’s really so far from authentic, really!
Another fun fact is the story of Coach Tony about banning AI crawling on Medium stories. I asked why ChatGPT was banned but Google Gemini wasn’t. I got no answer…about a month later Gemini access was restricted. Maybe it was me or maybe not, but the point is:
Medium creates vague policies that Medium itself fails to follow.
I’m a tech lover.
AI is the future and it’s here to stay.
If Medium refuses to see this fact, my place is elsewhere.
My place is on Substack.
So, do I leave Medium?
Maybe this is my last story on Medium, maybe not.
Who knows? Maybe Medium will fail, and maybe new leadership will take over and finally find a proper way to make it profitable.
One thing is clear to me: the current strategy will (sooner or later) lead to failure.
So I’m watching…
See, I’m not a quitter.
I simply make sure I know when to stop.
When enough is enough.
The assessment is simple: it’s called cost — benefit analysis.
My time — that’s the most expensive resource I have.
I always make sure I invest it properly:
in the right ideas
in the right events
in the right people
I invest my time in activities that bring me closer to my goals.
Any minute I spend on something with no returns is a minute wasted. I could’ve spent it on something else delivering more benefits.
It’s called efficiency.
People often ask me: how do you deliver so much along to your 9–5?
The answer is simple: I optimize for efficiency.
That’s it!
So no, I won’t stop.
In fact, I’m going ALL IN on Substack this year.
I just chose a better partner.
One that grows with me and one I help grow.
Substack. I’ve been there for a while.
I chose to run a paid newsletter and became a bestseller in record time, but you can simply write and monetize on the backend with digital products.
I can help you do both.
Just join me and get a FREE 10-Day crash course on how to build your Substack and gain your first 1000 subscribers organically. I give that to any new free subscriber (if you’re already a subscriber, and you want to have it, let me know in the chat:))
I’m sure you gonna love it.
See you inside!
Yana
The best summary and outlook about Medium I've read so far. If you're investing in content solely for Medium, maybe it's time to reconsider your strategy.
It becomes obvious that Medium is a financial disaster for the investors. Getting rid of the high-earning writers was the first step. What follows? Nobody knows.
In the newest Medium newsletter, they proudly mentioned that writers will be able to choose their pronouns in the Medium Bio description. Interesting way to throw money out of the window. Pronouns? Like really? Spending expensive programmer money on such nonsense?
You know the famous Budweiser-inspired saying: Go woke go broke! Seems Medium is next in line.
Great decision, based on both facts, figures and lived out experiences. Thank you for sharing the downside of Medium. You are right about time. We can't create it. We can only spend it and each of us have a limited amount of it. I moved away from Linkedin in December last year because I wasn't getting the value I needed for my time. Oh, and ignore the gurus with BOTH EARS and EYES when they say: "Show up and keep doing your thing everyday". Bad advice that lacks context.