As writers, we often forget that Medium is not designed to enrich us. It’s designed to enrich the Coach Tonys of the world and the platform’s investors. I used to do great on Medium but the algorithm is routinely tweaked and lately it’s been tweaked to my disadvantage.

We used to get our content boosted and our profiles featured. We used to get bonuses when we got a lot of reads. Unfortunately, the powers that be have discovered they do quite well by exploiting writers who are willing to produce content for next to nothing. They don’t have to throw us any bones.

I think ads would be a mistake. The lack of ads is one of the few things keeping people on the platform.