A Medium Boost Nominator’s Update
You can hear data speak if you listen.
You can hear data speak if you listen.
In July, I gave my first update about my journey as a Medium Boost Nominator, which you can read below.
How I’m Using the Boost Nomination Pilot
What I’ve learned from two months of boostingmedium.com
I stated I desired to remain as open as possible, and since it’s been over two months, it’s time to keep my promise. My fourth month as a program member ended in September, so it’s an excellent time to take stock.
A Quick Reminder
The Medium Boost Nomination Pilot is a program where a select group of Medium members can submit your article to Medium curators. If the curators agree that your writing matches the quality they’re looking for, they will apply a “boost” to your article inside the algorithm. This mathematical bump gives your story a wider audience, substantially increasing views, reads, and monetary earnings if you’re a partner program member.
How Much Do I Nominate?
I have nominated 80 stories since June 1st, and of those 80 stories, 58 were accepted, which brings my career acceptance rate to 72.5%. You can see the monthly breakdown below.
As you can see, in June, my average was 70%, July was exceptionally high at 90%, while August and September were a little lower than I expected at 65%. If you’re wondering what happened between July and August, I would say that July was an unusually high outlier, and the next two months were a return to more normal numbers.
The line chart below shows that July can be considered a happy little accident or beginner’s luck.
Who am I Nominating?
This is a tricky subject to discuss, as some writers I’ve spoken to would rather not know if I nominate their stories. However, many authors have told me they want to see if they were nominated. So, I keep a running list of every story I’ve nominated on my publications Discord community (which everyone is welcome to join) with the author’s name removed and not hyperlinked. Please join us if you’re interested in knowing if you were nominated. This Discord is open to the public, and you’re welcome to join whenever you’d like.
For the sake of this article, however, I will keep names private. Regardless of removing the names, I have exciting data to share.
For example, out of 80 nominated stories, 55 are from different authors. When I became a boost nominator, I saw it as a responsibility to help find new writers who may have small followings. Sometimes, great writers have big followings, and since my job is to nominate excellent writing, sometimes writers with big followings are nominated too. But for the vast majority of submissions, they have been writers with fewer followers.
This means I had not nominated 69% of the authors before. This percentage is down from 83% in my July update. The fall can be explained by a slowing down of new writers on my publication as we grew and a tightening of my standards in what meets Medium guidelines.
Even with the drop, I’m glad to say I’ve kept my word by spreading around my nominations.
Where Do I Find My Nominations?
When accepted into the program, I was politely requested to stay within my topic of interest “for most nominations.” I run a publication called The Taoist Online, specializing in philosophy, spirituality, and religion. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that 91.3% of my nominations are from my publication.
What Kind of Articles Am I Nominating?
There are hundreds of topics to write about within my publication. As many readers know, a Medium article can have five topic tags to help it reveal itself through the algorithm to those interested readers. When I record my nomination, I pick and record one of these topic tags chosen by the author that represents the article.
Knowing this, here are my 80 nominations by topic.
A noticeable point in the chart is poetry, with 11 nominations, seven accepted articles, and an acceptance rate of 64%, well below the standard acceptance average of 70–75%.
I hadn’t realized poems were over 13% of all submissions until reviewing the numbers.
Another high nomination topic is Philosophy, with seven nominations, six accepted, and an acceptance rate of 86%. Here are some other quick stats regarding topics.
The chosen topic was unique 36 times.
Fifteen topics have been denied at least once.
Twenty-one topics have always been accepted.
How Much Money Did I Earn?
An issue I avoided in my first update was payment.
Yes, boost nominators get paid per accepted submission. However, I’m also a private person regarding my finances. So, without giving exact numbers, I’ll give you as many facts about my Medium journey as possible and let you fill in the blanks.
I have ~8,000 followers, and my average non-boosted story earns ~$4. Usually, my articles are boosted a handful of times per month. These are given to me by other nominators, or Medium curators could organically boost them. Since we can’t tell who nominates our stories, I can’t say exactly how my articles are selected.
Here is a chart to compare how much money I made from accepted nominations vs. my MPP (Medium Partner Program) earnings vs. my referred members payments. The referred member program was shut down over the summer, but some of my referred members are still on the platform.
If you are one of my referred members, THANK YOU!
As you can see, the boost nomination program does pay more than my writing, but less than you might think. Interestingly, my MPP earnings dramatically increased in September, but my boost earnings remained nearly flat.
Conclusion
I hope this article has given an exciting overview of my time as a boost nominator. I plan on writing another update in January to provide a year in review, and I look forward to seeing how my journey progresses.
The Medium platform can bring happiness, joy, and even cold, hard cash to many deserving people, and I’m thrilled to be a small part of it.
I promise to keep working as hard as possible to help everyone. I only have so many nominations I can give out each month, and I wish I could nominate so many more, but until that day, I have to pick and choose carefully.
If you publish for TTO often, I’ve likely tried to nominate you before, as I look at everything we post at least once, but if not, keep your chin up, and don’t be discouraged.
Remember, you don’t need a boost nomination to know you’re a talented writer and a fantastic individual.