Could Medium Benefit From a Weekly Publishing Limit
Less is more, right?
Truth be told, I have always been the one who’s advocated for regular and frequent publishing on Medium. Multiple times per week, daily, or even more than once a day.
However, this is not what I think is best for readers, but what’s best for the algorithm to keep suggesting your content. Consistent new input is a major push for algorithms, in general. That is good for your earnings.
But is that the right path for Medium?
Too much
Honestly, a lot of crap is published on Medium daily. I am including myself here.
The need for consistency can drive you nuts, and also lead to the publishing of unrefined or unfinished drafts. Or to a boatload of shortform content with little substance.
For publications, this is also important. A large publication like Illumination puts out numerous posts per day from various authors. Someone who follows this pub is bombarded with all this content in the following section. It’s annoying.
So, let’s dream.
Limit for writers
What if Medium introduced a weekly publishing limit for writers?
Let’s say individual writers couldn’t publish more than 5 posts per week. One per weekday.
Undoubtedly, this would help with reducing low-quality, high-quantity generators, the shortest of shortform content (without much value), and more.
Of course, in turn, it would also severely limit successful Medium writers who publish a lot of quality content on a daily basis, like Tim Denning, who is known to publish multiple times a day.
Pros & cons, right?
Limits for publications
For publications, a limit could look like this:
Only 5–15 posts per day
maybe tied to the number of followers and writers, i.e. large pubs get 15 stories per day, mid-size 10, and small pubs 5
only 1 post per author per day (so not 10 posts by the same writer in one pub)
In general, I think this would vastly improve publication rhythm and reader interest, as readers don’t get overwhelmed with dozens of new posts by the same publication in a day.
The downside: Single-person publications (and great ones) will face a lower limit and hit the wall quickly.
The bottom line
Could Medium benefit from a publishing limit?
For readers, the positives of such a limit might outweigh the negatives, as the reading experience could be improved.
Better recommendations, less fluff = happy readers = happy paying members
For writers, especially the ones who publish very frequently, a limit will most likely decrease MPP earnings. At first.
In the long run, though, I could see a potential increase in quality posts rather than quantity-driven output, and with that a factor for higher earnings.
High-quality output, less fluff = more readers for your stories = more money.
What do you think?