At the end of February, I had 208 stories published on Medium. I wrote 8 of those during February. The other 200 were written from November 2021 to January 2022.

That’s not all the stories I’ve written though. I’ve already deleted hundreds that weren’t earning anything. I am using them to build niche blogs instead. They will earn more there than if I’d left them on Medium.

Let’s take a look at February’s income to show what it’s really like

I earned $181.20. That was made up of $143.95 for the 8 stories I published in February, $22.89 from referrals, and $14.36 for stories written before February.

The average earnings for my February stories was $17.99.

The average earnings for the other 200 stories was $0.0718.

In fact, only 58 stories earned money. The other 150 stories earned $0.

That’s pretty laughable.

My 8 stories from February earned over 10 times more than the other 200 stories.

I am 100% certain that if I repurposed those 200 stories into niche blogs I’d earn more than $14.36 a month. So why bother keeping them on Medium?

Medium almost always shows recent content. It simply doesn’t care about your old stories. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and some stories may make a comeback now and again, but that’s very rare.

I recently wrote about why I deleted 207 stories.

After that, I deleted another 153.

Now I have another 200 stories that I will delete over the coming weeks.

My new approach is to publish stories here, allow them to earn some cash, and then delete them and republish them elsewhere.

I don’t see any point whatsoever in leaving stories languishing for weeks. months, and even years when they could be earning elsewhere.

My first niche blog was set up for just $33 for a year’s hosting. I’ve already earned almost $200 from it. That’s more than the stories would have earned on Medium.

How about story views?

My 8 stories from February got 5,335 views. That’s 667 views on average.

The other 200 stories got 3,015 views. Just 15 views per story on average.

The average number of views for stories from February was 44 times higher than the average number of views for older stories.

As I mentioned above, Medium is only interested in fresh content. I know they might say otherwise, but I don’t believe it.

I have blog articles from over 10 years ago that still get hundreds of views every day. That just doesn’t happen with Medium. Medium is more like a news site. Your story is news today and gone tomorrow. Never to be heard of again.

Here’s a quick exercise for you

Go check your February earnings and count how many stories earned any money at all. Then divide that by the number of stories you’ve published. I bet you’ll be shocked.

I was shocked the first time I realized how many stories earned $0.

I’m sure some people have a good reason to keep hundreds of stories that earn nothing, but that wouldn’t work for me.

So, what percentage of your stories earned money last month?