Top Writer status means nothing.

It may mean a little bit less than nothing. I was top writer in 3 categories (inspiration, psychology and writing) and I thought “Cool! They’ll put me somewhere on the front page in those categories!” Eh, no. They did for about 2 months and around the first of the year Medium stopped putting me anywhere. As long as I was somewhere on the first page in the category (isn’t that what “top writer” means?) even if it was several yards down from the top screen (I only had about 400 followers at the time, I wasn’t expecting top billing), my articles were discoverable.

BUT around the first of the year they stopped doing that. Suddenly one of the top writers in “inspiration” was in Siberia and nobody could find me. I went from a couple hundred hits per article to 10 or 20. Since my followers who had liked my articles aren’t alerted when I publish, not even they could find me.

And then? My “top writer” status vanished like morning dew. I’m back to being “Susan Cogan, nobody in particular.”

And fiction? I love writing articles helping people write better, deal with anger and disappointment, how to relax, how to meditate, (and, of course I love to kick the shit out of Trump now and again) but I am primarily a fiction writer.

Fiction goes zero. All my fiction pieces on Medium have, collectively, maybe 10 hits.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Medium.com. They will always get first publish of everything I write for the web. Getting $30 a month for writing stuff I would have written anyway is the most fabulous feeling I’ve ever had with my clothes on. I’m here to stay.

Thank you for writing this article! and I will definitely keep an eye out for your article about websites for writers. Wattpad is not my audience!