Why Medium and WeChat Reward Completely Different Writers

My English blog had no visitors. Month after month, I published articles and nothing happened.

So I asked AI what was wrong. It told me: your site has almost no backlinks. Nobody on the internet is pointing to you. You need to publish on other platforms and promote yourself — that is how you build authority.

Then it said: have you considered Medium?

I had never heard of Medium.

I looked it up. I found the Medium Partner Program. I saw what writers there were earning. Then I compared it to what I had earned after months of trying to grow a WeChat public account in China.

That comparison stopped me cold.

Medium writers earn $10–$500 per story. A good WeChat article earns ¥5–¥200. But the gap is not really about money. It is about something more fundamental: every platform is an optimization machine, built to reward a completely different type of creator.

Once I understood that, the income difference made complete sense — and I finally understood why I had been failing for years.

The Comparison Nobody In China Is Making

There is a lot written about Medium income. There is a lot written about WeChat monetization. Almost nobody compares them directly — which means almost nobody is asking the more important question underneath: why are they so different?

The USD vs RMB difference alone is roughly 7x. But that is not the real gap.

Platform Thinking: What Each Platform Actually Rewards

AI didn’t tell me which platform was better.

It helped me realize I had been asking the wrong question.

The real question is: What kind of creator does each platform reward?

Once I saw this table, the income gap made complete sense.

WeChat rewards people who already have an audience. If you are starting from zero — no followers, no WeChat group, no existing community — you are playing the hardest version of the game. The platform is not designed for you.

Medium and Google reward people who write clearly about things they actually understand, and who are willing to wait. The first month looks like nothing. A year later, old articles are still sending traffic.

I spent years trying to win on WeChat and Douyin — platforms that punish exactly the way I work. That is not a personal failure. It is a platform mismatch.

Where Each Platform Sits

            Long-term SEO / Evergreen
                      ▲
                      │
      English Blog    │    Medium
                      │
──────────────────────┼────────────────▶ Existing Audience
                      │
        Douyin        │    WeChat
                      │

Top-left: slow start, compounds over time, works without an existing audience.
Bottom-right: fast if you already have followers, dies quickly without them.

I am a top-left person who spent years trying to succeed in the bottom-right quadrant.

This Is Not Really About Medium vs WeChat

Here is the bigger point underneath all of this:

You should not build your creative business on a platform you do not control.

WeChat can change its algorithm tomorrow. Douyin can suspend your account. Medium itself has changed its Partner Program payout structure multiple times — many writers who relied entirely on Medium’s internal distribution are now struggling as the platform de-prioritizes certain content types.

The writers doing best in 2025 are not those who optimized for one platform. They are those who use platforms to send readers back to something they own: a newsletter, a personal blog, a direct relationship with their audience.

Medium is a better starting point than WeChat for reaching a global audience. But the real destination is a platform you control — one where no algorithm change can take your income to zero overnight.

That is what this blog is, for me. Not a platform play. An asset.

What Took Me So Long to See This

In China right now, tens of millions of people are studying WeChat strategy, learning Douyin editing, paying for traffic growth courses. I was one of them. I studied. I tried. I paid for a course that taught me nothing.

Nobody in that world ever mentioned Medium. Not because they were hiding it — most of them genuinely do not know it exists as a monetization option. They are optimizing for platforms they can see, in a language they speak, for an audience they understand.

AI showed me the comparison while I was asking about something else entirely. That accident changed my direction.

My Framework (And Why It Keeps Working)

Looking at my last few articles on this blog, I notice they all follow the same pattern:

1. A real problem happens
2. I ask AI to help me think through it
3. AI gives me a framework, not an answer
4. I make my own decision
5. I document it publicly — including the uncertainty

This one followed that pattern exactly. The problem was: my blog had no traffic. AI taught me about backlinks. While explaining backlinks, it mentioned Medium. I looked at the income comparison. I built a mental model for why platforms differ. I changed my strategy.

AI was the thinking partner, not the answer machine.

Why I Am Still Writing

My son is 16. I do not know if this English blog will work. I have 484 visitors and $0 to show for month one.

But I am exploring possibilities for his future. Showing him that the internet is larger than any single platform. That English opens doors Chinese social media never will. That you do not need a teacher who promises to make you rich — you need to understand which game rewards the way you actually think.

I finally know which game that is.

Now I just have to play it long enough to find out if I am right.

This is part of my Learning in Public series — real decisions, documented in real time, with AI as a thinking partner.

• Failed Experiments #1: Why My First Side Project Got Zero Visitors
• Failed Experiments #2: I Paid ¥1,000 for an AI Content Course
• Investor Psychology #1: Why I Kept a Losing Stock for Five Years
• Month 1 Blog Income Report: $0 Earned, 484 Real Visitors