UPDATE: As of November 25, 2019, Medium has changed it’s policies! You are no longer allowed to delete and then re-post old stories.

If you’ve been on Medium for awhile, you might be aware of a “shocking and scandalous” trick utilized by many writers on this site. Now, please try your best to remain calm as I spill the beans; some writers take old stories, spruce them up a little, publish the new version and delete the original. Am I an active participant in this subterfuge, you ask? Of course, my parents didn’t raise me to be a fool!

My satirical melodrama aside, republishing old articles is a convenient way to counter writer’s block when you’re trying to publish frequent content. Typically, writers opt to revisit pieces that weren’t curated the first time around. Based on discussions I’ve had with other writers, it appears that “refreshed stories” have a high rate of curation. Usually, all it takes is some tweaking of the original content, a more attention-grabbing headline, and a new high-quality image to get the article through the golden gates of curation.

With the launch of Medium’s new earning system, however, you may wish to think twice before deleting your old stories.

Earlier this week, I posted a story outlining four observations I’ve made about Medium’s new earning system during its first full week in operation. If you haven’t done so, please feel free to take a look:

The biggest trend I’ve noticed since the switchover to the new MPP is that my older stories are collectively generating more income than my newly published pieces.

My earnings

Since October 28th — the day the new MPP became active — I have published six longer stories. I have also published a handful of poems and Top 3 articles, but I won’t be addressing them in this post. I plan on writing another article about shorter pieces soon.

I am taking into account all my earnings from October 28 to November 5, 2019. On each of these eight days, my back catalog generated the most income.

As of November 5, my new stories account for 46% of my earnings. 51.5% of my income, however, came from older stories published before the new system came into effect.

Looking at each story, my newest articles earn the largest sum of money individually, while my old stories generate anywhere from a couple of cents to a few dollars each. While it’s easy to dismiss your back catalog because most of the stories are only earning tiny amounts, you might be surprised at just how lucrative they are when their totals are combined.

Why might this be happening?

Based on conversations from the Facebook groups, I’m not the only writer to have noticed this trend. Several of my fellow writers have observed a similar pattern. This is a nice little “bonus” for those who’ve been on Medium for some time, but I am not able to verify if this is a widespread phenomenon or not.

The reason for this is fairly easy to deduce. Under the old claps equals money system, newer stories generated more money due to their higher engagment. Older pieces, while garnering views, would often only receive random claps. This effectively limited income to new stories only.

Now that earnings are based on reading time, we are paid when a Medium member views our older works.

To delete or not to delete? That is the question!

I don’t advocate that you should never rework or delete stories, but the new system means paying closer attention to stats before deleting anything. If an old story hasn’t been doing any business and you feel that a “new coat of paint” will make a difference, by all means, do it! You still have the potential of making more money by refurbishing an old one. If an older story is generating income, you may not want to delete it so quickly.

New strategies

Given that we seem to have the potential to earn more money on past stories, deleting them so you can refresh them might not always be the best solution. One possible strategy is to build upon an old story rather than just making a few changes and deleting it.

You could take the old story and write a new one based on one element or theme from it. For example, if you wrote an article about five steps to becoming a successful freelance writer, why not write a full piece focusing on just one of those steps. Then at some point down the road, you could write a separate story for each of the remaining four. See, five possible new stories without having to delete anything.

Promoting old stories is another way to increase your earnings. One of the best methods to do this is by embedding links to past articles. Typically, when I write a new piece, I’ll embed links to my other recently published stories in an attempt to generate more traffic. Embedding a mix of related older and new stories into an article is one way of attempting to generate more readers.

Also, many groups on Facebook are now creating threads designed to promote old stories.