3 ms·
Ask HN: Should I move a popular Medium article to a third party's publication?
I'm fairly new to Medium, and definitely new to writing articles that take off so rapidly.
I've recently been asked by a couple of people over e-mail to move my post from my own publication to theirs for increased circulation (it was the most popular post worldwide briefly this week I believe).
I'm not so familiar with the platform or how it works at high traffic.
It may be a stupid question but HN has not yet steered me wrong.
So..
Is this normal practice? Am I being really gullible? Should I move it?
Thanks in advance.
- gus_massa 10y agoDo they have a serious publication? Have you heard of them before? Have you read a few old editions to get an idea of the articles? Are they going to pay you? Are you going to pay them (editing fee, or something)? Or it's free for both? (If they are going to pay something now and more money later, assume that you will never get more money. Are you happy with the money they offer now?)
- headmelted 10y agoThanks for the response. No money involved (free for both), the biggest of the publications is Startup Grind, if that helps at all. It would mean removing it from my own publication (maybe Medium doesn't allow it to be in two publications simultaneously?). Not really sure what to do, not something that's mattered until now and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot, so to speak. I should mention that the publication is currently on my own domain, and Google is already showing the article pretty high up on search results (Coding on a Chromebook), so I'm reluctant to give up any link love that's getting built up there.
- mamurphy 10y agoIf there is no money involved, what is the benefit to you of moving your already-successful article to their publication (and removing it from Medium and your domain)? I don't see any. You aren't necessarily going to get better exposure than you currently are... and what else is the possible upside for you?
- headmelted 10y agoTheir publication is also on Medium. The upside (as it was described to me) was that it would then be exposed to their 500k followers, the downside being that it would no longer be in my own publication and thus on my own domain. The only reason I was even considering it was that I don't know how Medium promotes articles internally, so I figured the boost of the extra followers could help. But I figured maybe Medium doesn't even work that way? Thanks for the input - I was kind of leaning towards staying put anyway, and this reinforces that it's the right call.
- capaxinfinity 10y agoHey there - incidentally, I'm the one that requested the piece. Totally respect you keeping the post where it is - especially if your reasoning is for personal brand benefits. If your intention is to maximize its visibility, then we think we can help. Our publishers see 4-10x increased readership on their pieces once they move it from a small or no publication to Startup Grind, and without tooting our own horn too much, the brand does hold credibility with founders/investors, though admittedly less so with developers than, say, FreeCodeCamp, which is awesome too. You won't lose our on your Google rankings as Medium is very good about giving canonical URL denomination as your piece moves around the site, and they also prevent links from breaking with elegant redirects. When it comes to money, the standard on Medium has thus far been a free exchange: writers focus on creating great content, publications focus on promoting it. You benefit is sharing your idea, our benefit is folks seeing our brand supporting great ideas like yours. You can trust we're not making ad money on the piece, if that's a concern, and we don't plan on editing the content. Anyway, if this is something you have more questions on, I'll track this thread, but if not, you've still got a reader & fan here!