5 ms·

Can someone explain what this article was about? I've read it several times and I still have no idea what the main point was, or how it connects to leaving Medi

Can someone explain what this article was about? I've read it several times and I still have no idea what the main point was, or how it connects to leaving Medium. It feels like it was machine-generated - all of the sentences don't relate to each other or say anything on their own, from my reading.

fhoffa 7y ago
The last sentence says "Subscribe now for a free 30-day trial of the new Praxis blog" - so I guess that's what this one is about.
tonystubblebine 7y ago
I think it's confusing because he's talking about a feature for Medium publications that most people don't even know ever existed. For a small handful of publications, Medium had allowed them to offer their own "pay to subscribe" program where your subscription fee went directly to the publication. I think of this as a failed product experiment that Medium's been slow to kill (Medium is very slow to kill failed experiments in general).
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  Also, I think he's probably doing the right thing for himself. Tiago is on the path to getting a mainstream book deal. In self-improvement, he's on the Ben Hardy or James Clear path. A huge part of that book deal is based on the number of subscribers to his mailing list. A book deal is decent money, seemingly everyone gets an advance in the $200k range. But more importantly, it's a huge career level up for someone like Tiago. Every activity that doesn't build up your mailing list ends up being kind of a waste of time. I suspect that Tiago could actually make more money on Medium publishing behind their paywall than he's going to make in his personal subscription program. But it's not enough that it should be his focus. Also, I assume incentives will change again at Medium down the road as they keep trying to make the deal work for more and more authors. So maybe he'll come back, if just to cross post.
cambalache 7y ago
As a sample of the quality of writing he expects to be paid for is lackluster to say the least.
sytelus 7y ago
I thought article is well written and explains interesting mechanics that professional authors face. The core insight is that all you need is a tribe of few hundred people paying $10/mo if you want to make living out of your writings. However constructing such a tribe requires producing serious long-form high-value content as opposed to something that people will be amused by a short piece and immediately move on to next random amusing short piece. Counterintuitively, the goal isn’t to reach largest possible audience but the most serious audience which might be pretty small. You want your content to be valuable enough that people would be willing pay by their cold hard cash as opposed to pay by their attention. In this model knowing and connecting with your tribe members deeply is also important. The author argues that Medium attempts to imitate all-you-can-eat model of Spotify and Netflix but for written text. This model depends on grabbing attention as much as possible by random stream of articles each providing small dopamine hit instead of providing long term value to determined readers who are willing to put in work to digest complex long-form content. Currently they also don’t allow you to connect back to your followers. This means it’s hard to build tribe of serious audience, forced to write simple attention grabbing short pieces and depend on vitality lottery/luck factor to get paid.

fhoffa 7y ago

The last sentence says "Subscribe now for a free 30-day trial of the new Praxis blog" - so I guess that's what this one is about.

tonystubblebine 7y ago

I think it's confusing because he's talking about a feature for Medium publications that most people don't even know ever existed. For a small handful of publications, Medium had allowed them to offer their own "pay to subscribe" program where your subscription fee went directly to the publication. I think of this as a failed product experiment that Medium's been slow to kill (Medium is very slow to kill failed experiments in general).

tonystubblebine 7y ago
Also, I think he's probably doing the right thing for himself. Tiago is on the path to getting a mainstream book deal. In self-improvement, he's on the Ben Hardy or James Clear path. A huge part of that book deal is based on the number of subscribers to his mailing list. A book deal is decent money, seemingly everyone gets an advance in the $200k range. But more importantly, it's a huge career level up for someone like Tiago. Every activity that doesn't build up your mailing list ends up being kind of a waste of time. I suspect that Tiago could actually make more money on Medium publishing behind their paywall than he's going to make in his personal subscription program. But it's not enough that it should be his focus. Also, I assume incentives will change again at Medium down the road as they keep trying to make the deal work for more and more authors. So maybe he'll come back, if just to cross post.

cambalache 7y ago

As a sample of the quality of writing he expects to be paid for is lackluster to say the least.

sytelus 7y ago

I thought article is well written and explains interesting mechanics that professional authors face. The core insight is that all you need is a tribe of few hundred people paying $10/mo if you want to make living out of your writings. However constructing such a tribe requires producing serious long-form high-value content as opposed to something that people will be amused by a short piece and immediately move on to next random amusing short piece. Counterintuitively, the goal isn’t to reach largest possible audience but the most serious audience which might be pretty small. You want your content to be valuable enough that people would be willing pay by their cold hard cash as opposed to pay by their attention. In this model knowing and connecting with your tribe members deeply is also important. The author argues that Medium attempts to imitate all-you-can-eat model of Spotify and Netflix but for written text. This model depends on grabbing attention as much as possible by random stream of articles each providing small dopamine hit instead of providing long term value to determined readers who are willing to put in work to digest complex long-form content. Currently they also don’t allow you to connect back to your followers. This means it’s hard to build tribe of serious audience, forced to write simple attention grabbing short pieces and depend on vitality lottery/luck factor to get paid.