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There are two sides to this, though we often only hear one. For readers who aren't subscribed to Medium, it can be annoying. You go to read an article, and if
by sunny--tech 5y ago
There are two sides to this, though we often only hear one.
For readers who aren't subscribed to Medium, it can be annoying. You go to read an article, and if that article is monetized, you see a banner to sign up. Plenty of people leave immediately.
Now let me tell why, as a writer, I still use Medium and will continue for the time being.
I only post 2-4 articles on there per month. But even then, I'm seeing ~50K views per month and this month I'm on track to earn $1000.
To see those same results on my own blog, I would need to learn a lot about SEO, affiliate marketing, and have a large Twitter following to direct traffic to my blog. I would also need to maintain it myself.
Sure, I might have a higher chance of going viral on HN, but how likely is that even anyway?
As a full-time developer with a newborn who's just looking to earn some fun money, Medium is perfect. I write, submit to a publication, and they take care of the rest.
People may say, "I'm not going to read your posts on Medium." My answer is: okay? Can't make everyone happy. But I'm still getting 50K views from people who do want to read them, and I'm okay with that.
The other point to make is that Medium only pays for views/reads from other Medium members, so I don't necessarily care if I go viral on HN or not. If I really cared about going viral, I would just post my article to something like dev.to and then submit it to HN.
If you're just looking to write and get views/go viral and don't care about money, then it might not make sense to post to Medium. But if you want to earn some money with relatively little effort, Medium is hard to beat.
Edit: Here's proof of my claims for people questioning them (https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-stats-700c2b0b638f https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-stats-700c2b0b638...). Note: it is a Medium link to an unlisted post. Didn't know where else to put it.
- flemhans 5y agoI didn't even know there was a paid subscription. Just always closed the tab when bugged
- sunny--tech 5y agoYeah you can sign up for free, but to read all the paywall/monetized articles, you need to pay $5 per month.
- stereoradonc 5y agoUse ByPass Paywalls on github. No need to pay anything
- reph2097 5y agoThis, plus I downvote on Reddit and tell Google News to show me less medium.
- TheCyberBasics 5y ago"I only post 2-4 articles on there per month. But even then, I'm seeing ~50K views per month and this month I'm on track to earn $1000." That's impressive. I'm clearly writing the wrong articles haha.
- question000 5y agoOh oh that's because he's 100% lying. Just trying to draw more people into the scam. Hacker news is such a naive place sometimes.
- BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y agoWhat makes you say this and what would lying bring them? Looking at their profile clearly shows they've been an active Medium poster for the last year and a half, and probably don't have a deeper association with the platform than that authorship.
- austinkhale 5y agoI have an old Medium account with the partner program activated. It doesn't earn a ton but I'm averaging ~ $10 per 2,500 views. 50k => $1,000 seems steep, but maybe their category is worth more. In addition, you can earn more for new reader referrals.
- sunny--tech 5y agoThere's likely multiple reasons for this. One of my gripes with Medium is it's lack of transparency for how writers earn money. If your views are coming from mainly external sources, Medium won't pay you for that. Also, Medium pays more for more recent stories. Probably as an incentive to keep posting more articles. 1 hour of readership for a brand new story could get you $2-5. For an older story, it'll probably only earn you less than a dollar.
- nkrisc 5y agoThat’s quite the accusation. What makes you say that?
- faeyanpiraat 5y agoWould you mind linking to your medium blog?
- sunny--tech 5y agohttps://medium.com/@SunnyB https://medium.com/@SunnyB I didn't want people to think I was just writing this to get attention which is why I didn't originally post it. Here's proof to the claims I made: https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-stats-700c2b0b638f https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-stats-700c2b0b638...
- martian 5y agoHave you considered Substack?
- sunny--tech 5y agoI've heard good things about substack and it's on my list to check out. Just been too lazy. Do you use it? And if so, how do you like it?
- nine_k 5y agoI see why Medium is good for writers, and also somehow good for readers (it shows related articles which are sometimes valuable). The problems with much of the audience is not that they do monetization, but how they do it. Like many readers, I don't read enough Medium articles to pay $5/mo for it. I don't mind paying $5/mo for something useful, or sending a one-time donation. I gladly would pay, say, 25-50¢ for a good article, if I could do it without subscription. Such a commitment just feels unnecessary. One way to do it is ads — good thing Medium is not pushing ads at me! My thanks. But there's still no easy way to pay a small amount. I see how microtransactions are not economical. I wish Medium offered a "casual reader" plan, where I post, say, $10, and they go to pay per-article fees, not limited by time, that is, I'd not need to replenish it monthly if I haven't run into zero balance. This could be a gateway for more readers who just don't see the need to commit to a subscription. It could even lead to more conversions to subscribers.
- sunny--tech 5y agoYeah honestly if I wasn’t writing on Medium and was only a reader, I’m not sure I would pay for it either. I totally get the gripes from a casual reader stand point. There are some unique approaches to this idea of casual viewing. I know Coil (https://coil.com/ https://coil.com/) is doing this with the whole idea of Web 3.0. The idea, if I understand correctly, is you pay $5 a month for a membership, and any time you consume content from someone who has set up a coil wallet, part of your subscription goes to them. Like Medium subscriptions, but for the entire web. The problem right now is no isn’t really an incentive to use it. It’s all volunteer based. So the payouts from it are pennies. Websites would need to have Coil-only content that only members would get to see to incentivize adoption, similar to Patreon. But since it’s decentralized, it’s up to each site to implement it.
- pier25 5y ago> I would just post my article to something like dev.to and then submit it to HN. Dev.to is flagged by default on HN.