Medium

This post comes in two parts; I started it when I was sceptic and came to the conclusion that I should join it as a subscriber. The first part sort of documents this journey and the second part captures the lessons I have learnt or at least observed to make me a more effective publisher there. The first thing is that I think even the default look is pretty and clean. When I started this page, I hadn’t concentrated on it for months; every now and then I copy some stuff from the blog to the medium feed, but my huge problem is that I then had to pay for people’s content and they needed to pay for mine. While one correspondent suggested I should!   On the other hand, I want my content to be free; their paywall inhibits people’s ability to read my stuff; so it’s no longer solely  an amplifier. Although I concluded after research that I should subscribe, and maybe more.  Subscribing and reading is good citizenship and I can then chip in to others fees. One big problem as a money maker is that the only income is from subscriptions and so Medium shares from the less well read to the better read. The fact is that Medium is an audience you pay to join. But for more, see below/overleaf …

I wrote about the problem where the distribution of ideas is critical and more important than revenue. This is a critical choice, do you want to be read or rich.

Supporting authors I like

Back to Medium, in order to read more, I need to subscribe because they limit non-subscribers to 4 articles per month, and this is not enough to read and be generous with your feedback.

I have come to the conclusion that possibly the cheapest way to act with generosity is to subscribe and read those I really follow with care, I get to read their stuff and act with generosity to increase their earnings.

Building readership and income

In order to get some money I need to join their partner programme. If I were to reinvest, I’d need to go back to the start (methodologically), concentrate on writing (probably a couple of times/week), probably focus on one category (which doesn’t suit me) and concentrate on titles. All this assumes they don’t change their model again, which has been unstable to say the least.

I have just found this article, “How to Promote Your Blog on Medium” on travelpayouts.com, nothing very clever, and a bit too commercial. The newsletter might be useful.

D&B say it made $1.95 million with three employees. (2020)

See also,

She also has a blog.

They have a subscriber referral program . see https://bloggingguide.com/medium-referred-memberships/ and one can issue the blogs as emails, I need to work this out. (I think I have).

I also found an article by Liquid Ocelot on Medium on building audience or more accurately revenue. It’s a lot of hard work for $10. I have also discovered that my blog’s technology articles are more popular than those on politics.

In Jan 2023, I had a little think about how I was doing and read this and this, entitled “ten medium tips from the creators who know best”, which includes a pointer to using lists, and publications.

Medium has a blog, and a discussion forum which is defined by tag.

about Medium

This is one article on increasing your followers, on Medium, and one on its viability and consistency, this is a quote from the latter,

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool you twice, shame on me. Fool me seven times, well…how much money do you have, again?

Medium pay via a 3rd party payment processor, Stripe. This requires you to make a US W8-BEN form which allows them to pay gross of US Tax. They default to daily payout’s allegedly only if above £1 for UK bank users, but this can be turned off, and they have an API which might allow me to write a ‘call’ program. There are plenty of documents and examples out there.

Options

So what else is to be done?

1. Possibly pay for medium, NB I did and do. There’s at least two writers I enjoy! No competitors seem to be cheaper, and my doyens are still blogging and not monetising the blogs, but to me this maximises brand presence and would seem to be an essential part of any freemium offer. There’s some advice on google, but it may be that you have to diversify to monetise the writing. It’s what Zulie suggests. Mug’s are popular! Not sure if popular is the right word, but very easy to commission. I wrote an piece on Merch.  See Photobox or Vistaprint 😆 There was an article recently by a foreign language youtuber, who stated that he couldn’t make decent money on the youtube ads, he needed patreon and merchandise, but suggested that English language material might do better.
2. I looked at Patron, and feel that for me I must have a freemium model which requires a second site and while it may be cheaper for a single creator, they charge per following, this is not the case with Medium. Patron is a subsite, which allows you to ‘paywall’ certain content, Medium is an audience you pay to join.
3. I might look at Google adsense or Amazon affiliates, although I’d have to improve my readership massively, I’d be lucky to make $150 per annum today and have always turned it down because I didn’t want to lose editorial control of my blog by polluting it with other people’s ads.

Actions

So I decided to give it another go,

1. cross post content from my blog, maybe check the wiki to see if that’s worth doing too.
2. become a member of medium so I can pass it on and before any of my followers drop off, although by Jan 2023, I had nearly doubled my followership.
3. fix the blog to automatically cross post – I am not sure this is right, it is possible to post to Medium first, and then delay the post to the Blog, this would allow me to publish as first on Medium ( I have asked for this functionality; we’ll see). I tried blog to Medium, but it didn’t put it behind the paywall; I need to try it again sometime.
4. amend the blog’s follow me page, and maybe make a ‘follow me on medium’ page which may need me to make a referral trigger on the blog. Done.

is there a difference between followers and subscribers? How to promote the medium blog?