Medium Writing Tips / Medium Publications
5 Reasons to Create Your Own Medium Publication (And 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t)
Thoughts on creating your own Medium publication
One of the most commonly asked questions about Medium, that I receive is some variation of “should I create my own Medium publication?” There are many advantages to having your own publication. However, not all writers are aware of these. There are also some hidden disadvantages that writers should consider before creating their own Medium publication.
1. Control The Visibility and Distribution of Your Own Content
For new writers on Medium, there is a bit of a paradox when it comes to writing for publications. When you don’t have a large following and haven’t written for major Medium publications — it can be very difficult to become approved as a writer for any Medium publications. Conversely, once you are published in a few major publications — seemingly everyone wants your work.
For writers that want to control the circulation of their own content, creating a Medium publication can be a great option. I’m a big believer in the idea that you should never let others stop you from pursuing your goals. So I started several Medium publications to better showcase my articles. While this doesn’t magically grant you followers, it does allow you to pick and choose which stories you would like to feature in your publication. Even if your article is selected for a major publication, it will most likely be pushed off the publications “featured article” section, fairly quickly.
2. Gain Access to More Detailed Analytics
A second benefit of creating your own publication is the increased access to data analytics pertaining to your articles. Medium only gives writer’s a relatively small amount of data on their articles (number of views, reads, claps, fans, and some traffic sources). So any increased insight into your content’s data analytics is extremely valuable.
Below are screenshots of the enhanced “views” and “visitors” data that Medium publication owners have:
Views: The total number of views your publication has received on all posts and pages.
Visitors: The average number of unique daily visitors who have visited your publication. Each visitor is counted once per day, even if they view multiple pages or the same page multiple times.
3. Utilize Features Only Available in Medium Publications
When you create your own publication, there are several useful features that you gain access to. The two features I find the most useful are the “homepage promos” tabs and the “letters” function.
Homepage promotions enable you to add custom blocks to your publication that link your readers to a post, a feature page, or even, an external link (outside of Medium). Below is an example from one of my publications, Black Edge Consulting:
You can choose to include a section title, image, headline text, button and specify a custom background color. Whichever combination of elements you choose, they will appear as a clickable link to the URL of your choosing. This can be used to redirect to your personal website, a product, company, a landing page for your mailing list, etc. Medium generally does not allow writers many options to so obviously redirect traffic to external sites, so not utilizing this feature can be a major waste!
Letters are a way of connecting with your publication’s followers and starting a conversation. Letters are delivered to the inboxes of all the people who follow your publication. They are also a post, so they can be recommended, highlighted, built upon, and have a life of its own.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This publication advantage is purely anecdotal and based on my observation of how Medium articles index in Google. I’ve played around with publishing articles under my own publications (which did not have many followers) vs. simply posting my article to no publications and the results seemed clear — even without a meaningful presence, publishing the same post in a publication resulted in it being indexed higher in Google’s search results. If this is indeed true, one of the explanations may have to do with the URL Medium assigns articles in publications:
Again, this is merely an observation based on past experience, but it may be worth it to explore with your articles.
5. Help Fellow Medium Writers
The last reason to create your own Medium publication is if you simply want to help/interact with other writers. Unless you restrict your publication to your own articles, exclusively, Publications give you the chance to highlight other article’s that you discover from other writers. It’s also a good way to find writers who share common interests and may be interested in collaboration.
As great as creating a Medium publication is, there are still a number of reasons that you should think twice before committing your time and effort.
1. Takes Time and Effort Away From Your Writing
Maintaining and growing a publication takes time and effort. If you are already finding it hard to produce the quality or quantity of articles you desire, creating a Medium publication can distract from that. Sometimes you just need to keep your head down and focus on writing itself to get anything accomplished.
2. Medium has Changed the Publication Structure Several Times
While publications have many advantages, they are still a part of the Medium ecosystem and are subject to change at any time. This argument can be made for Medium as an entire platform — think twice before devoting all your resources to publishing on Medium, when you could be building something you control. But Medium publications have already changed structure several times since inception and will likely do so again.
3. You May Think About Articles in Terms of How They Will Fit Your Publication
One of the great things about Medium is that you can write about a wide range of topics and find an audience for your content. However, this exploration of new topics may be stifled (intentionally or not) if you create a publication with a specific focus (most Medium publications). Obviously this is not an issue for everyone, but it is something I have noticed after gaining some traction on past publications — I started to think about what article I should work on next in relation to my publication, as opposed to just trying to create the best content, period.
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Casey Botticello is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Blogging Guide, an online community of writers with an award-winning newsletter. He is also the creator of the popular Medium Writing Course and the Substack Newsletter Course.
Casey previously worked at several tech startups, a lobbying & strategic communications firm, and has created several businesses of his own. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, follow his Medium publications, Digital Marketing Lab and Medium Blogging Guide, or reach out to him directly on his personal website.
