What Are Some Sites Similar To Medium.com?

Alternative sites to Medium where you can start your own free blog and build your brand.

Medium is not for everyone, the site is saturated with bloggers, and writing now is a bit hectic thing. Let me rephrase the question; “Are there other platforms like Medium that pay people to write?” This question is also part of our article. One thing that makes Medium different from all the available platforms is its high domain authority. A site with good domain authority ranks well in the search engine compared to other sites that give you the ability to publish content on their platform.

I was a student, my father gave me money that was too low to support me in one week. The university campus was in a rural area, so finding a physical job was a bit pain in the ass. So, I decided to start working online. I started my research and luckily, the platform I found was “Blogger” This platform is free and if you are accepted into the Google-owned Ad network, you run ads on your blog and make money. I made over $1.2K in one year of writing on this platform. Later, I shifted to my own WordPress blog with a custom domain and hosting and made good money writing about “How to topics”

Medium Vs Other Similar Sites

Every blogging platform is different from one another. You might get success at one time with a different kind of niche but might get failed badly writing about the same niche. This is what you have decided which site to choose? Before we discuss the pros and cons of Medium and other similar sites, let me tell you my story and how I find blogging platforms.

• Medium has great SEO, while all other sites I have mentioned have a lower domain authority rating than Medium.
• Medium.com's Business model revolves around Medium members who pay $5 a month and the writers are getting paid based on the read time. While the sites I have mentioned that are alternatives to Medium as a blogging platform might have different business and revenue, sharing models.
• I love Medium editor and the way it works. You build yourself an audience on this platform.

Let me tell you a story;

On April 2nd, 2020, Medium suspended my account, that Medium account was 1 year old with four months of consistently publishing articles on this platform. Spoiler alert: That Medium account has been restored after 14 hours.

I was searching for finding Tweets of people whose accounts have been suspended, one strange thing I found out in this research is that people were blaming Medium for *Censorship* Medium could be anything but far from being a censorship platform. It is a quite liberal platform that gives rights to everyone to publish.

If you respect this platform's rules and terms of conditions, you will be here for quite a long.

Alternatives to Medium.com That Pay you for Writing Content

Following are some of the sites similar to Medium that are quite good alternatives for any Medium writer:

1. Papyrus dot so
2. HubPages
3. Vocal Media
4. Steemit
5. Substack.
6. Quora
7. Fiverr
8. Ghost.org
9. WordPress
10. Newsbreak

Let discuss each of these sites in detail.

Make Money Writing on Vocal Media — Potential sites like Medium

• Vocal Media: Vocal Media is a very similar platform to Medium.com. When you make an account on Vocal Media, you have to write an article and then curators will review your story. If it is accepted, then it will be live across the platform. They pay $3.80 per 1000 views to creators who didn’t join Vocal+ Program, if you join Vocal+ then for the same 1,000 views, you will be getting paid $6.

Vocal use stripe as a payment method. If you live in a stripe-eligible country, you can join this platform and make money.

One problem with vocal Media is the waiting time and the idea that someone is controlling you. On Medium, you could write a 2,000 words article and it will be live on this platform in the next minute, all you have to do is to click on the green “Publish” button, while the same is not true for Vocal Media. If you write an article on Vocal, then you have to submit it for review and the chances that it might be rejected is way higher. Here is a prompt asking me to add relevant tags to submit your vocal Media article for review.

Blogging on Vocal Media is good for some writers but you could make a substantial amount of money from your blog post if you publish it on Medium and it gets curated.

Vocal pays you per view basis. As you can see in the screenshot given below;

I would suggest you join Vocal+ here as it will help you make money on Vocal in many ways.

Update: I am writing this update as it has been over two and a half months since I wrote on Vocal, and I have made over $210 till now. I have over 800 to 1,000 reads a day, meaning I am making over $4 to $6 a day, which translates into $120 to $180 a month. If you ask me the one potential Medium alternative, my answer is that you should write on Vocal Media.

Pros of Writing and Publishing on Vocal Media:

• You make money on a reading basis. I have over 90,000 views on my Medium articles in the last 30 days and I have made over $230, while for the very same views on Vocal, I could make $540, which is double the amount.
• Vocal has a Vocal+ program that could open more earning opportunities for you.
• Your traffic source, demography, and interest doesn’t matter on Vocal. All you need is a real-human viewer.

Cons of writing on Vocal Media:

• You can’t directly publish an article on Vocal. First, you have to send it to Vocal moderators and then it will be accepted. Don’t worry, they accept everything.

You can also read a story on Vocal about this: Is Vocal Media a legit site to make money writing?

Make Money Writing on Paragraph

Papyrus is a platform where you can start writing and monetize your writing by getting paid readership. Like Substack (another platform like Medium) you can make money writing on Papyrus by connecting your account with Stripe and start charging readers a fixed monthly fee. They charge 5% of service charges and if you wish to start writing using a custom domain, you can do that too and you have to pay $50 (a one-time fee only)

I tested their newsletter when I was searching for an alternative and one of the things I found out was that their developers are also working in Google, and they are trying hard to optimize your newsletter for getting discovered. You can check out Papyrus.so here and start a newsletter.

Make Money Writing on Hubpages:

• HubPages: They have a very similar model compared to Medium but in a completely different way. They have two business models at the same time. They show Google AdSense ads beside your content and also display amazon affiliate products. If a person finds your article from the search engine and clicks on the Ad or buys the affiliate product, then you get paid based on the different factors.

You need to be living in a Paypal eligible country to receive your earnings from that platform. If more and more people find your content through search engines and they are mostly based on developing economics, you will be paid between $0.08 to $1.5 per thousand views.

The same way you get paid if someone buys an Amazon product from the amazon affiliate link they display on your blog post. Companies like HubPages make a lot of money because all they do is act like a third party, and the writers are getting paid far less.

Pros of writing on Hubpages:

• Hubpages are free and you don’t need to install anything or do any technical thing. Just make an account like you make one on any social media and you are ready to go.
• The money will transfer to your paywall account and there is no payout limit.
• Hubpages will run ads beside your content and you will make money based on the number of views you get. To make more money, get visitors from developed countries.
• Built-in domain authority means it is easier to rank on search engines than writing stories on your own blog.

Cons of writing on Hubpages:

• You don’t own the site. They could suspend your account anytime.
• They pay you way less than if you do the same on your own blog and monetize it with Google AdSense.

You can also read: How to make money writing on HubPages?

• Steemit: Steemit is a decentralized site that is like a digital currency and is traded in the crypto market. Steemit is quite a good site and most writers have made hundreds of dollars on this site, but the currency Steemit is using, called the “SP,” is losing value so do your article.

To get paid from Steemit, you need to make an e-Wallet so technically, any person can join this site. The process of getting your Steemit account is a bit hectic but they will send you your conditionals in under a week.

Also Read: How to generate hundreds of blog post ideas with these 5 ways

• Substack: Substack is a completely different platform based on Email marketing and a subscription-based model. You can create a free publication — a publication where a user can read your content for free and Paid Publication — A publication where the user has to pay you to read your content. One benefit of using Substack is that you could use it as a free email marketing platform.

A writer that has already email subscribers can easily find success on Substack. There are some great paid publications that are generating five figures of income every month just from this platform. Substack is a free Medium alternative. It combined email marketing with a beautiful editor. So, when you write an article on Substack, Substack sends the whole article to the email inbox of your subscribers.

How Substack Makes Money? When a writer starts a paid publication and gets paid, subscribers. You can choose to set $5/month or $30/year minimum subscription charges. Substack takes 10% of the service charges because they provide you with a platform. For writers who want to use Substack just as an email marketing tool. You don’t have to pay anything to use their services. A very good Medium alternative.

You can also read:

• Medium Vs Substack: Which Platform Is Best To Make Money Writing?
• Substack Writing: How To Make Money Writing On Substack

If you want to grow your Substack, Join SubsMarketing Newsletter.

Make Money Writing on Newsbreak:

There is a new alternative site to Medium and it is called Newsbreak.

• Newsbreak: As the name suggests, Newsbreak is mostly concerned with publishing news-related articles but you could also submit articles about any topic of your choice. They pay upfront $1000 per month to writers who successfully join the Newsbreak Partner program. In my opinion, Newsbreak is one of the best Medium alternatives. I wrote an article about; How to make money writing on Newsbreak. We also compared Medium Vs Newsbreak, which gives you insights into both writing platforms.

Newsbreak is a free website where they pay a fixed amount of money for three months if you publish 2 articles every week for a month. They also have other monetization tools. Think about a writing platform that App is trending in the US, and has over 25 million unique page views every month, Newsbreak could give you this opportunity to reach a wider audience.

Alternatives to Medium.com that you make money through other ways

These sites really didn’t pay you directly; instead, you could use them to drive traffic or get leads using these sites.

• Quora

Quora is a question & Answer based platform with over 300 million users and the traffic statistics is much higher than Medium.com. Quora has a feature called “Quora spaces” Quora is very sensitive to adding links to your answers but if you own a Quora space, then you could publish links, posts, and Questions on your Quora spaces. I owned a Quora Space with over 65K followers and it generates 500 to 800 of traffic to my Medium and my own blog posts. Also, if you live in a stripe-eligible country, you could join the Quora Partner program and get paid directly from Quora by asking questions.

How to make money from the Quora Partner program?

• Fiverr

Fiverr is a freelance site where you can sell your skills. Fiverr act like a Third-party between the seller and the buyers. They take a 20% cut on your earnings. You can start a writing gig on Fiverr, and if someone contacts you, you get a writing gig.

• Ghost

The ghost is like any other site but quite good. You can start your own Membership site like Medium, and if you want to just run ads on their blog. You have to pay $25 per month for their hosting and you could also buy your own domain to host your site on the Ghost server. Ghost is also a blogging platform similar to Medium.

You can start your own website like Medium through Ghost.org, and through your quality content can let people pay you to read the content. Ghost.org gives you this feature; literally, people make thousands of dollars through their Ghost blogs. Signup here to enjoy a fast Ghost blog experience.

• WordPress

WordPress powered millions of blogs on the Internet. Most hosting companies provide an open-source content management system to their customers. You could use hundreds of ways to make money through blogging on your own hosted platform. One benefit of having your self-hosted blog is “Your platform, your rules”

If you want to know more ways to make money through your own WordPress-hosted blog, you could read this article.

Read:19 ways to make money from your WordPress blog.

Medium alternatives for developers

If you are a developer and want to find some sites that are better Medium alternatives then the following are some of the sites that fall best into the category of Medium alternatives for developers.

1. Hackernoon: It was a Medium publication but later on they started their own website.
2. Dev dot to. Powered by Hash node.

In this article, we have mentioned different alternatives to Medium.com where you could write about the thing you love or do blogging and also build your brand and make money on the side.

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