What Is Going On With Medium Right Now?
Back in late 2016, I was looking for a home..
for my words.
I started a Wordpress site in May that never got over 500 monthly visitors, and to make it worse, I felt as a writer that I had no other options.
It was either a Wordpress site or nothing.
Maybe Quora back then? Who knows.
Then someone mentioned Medium in a newsletter I used to follow, and that was like a lightbulb moment for me.
“Shit, I’ll just publish on Medium then.”
My options as an online writer grew from “Wordpress or nothing” to “Wordpress or Medium?”
It changed the game forever.
To be real, “blogging” is still a young sport. I mean, Youtube rose to its first semblance of prominence back in 2009. It’s just a decade ago, basically.
Medium came into the game in 2012 with guns blazing saying “Forget all the noise about hosting, and domain names, and the headaches of starting your own site, we got a one-stop solution for you.”
And Medium was so good that millions of writers have flocked there over the last 9 years.
There’s nothing to compare it to, so I have to bring another social media platform into the example. “Medium is like Instagram for bloggers.”
That gets the job done pretty quick.
So Medium changed the game from a conceptual perspective, but it also changed the game in terms of performance.
Writers used to be able to get a FUCK TON of views back in the day. I remember the good ol’ days when one post in “The Mission” would give me 200 views within 20 minutes of publishing.
Ah, I miss those days.
Back then, Medium seemed like a much more vibrant platform with publications that resembled thriving ecosystems instead of decaying boneyards.
Now, I’m not gonna lie, it looks more like the latter.
I’m not saying it’s pointless to publish on Medium anymore, but the magic and exponential growth writers used to see back then is pretty much gone.
The scales of power between Medium blogs on the left and Wordpress blogs on the right used to be quite imbalanced. Medium had all the leverage.
Now they’re as level as they can get.
It’s a shame. Medium used to be a place where anybody could be heard. As views plummet, it seems the dream of making it big on Medium is getting farther and farther out of reach.
Medium Is Not Doomed
You’d think a platform as big as Medium would fix the problem. It’s a simple switch in the algorithm they could flip to turn the floodgates on for everybody again, right? Decentralize. Let the audience decide who they want to read, and not Medium curators. Allow the mob to get more of who they love on their homepage.
They’ve failed recently.
I’ve written on Medium since 2016. I’ve seen waves of ups and downs numerous times through my five years writing here. Every 12 months there seems to be some big crisis of organic reach, and then Medium pivots and the views come back again.
If I had to bet, I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance Medium pivots and flips a switch in the algorithm that, I don’t know, makes it fucking better for everybody again (including themselves).
I have the benefit of knowing Medium’s track record on this. The views may come back eventually.
So I guess the question is, what’s next? What are the other options here?
Medium
No, I’m not joking. Medium has some pretty big SEO benefits, like the benefit of a high Domain Authority. If you post keyword-optimized posts on Medium, your chance of ranking high in search results is quite good.
Not to mention you still get fucking paid here. How many sites allow you to get paid for your writing like Medium does? Newsbreak? Eh, I’m really bearish on Newsbreak lately.
You can use Medium like a mercenary to grow your own search-optimized portfolio of posts and get paid doing it.
LinkedIn allows you to write blog posts on their platform, too. It’s like a cheat code to ranking higher in search results since LinkedIn also has a high domain authority. Not to mention you’re able to tell your story in much more colorful ways.
On Medium, your options are
- Write a blog post, or
- Write a blog post
On LinkedIn you can share videos, pictures, status updates, and even go live. You’re playing Chess on LinkedIn and Checkers on Medium.
The other reason I love LinkedIn is because the organic reach is still bonkers.
You get the organic reach of pre-2018 Medium and the versatility of Facebook. It’s a match made in blogging heaven.
Wordpress
The benefit of Medium used to be that it’s easier to build an audience there than on Wordpress. I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.
If you’re going to spend dozens of hours every week writing and clawing your way to getting even a trickle of traffic, why not just do it on a Wordpress site?
At the end of the day you OWN that traffic on a Wordpress site. You can make the rules. You can advertise or sell sponsored posts or do whatever you want. As Medium’s organic reach declines, maybe the old ways are becoming the best ways yet again.
Medium Made It Too Easy For Us
Without Medium, nobody would know who I am. As their organic reach seems to decline a bit lately, I find myself wondering things like “Where will I go if it gets any worse?”
Where will I get my message out? Where will I go to connect with my audience?
The more time passes, the better LinkedIn and Wordpress look, to me.
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