Blogging

Why I Moved My Blog to Medium

Seven years and 100+ posts later

My Blogging Story: How and Why I Started

Driven by my passions for writing, reading, and learning, I started my personal blog sometime in December of 2015. Up until that point, I had no outlet to express my thoughts beyond the typical social media post or Facebook rant. As I learned more about business, passive income, and entrepreneurship, blogging became a natural transition as a form of expression, but also as a thought experiment for the things that were working well.

Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Work Week and the Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco were popular reads during the time, so the inspiration to write and create was at an all-time high. I still think about those books as foundational to becoming a writer/entrepreneur because of the powerful ideas they introduced.

For example, I still believe in Ferriss’ idea of “lifestyle design,” and Demarco’s business and lifestyle strategy known as the “Fastlane.” As more and more people conform to societal expectations, these ideas empower individuals to take control of their life.

I liked the idea of leveraging a blog as a side hustle and also a platform to practice the craft of writing and business.

There is really no way to practice business. Even top business schools rely on case studies and personal anecdotes to translate concepts into something resembling the real world. Even then, after years of studying product-market fit, the 4Ps of Marketing, data analytics, metrics, game theory, and economics, there is still no guarantee that you will succeed in the marketplace.

What’s more important is to get out into the market and experiment, fine-tune, practice, and FAIL. Fail over and over again until you no longer fear it and instead embrace it. Failure is the hidden key to success in entrepreneurship and being able to write about those failures provides an unmatched opportunity for reflection.

Why Medium and Why Now?

Despite all this time writing and posting, my blog still hasn’t provided a steady stream of passive income. Admittedly, this is partly because I treated my blog as a hobby and creative outlet for many years, but it is also partly because I have failed to be accountable for what it takes to succeed as a paid blogger.

For instance, my first sustainable source of income from the blog came in the form of links to amazon products using their affiliate program. Instead of doubling down on what was working, I launched an online t-shirt store that practically failed in every way imaginable. I didn’t embrace failure at the time and it robbed me of time and energy and derailed my overall momentum.

Failure has a way of highlighting everything you aren’t good at.

I believe Medium can help in this regard. It is built on a platform of metrics that tracks everything for you, including the stats and success rate of each story. For someone that is naturally competitive, this platform provides the opportunity to “compete” with other writers. Although you aren’t actually competing with anyone, you have the opportunity to measure the success rate of each post, follower responses, and monthly revenue.

The ability to track metrics, participate in writing challenges, and otherwise “compete” with other writers makes Medium an exciting platform for blogging and content creation.

Which leads me to my second point, Medium pays you for your content when you enroll in the Medium Partner Program. If this is something you are interested in, start by joining Medium with my referral link below. You’ll get full access to all of my stories, my publication on high-performance, and every other story on Medium.

Writing For and Creating Publications

Another unique aspect of Medium is that it has a built-in magazine feature known as publications.

“Medium publications are shared spaces for stories written around a common theme or topic, usually by multiple authors.” — Medium

When you write for a publication, you get access to a specific niche of readers that are interested in curated content. If you are like me and want to write about different topics, publications give you the opportunity to do so.

This is also great if want to start a publication featuring a large segment of your own content. For example, I like to write about high-performance in fitness, business, and psychology and created the High-Performance Lifestyle publication as a result. However, I still produce content about writing, books, and learning and have published articles in other publications such as New Writers Welcome, Better Humans, Feedium, Motivate the Mind, and In Fitness and In Health.

The opportunity to expand your writing to other genres gives Medium an advantage when compared to traditional blogging.

Blog Aesthetics

Writing and reading on Medium is simple and smooth. For the most part, Medium has removed any unnecessary distractions, ads, or third-party popups and is hyper-focused on the reading experience.

When it comes to content creation in the written form, is there anything else more important? At this point, I am physically unable to read anything from a mainstream blog that is at least 50% more advertisements than content. Even before making the transition to Medium, I frequently used the platform to find book reviews and summaries because of how easy it was to consume the content.

Each story you write appears exactly how your audience will view it. There are only a few options for headers, the font is neat and not too small, a single picture is all that is needed, and quotations are easy to use. Medium allows you to focus on the content and little else, which removes the barriers to blogging for a lot of people.

What’s Next?

After seven years of blogging, the craft of writing is still exciting. For me, it’s much more than just putting words on a blank slate. It is a creative process that involves plenty of time in deep thought. I enter a state of flow, where writing and thinking blend into a single purposeful action.

I have learned to transfer these skills into real-life applicability. Like the great swordsman Miyamoto Musashi once said, “if you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.” The simple act of writing all those years ago has led to so much more.

I plan to continue to build my presence on Medium with insightful articles that act as a call to action. I believe strongly in reading and learning as a catalyst for other successful endeavors in life. I believe deep thought and reflection is a necessary component for character and mastery.

With that being said, I will continue to expand my influence through my online coaching business, fitness and lifestyle programs, and hopefully in other ways that I have yet to explore.

We all have our gifts, the things we are naturally good at, and perhaps our best ways of contributing to the world. My only wish is that you find yours and use it to make a difference, just like I have found mine.

“Moving forward is one of the most important decisions we can make in life because it allows us to grow, learn new lessons, have more energy, enjoying more peace, and overcoming our adversities.” — Dr. Peter Nieman

If you are interested in learning more, please visit trainoutwork.com. This post contains affiliate links which means I get a portion of what you pay at no extra cost to you.