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Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#61

Post by [deleted] »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #42

If Medium was 5 people in a basement I'd forgive them for not quite having a business model sorted out yet. What I fail to understand is how something like Medium turns into a bloated ~150 person company that's burning VC cash like crazy with no clear path towards becoming an actual business that makes decent revenue, let alone profit. Whether it's a bubble or not is semantics but it's these sorts of 'companies' that…

They burn $50m per year and have 60m readers They need 1.4% of readers to subscribe They charge 1/3 what the NYTimes does. The NYTimes company has +$1bn revenues. They can probably get 1.4% of readers to subscribe. They could also charge subscriptions for blogger tools. They could have tiered subscriptions ($5 is the lowest guardian membership, and it looks like you get little for it). They have only just started off…

[deleted]

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#62

Post by muraiki »

user5994461 wrote: post #30
sverige wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has become the go-to site for tech musings written by unpaid people who can't be bothered to set up their own blogs. This is it for me. If you want to write about tech, or the tech scene, and especially web tech, why can't you just build a site? I've built a few and I don't even do web development for a living so I had to teach myself some stuff.

Because it is difficult, a lot of work and potentially very expensive (when you have traffic) to build your own. If you are in tech, you should understand to use the right tool for the job.

Hosting a web site for a blog is expensive? A local webhost offers 75GB of transfer for $6 a month, with the highest transfer day per month dropped completely. If you want a CDN on top of that, it's a whopping $1 per month per 10GB.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#63

Post by Baeocystin »

lathiat wrote: post #50
anarchitect wrote: post #14

I'm happy to pay for things that provide value in my life. I pay a modest amount to some bloggers directly via Patreon for what I could otherwise get for free. I'm also considering doing the same for The Guardian (though that gets me the removal of ads). It's not out of the question that I would want to do the same for Medium. I would miss them if they went away or had to change direction to monetise in new ways that…

I agree with this, I contribute $54/month on Patreon and $10/month on YouTube Red for creators. Having said that I think people will struggle with Medium because Patreon is sold on a personal relationship with a given creator and genuinely wanting more from them. Seems like that won't work so well with Medium. I like Medium though

I really like Patreon. I spend about the same as you, and it goes directly to help support the folks that are creating things I think are good. And it is like you said- the personal connection, and wanting to help support worthy effort.

I would be willing to do the same for high-quality news and opinion. So far, there's far too much chaff in the wheat, and I don't think Medium is the answer. I hope people keep trying, though. Quality journalism is genuinely important.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#64

Post by detaro »

eloisant wrote: post #8
snackai wrote: post #3

When I see a nice Headline on HN: "Oh cool, I would love to read that", then I look at the domain: "Oh it's on medium. Never mind then." I'd never pay for that shit show.

It's a blogging platform. Why posts hosted there should be any less interesting than posts hosted on any other platform?

> Why posts hosted there should be any less interesting than posts hosted on any other platform?

Platforms have communities that post about certain things, and less about others, and develop a reputation for doing so (and the average quality). If you post on one, your links share the reputation readers attach to it as a baseline, since readers expect it to fit in the pattern of other content they have seen on there.

Interestingly, for me Medium offering custom domains doesn't really impact this, since "people bothering to set up their own domain name" seems to be a group that's less bad in general (and exceptions get mentally tagged as such).

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#65

Post by Spooky23 »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #42

If Medium was 5 people in a basement I'd forgive them for not quite having a business model sorted out yet. What I fail to understand is how something like Medium turns into a bloated ~150 person company that's burning VC cash like crazy with no clear path towards becoming an actual business that makes decent revenue, let alone profit. Whether it's a bubble or not is semantics but it's these sorts of 'companies' that…

They burn $50m per year and have 60m readers They need 1.4% of readers to subscribe They charge 1/3 what the NYTimes does. The NYTimes company has +$1bn revenues. They can probably get 1.4% of readers to subscribe. They could also charge subscriptions for blogger tools. They could have tiered subscriptions ($5 is the lowest guardian membership, and it looks like you get little for it). They have only just started off…

But the New York Times produces the New York Times.

Medium is a bunch of blogs.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#66

Post by riffraff »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #42

If Medium was 5 people in a basement I'd forgive them for not quite having a business model sorted out yet. What I fail to understand is how something like Medium turns into a bloated ~150 person company that's burning VC cash like crazy with no clear path towards becoming an actual business that makes decent revenue, let alone profit. Whether it's a bubble or not is semantics but it's these sorts of 'companies' that…

They burn $50m per year and have 60m readers They need 1.4% of readers to subscribe They charge 1/3 what the NYTimes does. The NYTimes company has +$1bn revenues. They can probably get 1.4% of readers to subscribe. They could also charge subscriptions for blogger tools. They could have tiered subscriptions ($5 is the lowest guardian membership, and it looks like you get little for it). They have only just started off…

What makes you think they can get 1.4% of the people to subscribe? Remember, there is no real value in that subscription at the moment.

And the viable business model you mention, ads&subscriptions is excluded by the fact medium has said they will not use ads. Hence, they have no business model.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#67

Post by jeremyt »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #42

If Medium was 5 people in a basement I'd forgive them for not quite having a business model sorted out yet. What I fail to understand is how something like Medium turns into a bloated ~150 person company that's burning VC cash like crazy with no clear path towards becoming an actual business that makes decent revenue, let alone profit. Whether it's a bubble or not is semantics but it's these sorts of 'companies' that…

They burn $50m per year and have 60m readers They need 1.4% of readers to subscribe They charge 1/3 what the NYTimes does. The NYTimes company has +$1bn revenues. They can probably get 1.4% of readers to subscribe. They could also charge subscriptions for blogger tools. They could have tiered subscriptions ($5 is the lowest guardian membership, and it looks like you get little for it). They have only just started off…

Stack overflow is a bad example. The vast majority of their workforce is in sales and works on the recruiting product. The actual team which maintains and improves the Q&A product is tiny

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#68

Post by ThomPete »

user5994461 wrote: post #39
sparkzilla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Medium and most other sites-in-search-of-a-business-model (including the Register) think that content is king, and that by producing 'better' content will create more revenue. In fact, distribution is king, and getting more distribution -- independent of the content -- is the key to success. Consider a site with high distribution and crap content: It's already making money and can always improve the content. A…

>>> A site with no distribution can't make money even if it improves its content. Inaccurate. Good content can and will self distribute. You're on the internet, your content is instantly automatically available to 1 billion people. Search engine are incredibly good at discovering niche/targeted content, a good article will be top page in a few weeks even if you have zero reader (well, until then). And good articles c…

Good content self distribute but not enough to make money on it or turn it into a business model and that's ok.

Thats why you feed is filled with clickbait titles and "10 things to X" or fake news for that matter (the real fake news not the overhyped use of it today)

They actually are made to make money they are just not good content.

I have been involved in two actual paper newspapers who both failed in the zeros. I have seen an uncountable number of attempts to make money by providing quality journalism.

The reality is that most people don't care about "quality" journalism. It its' not valuable enough to establish an industry.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#69

Post by Alex3917 »

BillFranklin wrote: post #60
code4tee wrote: post #42

If Medium was 5 people in a basement I'd forgive them for not quite having a business model sorted out yet. What I fail to understand is how something like Medium turns into a bloated ~150 person company that's burning VC cash like crazy with no clear path towards becoming an actual business that makes decent revenue, let alone profit. Whether it's a bubble or not is semantics but it's these sorts of 'companies' that…

They burn $50m per year and have 60m readers They need 1.4% of readers to subscribe They charge 1/3 what the NYTimes does. The NYTimes company has +$1bn revenues. They can probably get 1.4% of readers to subscribe. They could also charge subscriptions for blogger tools. They could have tiered subscriptions ($5 is the lowest guardian membership, and it looks like you get little for it). They have only just started off…

> It seems that Medium has a viable business model: ads and subscriptions.

Ads and subscriptions are mutually exclusive.

Re: Medium asks $5 a month for nothing

#70

Post by watwut »

sverige wrote: post #38
user5994461 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is difficult, a lot of work and potentially very expensive (when you have traffic) to build your own. If you are in tech, you should understand to use the right tool for the job.

I'm not saying you have to build a server to host your blog. You can host it on AWS or elsewhere if you get a lot of traffic. It's not that hard to get a domain name, host it somewhere, and write some HTML code. Yes, it could be difficult and a lot of work if you think you need embedded videos that autoplay and follow readers as they scroll down trying to escape that and the pop up pestering them to subscribe.

It is harder to make said html look nice - unless you are graphics designer. But also, it requires additional time to spend which matters.
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