Why Medium Sucks

Not the person you're replying to but...

> With all due and sincere respect, have you ever tried to build an audience or community from zero without partners, a leverage point, or an ad budget?

Yes.

> Even getting a quality audience of thousands is non-trivial or costs money or needs a clever strategy.

That hasn't been my experience. I started with a blog. Then I wrote a book which I published online a chapter at a time. Now I'm on a second book.

I'm at the point now where I'm lucky enough to have many more people read what I write than I ever expected. My first book has sold many many more copies in print, EPUB, and Kindle than I ever dreamed.

I don't think I had a clever strategy. I just put a ton of effort into writing things that people find valuable. I think the real problem many people suffer from is that they aren't trying to do that. They have mostly selfish goals around growing their brand or their business, and actually satisfying readers is merely a means to that end.

I certainly personally benefit much more than I ever expected from mt writing, but if I ever felt like a I wrote a thing that wasn't worth the time a reader spends reading it, I'd delete it in a heartbeat.

> I try to explain, look, unless you're John Carmack or are we'll known for certain expertise, or have a track record, likely you can post your idea publicly on your blog and no one will ever copy it, even if it's a decent concept.

You say that like it's a bad thing. I don't believe you need to be a celebrity or a world-renowned expert. (I'm neither.) But you do need to have something that's worth the reader's time if you want to have a lot of readers. Otherwise, how are you making the world better?

That being said, it's also totally fine to not have a lot of readers. Everyone starts somewhere and writing not-too-great things for a small number of readers is the first step on the path towards writing better things for more people. The Beatles did not play their first show to a sold out arena, and that's great, because they weren't that good then either.

Your audience naturally grows with your skills. That's the system working as intended.

Medium is also blocked in China. Meaning 1.4B people can’t access your content.

We cannot know of course, there is no Twin Earth where Taylor Swift is president, nobody likes pizza, and I or Medium had done things differently. I can only ponder the odds of my personal blog becoming popular vs a story on Medium becoming popular. Both may be very small, but it should be clear that the odds are still greater in the Medium route.

Tags allow visibility to people perusing topics on Medium, or getting emails about those topics. The SEO boost is clearly greater, and Medium is unlikely to go down if a flood of traffic arrives. And the possibility of "editors pick/best of" etc is obviously greater, since it exists at all. And besides, since I am not famous, leveraging a famous domain lends enough credibility for more people at the margins to read what I wish to say.

So my particular outcome aside, I think it good advice for any internet rando, including myself, to leverage the power of such a platform while the benefits seem nonzero. Though I understand people's reservations (such as this article!), they seem overstated or else to ignore completely the clear advantages, even if they are only potential advantages.

> You are going to get more people to see your post if you put it on Medium. You are going to get more "friends" if you are on Facebook. You are going to interact with more people if you are on Twitter.

That's the whole point of the POSSE concept pushed by the IndieWeb people. By all means syndicate your shit on Medium, Twitter, Facebook, etc -- but post it on your own website first.

If you don't have your own website, you're nothing but a digital sharecropper. Ask right-wing YouTubers how that's working out for them and you'll find their answers instructive once you get past the butthurt.

Part of public domain now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)#Criticism_and...