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Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

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Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#221

Post by hmlongco »

TheCyberBasics wrote: post #210
gremlinsinc wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use medium, as a freelancer, the extra little boost in cash helps during dry spells. I mean, if people can't afford the $5 per month that it costs to read all medium posts, they really shouldn't waste the time complaining.

I have a blog on medium as well, I just haven't been motivated to contribute to it for a while. It may be my "reach" as others have stated. I like pushing out the small tutorials that I write, but I just can't justify 3 hours (ish) of work for I also don't want to have to buy a domain and have a hosting service to push my own site having to load it up with ads or other nonsense just to make a side hustle possible. So…

Took a quick look. If you want my take, your basic tutorials are, well... too basic. They describe fundamental language principles in a well-established programming language for which there's already a wealth of material available. Frankly, there's already a million articles and books that cover that.

IMHO, you need to write about some cool hot or esoteric feature that solves a specific problem in a new way. Or about how a particular crash bug ended being based on something that everyone else thinks works one way when in fact it works the other way.

Do a search on a topic. Are there already thousands of pages that cover the same thing? If so, write on something else.

Trust me. It's possible to do a lot better than $1.50 an article.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#222

Post by swatson741 »

I used to work as a professional tutor and, I think Medium's monetization strategy is overall a good thing for tutorial authors. My nuanced thoughts are pretty split though. I, personally, would never write on Medium. It doesn't fit the hacker ethos. I would roll my own blog and, try to make the content as accessible as possible.

Despite this I still see the value in Medium over what I would do and over other options like blogger, quora, stackoverflow, etc. Medium's premium content ranges from horrible clickbait to significant thought pieces. It's all over the place but it's best content is pretty good and I think the reason why is because of their monetization strat.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#223

Post by hmlongco »

SilasX wrote: post #193
gremlinsinc wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying, you'd rather pay me $19 for my tutorial, than pay $5 for all tutorials on medium's platform?

For the tutorial quality and UX scumminess typical of Medium, no, I don't want the $5(/month?) option. I'd prefer any of these options: 1) Free, non-scummy tutorial sample , with the rest offered for money, or 2) Free full tutorial with non-scummy ads/UX, or 3) Free full tutorial with the understanding that this is self-promotion and I should raise my evaluation of the author and seek to hire their other work. Which…

Probably the fact that while you listed your preferences you and most everyone else wouldn't bother to pay. Primarily since it would mean making a credit card transaction to an unknown site.

Your options are clearly biased towards the fact that you don't want really to pay anything, either in terms of money or ads/attention.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#224

Post by young_unixer »

hmlongco wrote: post #214
young_unixer wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something."

So... it's a "dark pattern" to give you access to some articles for free and then, should you like them and want to read more, ask you to pay for them? IDK, but that seems pretty straightforward to me.

I'd say it is a dark pattern to fill the screen with annoying banners asking me to sign up when I just want to read an article.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#226

Post by SilasX »

hmlongco wrote: post #223
SilasX wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the tutorial quality and UX scumminess typical of Medium, no, I don't want the $5(/month?) option. I'd prefer any of these options: 1) Free, non-scummy tutorial sample , with the rest offered for money, or 2) Free full tutorial with non-scummy ads/UX, or 3) Free full tutorial with the understanding that this is self-promotion and I should raise my evaluation of the author and seek to hire their other work. Which…

Probably the fact that while you listed your preferences you and most everyone else wouldn't bother to pay. Primarily since it would mean making a credit card transaction to an unknown site. Your options are clearly biased towards the fact that you don't want really to pay anything, either in terms of money or ads/attention.

No, I've paid for courses before, far more than I care to admit. And I've listed an ad-based option that makes money (2), I'm just allowing for the possibility of people who want to get paid in self-promotion (3), although that's perhaps redundant, being a species of advertising.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#227

Post by hmlongco »

andybak wrote: post #207
yters wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so people chose medium for no reason?

I presumed it was mainly for ease of use. I might be wrong - anyone here write for Medium who can chime in?

Started writing on Medium a year or so ago, mostly on Swift, RxSwift, SwiftUI, Combine, dependency injection, iOS application architecture, and so on. Will probably make $5-6K this year, which is a heck of lot more I ever made trying to monetize standalone blogs. And since it's cumulative I'll probably do better next year.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#228

Post by hmlongco »

young_unixer wrote: post #224
hmlongco wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... it's a "dark pattern" to give you access to some articles for free and then, should you like them and want to read more, ask you to pay for them? IDK, but that seems pretty straightforward to me.

I'd say it is a dark pattern to fill the screen with annoying banners asking me to sign up when I just want to read an article.

Dark patterns are tricks, like making you click on something that you thought did one thing but does something else. Asking you to sign in/up is hardly a dark pattern.

And I've yet to see Medium "fill the screen" with annoying banners. In fact, from what I've just seen, Medium just displayed a web page with the article's bottom half telling you you've read all of your free articles and asking you to sign up.

Too much hyperbole on the internet these days...

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#229

Post by dhosek »

LandR wrote: post #77
dhosek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DDG lets you block sites from results? Time to create a DDG account

It's a browser add-on called something like DDG Hide unwanted results.

Browser add-on? feh. Heck, I'd sign in to google and let them monitor me explicitly if I could just filter out sites from my results through the standard web interface.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#230

Post by dylz »

Rochus wrote: post #198
rawfan wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not correct. I've had people complain they couldn't read my articles on Medium and I never took part in the partner program.

> That is not correct That's an official publication of the company behind medium. Maybe they had some bugs in the past or the people who complained or the author just made mistakes. Try to access this article: https://medium.com/@rochus.keller/implementing-call-by-refer... Can you access it or not?

There are separate walls like account walls, max x articles per day, requiring sign in that are in addition and uncontrollable from paywalls, IIRC.
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