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Can we all stop using Medium now?

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Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#161

Post by vfc1 »

One of the big advantages of self-hosting is that you own not only own the platform, but also the traffic.

When I started my business I had a previous blog with several topics covered.

Because I self-hosted, I managed to redirect the traffic only for a specific set of posts on the topic to my new business blog where I moved several posts over, getting thousands of visits in my business blog (and converting customers) since day one.

The Ghost blogging platform is open source, and you can self-host if you want (I do).

With Ghost, you can also get their hosted service for a monthly fee and you own your own platform, you have a markdown-based editor with markdown on the left and content on the right.

You can run your own ads, have a fixed top menu that does not go away with scrolling with links to your products and services, etc.

If you are serious about running a business blog, you should definitively self-host. I know Medium has the sharing aspect, but it's not worth it because most of the traffic in blogs in general comes from Google searches and not sharing.

The social sharing traffic is a drop in the ocean for most blogs, it's not worth getting potential paying customers blocked due to a medium paywall popup.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#162

Post by Semaphor »

john-radio wrote: post #118
Semaphor wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see a "Pardon the Interruption" notice every time I want to read something https://makemediumreadable.com/ I stopped minding medium (as a reader) since installing that.

I'm glad this exists, and very impressed with how front-and-center their source code is, but I decided a while ago that I'm not installing random add-ons unless I have a very high level of trust in their integrity.

It requires "all websites", so I pulled the code, read through it, packed it up and installed it manually in firefox ;)

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#163

Post by dingo_bat »

55555 wrote: post #65

I was writing on Medium because it ranks well in Google. I wrote nearly a dozen really great articles on primarily health and dietary supplement topics. After 2 months they started to rank well and were getting daily readers, as the content was really great. Then I wrote an article on a 'research chemical' and they banned my account overnight. I lost the final edited versions of all content. They did not send me a zi…

> The thing is, the thing I wrote about isn't illegal.

Even if it were illegal that wouldn't be a reason to delete it.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#164

Post by luckylion »

ajflores1604 wrote: post #70

So just my personal take, I definitely benefit a lot from Mediums recommendation system, however it might work. Probably because I'm brand new to programming, and even fields like machine learning are very fresh to me even though it seems like everyone and their mom already knows the basics. So having a system that can see that I looked up a specific topic and recommend similar articles from that domain. A lot of the…

> A lot of the time I don't know what I don't know, so having this recommendation system helps illuminate the domain a bit more for me.

That's a very good point. Before the advent of Google, we used to have curated link lists for topics that you could explore. It's become rare, and it's probably harder to do now that everything moves much faster (or maybe it doesn't and I've just gotten much slower).

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#165

Post by [deleted] »

pergadad wrote: post #136
IloveHN84 wrote: post #131

Funny how from "All to Medium, ditch WordPress and personal blogs" now people want to go the way around because of metered views and other limitations imposed by Medium popularity. I say it since ever: own your own content.

But you don't really own your WordPress. No way to get around using their services if you want to have proper spam filtering.

[deleted]

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#166

Post by inapis »

sgarman wrote: post #17

I know this doesn't justify all the issues but I'm at least a little excited that someone is trying to create a media/news service that isn't ad based. Seems like we have a way to go but at least this is a start. I'm a little surprised that there are so many complaints here - I bet a lot of the same people complaining also complain about ad based services and now they create news / journalism / articles designed for…

The internet suffers from massive cognitive dissonance. Forums like HN/Reddit just amplify it. People complain about ads, People complain about subs. Fortunately, people who want to pay for content will pay for it as long as you express the value clearly. And people who complain about both are probably a minority.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#167

Post by collyw »

Vinnl wrote: post #144
manub22 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to create your own blog, and get traffic overtime. Why they earn money on your content?

If I use Medium, they might earn money with my content. My blog, on the other hand, costs me money. I do have a personal blog instead of Medium. But it's definitely not about the money.

Personally, depending on my mood, if I have the obnoxious "sign in" prompt that medium and others give I'll maybe just not read the blog at all 1 time in 4. I am sure I am not the only one that gets put off by that crap.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#168

Post by inapis »

mojuba wrote: post #157
sgarman wrote: post #17

I know this doesn't justify all the issues but I'm at least a little excited that someone is trying to create a media/news service that isn't ad based. Seems like we have a way to go but at least this is a start. I'm a little surprised that there are so many complaints here - I bet a lot of the same people complaining also complain about ad based services and now they create news / journalism / articles designed for…

Ever since we switched our app from ads to ad-free soft paywall with daily limited content, we get a lot of hate and negative reviews on the App Store from our users. Some even said quite directly "bring back the ads". This is so strange. What this kind of people don't understand is, we all buy products whose prices include advertisement costs. Eventually we pay for everything anyway, there is no charity (unless some…

> It's usually the switch that triggers a lot of hate: businesses should probably be cautious about it.

I agree. The switch is the noisy period. When you are free, you attract people who are looking for free and would probably never pay for it directly. When you are paid and ad-free from the start, you attract a customer base who understands the value intrinsically and will probably run away if you switch to an ad-based model.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#169

Post by fiala__ »

Jerry2 wrote: post #151
55555 wrote: post #65

I was writing on Medium because it ranks well in Google. I wrote nearly a dozen really great articles on primarily health and dietary supplement topics. After 2 months they started to rank well and were getting daily readers, as the content was really great. Then I wrote an article on a 'research chemical' and they banned my account overnight. I lost the final edited versions of all content. They did not send me a zi…

> When you write articles on Medium keep in mind you're writing on someone else's website and they don't give a damn about you. You are subject to their opinions about what is appropriate and what isn't. Same can be said about other platforms like YouTube etc. When you produce content for all these mega-platforms, you're nothing more than a sharecropper... a digital one. [0] You really have no rights and you're at th…

The problem with YouTube specifically, is that while blog posts are easy to host on pretty much anything that has a CPU, self-hosting videos at scale is essentially impossible. So while Medium only added a marginal amount of convenience for your average blogger, YouTube straight up enabled the kind of content it hosts.

Re: Can we all stop using Medium now?

#170

Post by sytelus »

TLDR; The article says that Medium locks up content behind its walled garden, requires login and then payment in some cases.

I think the article is not well researched and doesn’t understand the basic premise of Medium: Enable professional writers to make living off of writing. Medium is not your usual free blogging platform. There is an expectation that people will pay for good content and the hope that good writers should be able make living off of their writing. Medium wants to take on doing SEO, infrastructure, payments and let authors focus on just creating content.

Here’s some stats on how much writers can earn on Medium: https://medium.com/s/partner-program-updates/april-update-fr...

If I have to be devil’s advocate, I would ask why can’t Medium use ads as revenue source. Their $5/mo subscription may look like cup of coffee but honestly I am tired of having dozen such subscriptions in my life. Also, people outside developed world, kids, teenagers, college students will still find this unaffordable.

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