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Medium is not the home for your ideas

hulry.com

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Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#361

Post by nicbou »

axegon_ wrote: post #207
nicbou wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone says they'd do that, but I find really hard to believe. I create rare, valuable information that saves people money and headaches. On a good month, 2% of my revenue will come from donations. Usually, it's 0%. At best, it pays for a meal and a beer. This website has 135k page views per month. If that's how much I get from teaching people how to navigate German bureaucracy, I doubt you'll make anything from yo…

Some of us actually do. A quick scroll through my paypal, I've donated somewhere over 1000 euros in the past two years to various foundations and individual content creators. And having some experience with German bureaucracy and taxes, and also having never lived in Germany nor speaking German, I'm fully aware how convoluted and complicated this can be and I could definitely see myself donating/paying for useful inf…

You are an exception. If one in 83 unique visitors donated I'd be well off, but it's not the case. I'm a bit tired of people pretending the internet could survive on donations and micropayments.

Affiliate marketing works well for my niche. I wanted to start similar sites about other topics, but if those don't naturally lead to certain purchases, they're extremely hard to effectively monetise.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#362

Post by nicbou »

coderdd wrote: post #296
nicbou wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone says they'd do that, but I find really hard to believe. I create rare, valuable information that saves people money and headaches. On a good month, 2% of my revenue will come from donations. Usually, it's 0%. At best, it pays for a meal and a beer. This website has 135k page views per month. If that's how much I get from teaching people how to navigate German bureaucracy, I doubt you'll make anything from yo…

I saw the following model work: offer a compilation of your best (or themed xyz..) articles for money. Add that you can mostly find these scattered on the site anyway. Very fair, and people would pay for getting an organized package vs clicking through random posts.

It's not a bad idea.

I am personally against it for my website in particular though. I insist on keeping everything on it open and free. Immigration advice should help everyone, not just developers with a generous relocation bonus.

I'd much rather invest the effort into making the content more navigable/discoverable. This is actually what I'm working on right now.

Again though, this is just personal preference for this specific website. Selling packaged information could work. I did buy a motorcycle travel book that was a rehash of the author's YouTube channel.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#363

Post by nicbou »

kritiko wrote: post #278
nicbou wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone says they'd do that, but I find really hard to believe. I create rare, valuable information that saves people money and headaches. On a good month, 2% of my revenue will come from donations. Usually, it's 0%. At best, it pays for a meal and a beer. This website has 135k page views per month. If that's how much I get from teaching people how to navigate German bureaucracy, I doubt you'll make anything from yo…

Maybe you just need to package it differently? I know I've bought Kindle books on similar issues and that there are people who work as consultants doing such things. Not to say that you necessarily want to become a consultant, but you don't even necessarily need to create new content... just stick some of it behind a paywall or in an ebook.

I started writing a reference for long distance motorcycle travel, and that's how I intend to distribute it. I don't expect to make anything from it, but the more linear, prosaic format would fit nicely on a Kindle screen.

The website mentioned above is more of a "visit it when you need it" resource. It's painfully boring to read, as it's written like a plain English instruction manual. It wouldn't be an interesting book.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#364

Post by anupamchugh »

tjpnz wrote: post #237
axegon_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog po…

It's rather telling that the first thing Medium does is flash a login prompt in your face when landing on one of their pages. At that point I tend to go elsewhere.

This isn’t medium’s fault. It’s the writers who’ve opted to put articles behind paywall to earn from the MPP.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#365

Post by illuminea »

I totally agree. It's so important to own as much of your content on the web as possible. That's why CMSs like WordPress are a great solution. I know WP has lots of issues, and that's why we created Strattic: static and headless publishing for WordPress websites so you can easily and quickly create content, but not worry about security and performance. https://www.strattic.com

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#366

Post by bishalb »

fastball wrote: post #230
bishalb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or plain old WordPress

WordPress is very slow (objectively) and much more complex to get started with (subjectively). Also the security model of WP isn't great (PHP/MySQL/etc).

Much more complex to get started with compared to what Ghost? Really? Almost all shared hosting services offer a single click install of WordPress, I don't think ghost is anywhere as simple as that to install(for a non tech savvy user)

WordPress has improved a lot in the past few years in terms of security, "worpdress is insecure" is an old meme. Sure if you just go on installing any plugin under the sun, there can be a risk. But the stock installation of WordPress with just a handful of reputable plugins should be good. Much of the slowness comes from the oodles of plugins that people install.

For speed, there are many great and free caching plugins available for WordPress which can considerably speed up your site.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#367

Post by fastball »

bishalb wrote: post #366
fastball wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is very slow (objectively) and much more complex to get started with (subjectively). Also the security model of WP isn't great (PHP/MySQL/etc).

Much more complex to get started with compared to what Ghost? Really? Almost all shared hosting services offer a single click install of WordPress, I don't think ghost is anywhere as simple as that to install(for a non tech savvy user) WordPress has improved a lot in the past few years in terms of security, "worpdress is insecure" is an old meme. Sure if you just go on installing any plugin under the sun, there can b…

I meant less complexity with the setup and more complexity in just "starting to write a blog". I have used both and I found the experience with Ghost much nicer.

WP will never be faster (and will use more resources) than a JAMStack website.

WP will never be more secure than a JAMStack website. It is literally impossible to deface my static Ghost blog without compromising my upstream provider. This is obviously not the case with any WP site.

WP definitely has its uses. I don't think a personal blog is a good one.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#368

Post by johnonolan »

bishalb wrote: post #366
fastball wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is very slow (objectively) and much more complex to get started with (subjectively). Also the security model of WP isn't great (PHP/MySQL/etc).

Much more complex to get started with compared to what Ghost? Really? Almost all shared hosting services offer a single click install of WordPress, I don't think ghost is anywhere as simple as that to install(for a non tech savvy user) WordPress has improved a lot in the past few years in terms of security, "worpdress is insecure" is an old meme. Sure if you just go on installing any plugin under the sun, there can b…

"Ghost isn't easy to install" is an equally old meme which is trivial to disprove :) Self-hosting any CMS requires a degree of tech-savvy.

Here's a comparison of Ghost vs WP in terms of time to install: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKNgV1gTHg

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#369

Post by tomjen3 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #335
tomjen3 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I see things like this, the more I think the original sin of this century was analytics, rather than ads.

Ads drive analytics / analytics feed ads.

But ads have been a thing since the Egyptians started to write sales documents on Papyrus, but it is only in the last 20 years or so analytics have changed the game: I suspect that I might have been slightly of in the previous comment, maybe it is only when analytics can note the effect of individual customers actions that they matter.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#370

Post by axegon_ »

nicbou wrote: post #361
axegon_ wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us actually do. A quick scroll through my paypal, I've donated somewhere over 1000 euros in the past two years to various foundations and individual content creators. And having some experience with German bureaucracy and taxes, and also having never lived in Germany nor speaking German, I'm fully aware how convoluted and complicated this can be and I could definitely see myself donating/paying for useful inf…

You are an exception. If one in 83 unique visitors donated I'd be well off, but it's not the case. I'm a bit tired of people pretending the internet could survive on donations and micropayments. Affiliate marketing works well for my niche. I wanted to start similar sites about other topics, but if those don't naturally lead to certain purchases, they're extremely hard to effectively monetise.

Perhaps. But you see my point, right? There is something morally corrupt in offering "free" content while compiling a spam mailing list.
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