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For folks who write for Medium.com, what's your engagement like, and how much do you make?

I’m wondering if it’s financially worth it to cover the $5/mo membership.

I post Medium articles fairly regularly, and each email update shows I get ~500 reads total.

Is that enough to cover the $5/mo? Would it be a wise financial risk?

Are people willing to share their readership and total MMR?

Edit: shouldn’t have shared my financial situation; was interested in data/advice only.

z00s ,

You can eat for a month for $5?

mortalic ,

This is the answer, it’s friendlier to authors trying to get started.

algorithmae ,

I’ve never heard of Medium, so let me get this straight. You’re giving them content AND paying them? That’s like going to work and paying your boss.

If that’s true and you’re struggling to get food at the same time, there are some serious issues going on and you should reconsider what you spend your time and energy on

PlanetOfOrd OP ,

Yeah. It’s been a struggle these past few years. I’ve been getting creative to find any source of income, but it seems like no matter what I try I always hit a wall. But I found out I have a new contract starting soon (🤞) that will definitely cover costs for a while. This season is critical for me, and I often check my priorities often. Thanks for the encouragement.

shellsharks ,
@shellsharks@infosec.pub avatar

Don’t give your stuff away to Medium. Buy a domain and host everything from there. Sites like square space can be used to help you monetize.

PlanetOfOrd OP ,

Hm…I’ll consider this. I 100% believe in self-hosting, but I’ve had to compromise lately. Thanks for the suggestion.

Rhoeri ,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

If you have to pay to submit articles, it’s a shit site.

PlanetOfOrd OP ,

Oh, no, I don’t have to pay to submit articles. I’ve already published dozens of articles. It’s just that in order to participate in profit sharing, you need to become a member: $5/mo or $50/yr.

xakiv ,

Haha it looks like a Ponzi scheme… Edit: Sorry it was just a silly joke. Hope you’re going to find a better solution than Medium nasty pricing! Taking money from readers and authors…

xakiv ,

Sorry it was just a silly joke. Hope you’re going to find a better solution than Medium nasty pricing! Taking money from readers and authors…

NewNewAccount ,

How does the membership work? If you contribute and you’re a member you’re eligible for compensation?

PlanetOfOrd OP ,

Yup. Once you’re a $5/mo / $10/mo member, then you can profit share.

thorbot , (edited )

Damn man if you’re struggling to eat don’t spend money on a subscription! Get a meal plan figured out and budget it out. Your body can’t sustain itself on words

Sibbo ,

I almost never got anything useful out of medium. It’s kinda mediocre. The best people usually don’t give their texts to a company like medium for almost nothing. They usually have their own websites.

Synnr , (edited )

The thing about medium is that it’s a trusted domain + mailing list + blog + search engine in one. All you have to do is sign up and start writing, for free.

Sure you can have your own domain, and spin up a cheap VPS which has WordPress or other blogging software, customize and setup the share buttons and theme and other plugins, pay MailChimp or another trusted relay to actually inbox your emails, use Google Analytics or some open source complex privacy-focused analytics, and then set up your advertisements or some scheme to contact you for article product placement if you actually want to make money from it. If you’re really good and knowledgeable in your field. That’s a lot of time invested and very expensive relatively (compared to free).

I think a lot of people just want to share their knowledge, getting paid pennies for page views comes second to that.

Wxfisch ,
@Wxfisch@lemmy.world avatar

Or you can use something like Squarespace or Wix and have a fully functioning website with everything you need in a few hours and start monetizing your views with ads. Both start at $16 a month so it’s a larger hill to climb sure but you get custom branding and don’t have to deal with the baggage of a Medium page (largely that it’s considered in many circles an untrustworthy source for pretty much any topic mainly because of how easy and barrier free it is to write there. They also have a pretty well established history of working to screw over contributors to profit off of your work including you automatically giving a full license to medium for everything you post).

If all you want is a newsletter though without a webpage to back it you can setup something in mailchimp with a custom domain (.coms start at about $10 from cloudflare). Again an hour or so of reading and configuring and you’re on your way, with an Adsense account you can even embed inline ads to your newsletter.

agent_flounder ,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Unless you’re writing some insanely great shit about a ridiculously popular topic or you majorly luck out somehow, it stands no chance of getting huge. It’s like sports stars. For every one of those there’s tens or hundreds of thousands that nobody will ever hear about.

Or maybe I just suck and I’m bitter lol. My website was doing like 11k visits a month, max, at one point. I think I got like 2 checks from Google in five years. Enough for two fancy date nite dinners.

Synnr ,

Nope, that’s about standard or even better than most, unless you’re doing it full-time.

Synnr , (edited )

Unless you’re making more than $16 each month (most are not making anywhere close to that) from Medium then you’re just choosing another company to profit off of you. It’s also more work and takes a lot (arguably, depending on your technical comfort level) more time because again… most people have nothing of much value to say. If you’re an expert on your field or a great marketer, sure maybe you can make that $16 back and then some. Most can not. You’ll know if you can, and you can look at your medium analytics and judge that and then do the Wix thing because…

Do you own the content that you publish on Medium?

Yes. Everything you publish on Medium, that is rightfully yours, belongs to you and you can republish, delete or choose to convert it into other forms without worrying about anything because Medium gives you the ownership. They have clearly explained this in the Medium terms of service.

Medium (company) might use your content to redistribute, translate or modify, and they need your permission for this. They need licensing for this because of the Medium rule; “You own your content”

Medium is like an ocean in part because it’s so easy and free. There are some really spectacular fish and animals and rare finds and even shipwrecks full of gold and treasure. There is also a metric shit-ton of mediocrity.

A comparison could be made to tiktok. Sure, you can make videos and upload them to your website and then share them. But there is immense value in the existing community in algorithm.

robolemmy ,
@robolemmy@lemmy.world avatar

My favorite quote from the interwebs about medium.com is “they call it medium because it’s rare to find anything well-done there.”

JustZ ,

Oh shit.

Synnr ,

Dude, if you’re struggling that much, I’ll pay for a few months for you so you can try it out. $15 for 3 months, or do you have to pay yearly? I have no experience with medium but I get a ton of good info from medium articles and it’s a great resource.

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