Is Medium Worth Using, Part 2

You might remember I wrote an article about Medium. I pointed out some of its flaws, such as curators decide if your stuff is worth reading, and if they don’t believe it is, you can’t get any organic views of your post. You can only get traffic by driving people to your post with a “friend link.”

Another flaw is that you can’t make any money unless your post is curated.

Another one is that while you can comment on other posts, the post author can neglect to “clap” your comment, and it won’t show up for other people to discover. I know this is the case because when I get comments on my posts, I get an email letting me know that I received that comment, and that I can clap if I would like for others to be able to read that comment, so basically, if you comment negatively on someone else’s poorly written and barely coherent post, the author can just neglect to clap, and no one will see your insight. That’s a bunch of crap. You all know how much I hate misinformation or the misinterpretation of information.

One more flaw is that you can tag your posts, but since you can’t get organic views, tagging is useless, which correlates to the fact that Medium posts won’t appear in search engine results.

I mentioned that one good thing about Medium is the option to import your work from other social writing platforms including your own blog, but what’s the point of doing that if the curators won’t help you get views or pay? Furthermore, I’ve begun to have some issues with this feature…

Nevertheless, I managed to import a few articles. They didn’t get any views. I sent out links on social media, but still no one read. Why would they? They probably didn’t even see the post.

Tweeting: Fruit flies are our friends! Check out my new post on @medium about the friendly fruit fly! #flies #bugs #readmore #education and adding a little drawing of a cute fly doesn’t get you views. That’s just not the way social media works, but I’ve talked about that to exhaustion.

What I want to discuss is that I recently wrote an original post for Medium; it was part comedy, part satire, part informative—my usual mileu. Its title is Weird Lies We’ve All Grown Up With, and yeah, that’s the link if you want to check it out, but as always, I’m going to be totally honest with you guys; it’s not a great article, and I wasn’t expecting for it to be curated, but I certainly wasn’t expecting for this to be the reason.

You see that?!

My story wasn’t reviewed for possible curation because they’re getting a lot of stories?

Let that sink in. No, really, let that sink in; a social writing platform, which promises to pay you can’t review your work for curation because there are too many writers submitting too many stories.

To top it off, I wrote another original about dating, which you can see here, and it wasn’t curated for the same reason. Why the Hell would I keep writing for Medium? They’re flat out telling me they don’t care about their writers, and they will not pay me.

Go ahead and keep writing for Medium if you want, but unless you’ve been earning money from Medium over the past few years, I promise you won’t be earning any money in the future. Why would curators waste time reviewing and promoting your story when they’ve already picked their favorite writers?

In a way, this reminds of the debacle, the Kindle Scout Program, but at least that had the decency to die.

Trust me, social writing platforms, just like social media, have their favorite people, and they always showcase those people no matter how bland the content, or how much of it is plainly plagiarized by copying and pasting from Wikipedia entries, or how many people openly comment that the title was misleading, and the picture was clickbait.

This is like how LinkedIn will normally show you what they consider “top content,” so that the top content stays on top, but your content won’t get organic views, so it can’t reach top content status. A bunch of BS, right? I’m not making this up, but back to social writing platforms…

Here’s the thing; most people who write on social writing platforms are doing so in hopes of sending their readers and fans to their website, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but things don’t really work that way. For the people who are trying to take this path, it’s imperative to write for a platform, which incurs organic views, like Reddit, Quora, and even Vocal. I know for a fact Vocal gets organic views because I don’t often promote my video game reviews, and when I check my website stats, I rarely see clicks to a review, which means that the views I get on my reviews are from organic Vocal views.

Reddit and Quora still beat out Vocal in this respect, but they’ve been around a looot longer.

Another reason people write on social writing platforms is to make money, but off the top of my head, the only three platforms I’m familiar with are Vocal, Medium, and Steemit; Steemit is another platform whose articles won’t show up in search engine results. I once tried to make a Steemit account. I can’t remember what put me off, but there was something queer about it, and to be honest, I haven’t read or heard a word about Steemit since it launched in 2016, so, I mean, if you use Steemit, and you’re making money, that’s cool. Keep it up. I may look into it again, hoping they’ve ironed out the kinks.

If you’re writing for Medium, and you’re making money, that’s awesome. Keep going strong. Really, I know I’m talking a lot of crap about Medium, but hey, sometimes some things work for one person but not another.

If you’re writing for some other platform I don’t even know about, and you’re doing well… let me know. I’d like to look into it.

So… is Medium worth using? I gotta’ say no. Not really, not if you either want to drive people to your site with organic views, and not if you’re trying to make money writing. Both of those reasons are especially applicable to new writers.

Moreover, these are all reasons why writers shouldn’t bank on Medium, but what’s worse is that readers don’t read Medium. How do I know?

I have a Medium account. I click on the posts from the front page, the curated ones, which are supposed to be top notch and is why they're sponsored, but I’m only allotted three reads per month. Yeah, readers are only allowed to read a few articles for free. If they want to read more, they have to upgrade to premium and pay to read unless they get a “friend link” from the writer.

If I don’t know the writer, how am I going to get the friend link? Social media? Why would I follow a writer I’ve never read to get a friend link to read an article for free on Medium?

Let that sink. Why would you pay to read something? No matter how perfectly written or insightful the article might be, you are guaranteed to find similar information elsewhere for free and sans digital acrobatics. Readers do not read Medium articles. Writers occasionally read Medium articles, but if you’re truly trying to become a successful, wage-earning writer, Medium won’t get you there.

My suggestion is to start with Quora. Just read and then answer questions, but only if you’re informed on the topic and have an actual answer. Then, you can post original questions, or you can write original posts on your Quora blog. Once you have some experience writing then it’s a good time to find the proper paying social writing platform, and, natch, I’m going to suggest Vocal.

Is Vocal a social writing platform? I mean, they don’t allow comments… yet, but they’re not like one of those weird, digital newspapers like paper.li either. Technically, Vocal is defined as: A long-form, social publishing platform that helps creators get their voice heard and make money from their content.

Yeah, I guess that about sums it up.

Thanks for reading. I’m pretty much done whining about Medium. I might post a few more articles just to see what happens if a post does get curated, but like KDP Select, and it’s BS, I’m not expecting much.

I’m literally trying to provide you with functioning blueprints, so feel free to tip me. That way I can keep bringing you honest feedback and information about the world of reading, writing, editing, publishing, and advertising. Find more articles like this one, for free, at StoriesbyDennis.com.