Medium vs. Substack
The most basic questions were answered.
Which one should you use?
This is a personal choice. Both have a clean interface and have all the tools you need for your writing. Both are free to use. Substack is newer while Medium has a thriving community due to its age of existence. I use both and have recently established a plan of action on how my writing will be distributed across each platform.
I will use Medium for quick posts on what comes to mind, to help me fight my own writer's block. It is not limited by any word limit and I am not going to aim for perfection, which means I will not be troubling my wife (who is my best critic) to approve these posts before I hit publish.
I think of Medium as a journal more than a publication. My finest work will move to Substack, which will be less frequent but more deliberate. Quantity here, quality there. This is for the general public, and Substack would be for my target audience.
Both have great metrics that are inherently captured to help us understand where readers come from and what they do, how long they spend, etc. For you though, the following questions might help you zero in on what matters more to you.
What are some key differences between each platform?
The fundamental difference is their unique business models. Medium was built around a thriving community wherein if you wrote well and consistently (at least in the early years) you would pick up followers pretty quickly. It auto imports all your Twitter followers giving you a good launching pad.
But, as the community and content started to grow it became increasingly difficult for new writing to be picked up by Medium’s propriety curation logic. We have no idea how the curation works. For all I know, it might be an AI out on its own trying to dominate the human race and take over the planet.
As history would show, all thriving blogging platforms became inherently competitive pinning writers against other writers to gain reader attention. This worked against the underdogs of the platform, discouraged many of us, and weeded most of us out. This leads to writer's block, which is a manifestation of our fear — the fear of rejection, from being ignored, of being irrelevant — of writing.
Substack is modeled around creating your tribe. It is a newsletter-first approach. So you write your piece and share it across your social circles to give the reader the option to subscribe. If they do, you just struck gold. You collected an email which is a valuable virtual commodity. So this is where I would focus on creating a personal brand.
Which one is better for writers?
This is a common question in all of our minds but what I realized is that it doesn’t matter. If we are passionate about writing, the tool we choose is not all that important as long it does the basic job or captures our thought well. Both these platforms will help writers write well. So if this question in your mind pertains to broadcasting or monetization, read on and it may help shed some light.
Which one is better for monetization?
I am in the process of demonetizing all my older posts on Medium to open those up for everyone on this platform to read for free. In case you didn't know, to post or read MPP content you must be a paying member at $5 a month. For the full scoop on MPP, see post-credits.
When they first rolled it out (yes, there was a time when Medium was a free-for-all platform) every one of us marked almost all of our posts (aka Stories) as premium content, because we were stupid enough to think that Medium is going to flood our Stripe accounts with some serious earnings. What transpired: Most of us earned pennies, which is what our writing was worth. It was just one hard wake-up call.
Yes, some writers are established and consistently talking about the 4-figure incomes they earn via MPP (see post credits for the reference link). They aren’t lying. If you had created enough relevant niche content on Medium early enough I am certain that they are reaping the benefits of some steady food-on-the-table worthy moolah. But if you are starting now, or restarting, it’s a long way to go on very rough terrain. Keep that in mind.
My advice for newcomers who want to make writing a living, start with Substack which shows more promise, provided you put in the work to market it right. It will take time but you can easily convert your free subscribers to paying customers for your content when you are ready.
Note: all platforms take their share of commission fees. Did you think they created all these amazing platforms because of the niceness of their hearts? They are all for-profit businesses at the end of the day.
Which one gives you the most visibility?
It depends, on how much work you put into marketing your work, how big of an audience or fan base you already have that you can tap into, and how supportive your friends and family are to help spread the word or re-share in their circles and then some pure unadulterated luck.
Visibility is the toughest nut to crack when it comes to writing for an audience. We all need constructive criticism and encouragement to continue creating our finest work. But creating and selling are different skillsets. For most of us, they don’t work in tandem, and if you try to be all things at once it will deplete you (unless of course, you are James Franco).
So, my advice is: focus on creating your content and an audience will find you eventually. Will that meet your goals? Maybe, maybe not. It again depends on your goals. As for me, I get satisfaction merely from creating words on a paper that dance well together.
What other questions do you have?
Ask in the comments below and I promise to give you my best answer.
Thanks for reading. If you liked this free post please consider subscribing to my newsletter “Step into The Light” on Substack here (also free).
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