Here’s The Ultimate Reason Why Substack Is Far More Rewarding Than Medium
How Substack Ensures Greater Readership Than Medium
In my experience blogging on both Medium and Substack these past 8 months, my articles acquired a higher readership on Substack than they did on Medium.
When comparing the statistics, it’s clear to me that a lot more people read my articles on Substack, compared to those on Medium.
I Feel Way More Rewarded On Substack
The fact that a lot more people are reading my articles on Substack makes me feel appreciated and gives me a lot of fulfillment and encouragement to keep on writing.
As a writer, it’s a great feeling knowing that people are reading your work after all the time and effort you’ve put into it.
It makes you feel rewarded and acknowledged. That’s the key factor here, that our work is valued by others and they care about it.
For quite some time now, I’ve only been getting that feeling from Substack, not Medium.
A Similar Approach On Both Platforms
Since I started blogging, I’ve been more active on Medium than on Substack. However, for the past 2 months, I’ve tried being more balanced in my time spent on both platforms.
But aside from that, I’ve been pretty much engaging the same way with other writers and my publishing frequency of articles has also been more or less the same for both platforms.
So there’s really not much difference in my blogging approach towards Medium and Substack.
Substack Is Based On Email Subscription — Is This The Real Reason?
Some might counter that Substack readers are acquired by email subscription and they receive our articles directly to their inboxes.
Hence, this gives them direct access to our articles compared to readers on Medium. While I agree with this point, there are other important factors to consider as well.
For one, I have a small list of Medium subscribers to my articles. This number is of course much less than that of my Substack subscribers.
But the fact remains that almost all my Medium subscribers don’t read my articles at all. This I figured out by assessing my stats and comparing them with the number of people who engaged with my articles.
Not only that, but my Medium followers are way higher than my Substack subscribers, so you would think that at least a portion of them would be reading my Medium articles!
While those followers may not be directly receiving my latest articles in their email, I publish regularly and in various publications. So naturally you’d assume that my articles would gain a certain level of views and reads.
However, this is not the case and my readership stats on Medium remain quite low compared to Substack.
Why the heck is this?!
There are a few possible reasons I can think of. These are based on my observations and experience so far.
Really Poor Distribution Of Articles
This is one big possible reason I can attribute to my articles’ really low readership levels. They’re simply not getting the same widespread distribution that many others are given.
I’m not sure why this is happening to my articles, given that:
- The topics I write about cover general interests and aren’t obscure.
- They’re fairly well formatted and aren’t at all a chore to read.
- I do engage with other writers to a certain extent each day, and thus it’s not like I’m inactive on the platform.
- I’ve been utilizing topic tags with a very high follower-to-number of stories ratio. So you’d think that would help expose my articles to many readers!
- I’ve been publishing most of my articles in various publications, many of which have large followings.
Given all these facts, why then are my articles not getting proper distribution?? I really can’t think of any logical reasons, save for maybe one or two.
Suspected Of Being AI-Generated?
A few people have told me that my articles look AI-generated to them, which is not the case as I’m totally against AI-written content.
I can somewhat understand why they might think so, as my writing style tends to be more matter-of-fact and formal. This is due to my previous practice of writing opinion pieces for news outlets.
That being said, I can honestly say that all my articles are purely written by me, without any AI influences whatsoever.
So then the question is: Does Medium suspect my articles as being AI-generated and thus, purposefully limit their reach to more readers?
But then again, this wouldn’t really make sense given that if my articles had AI influences, then the platform would eventually flag it and it also wouldn’t have been accepted into the various publications I’ve been submitting it to in the first place!
So what’s the reason for this poor distribution? Honestly, it’d be really helpful if Medium informed me of the reasons so I can make the necessary changes.
Substack Readers Are Simply More Interested In Long-Form Content
Another possible reason I can think of for my poor readership is the lack of genuine interest by Medium readers in consuming long-form content, compared to Substack readers.
Many of us have encountered countless spammers and clap-and-runners on our articles, revealing just how many fake or disingenuous readers there really are on the platform!
On the whole, I believe that Substack has more genuine readers than Medium.
Based on my interactions with the community there, a lot more of them seem genuinely interested in reading longer-form content with substance.
That’s not to say that there aren’t many genuine Medium readers. It’s just that it feels proportionately lower compared to Substack.
I’m Spending More Effort On Where I Feel More Appreciated
Moving forward, I’ve decided to allocate more of my time and efforts to engaging and reading on Substack as I find it more rewarding.
I sincerely hope the situation changes and my Medium articles gain a much higher readership. It will make me feel appreciated and my blogging experience will be fulfilling.
At the end of the day, it’s the readership of our articles and recognition of our work that truly drives us as bloggers.
What about you guys? Have you experienced any similar type of situation? Do you have any particular insights in terms of how the algorithm favours greater distribution of certain articles over others?
Do let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading!
Copyright Raveen Jeyakumar, 2024. All rights reserved.
