Why Medium Is Still Insanely Worth It As A Blogger
There’s more to Medium than views.
Not many can look past the most misunderstood variable for social media success of all time — views.
And that’s why so many are upset with Medium lately.
But I have a different point of view on it..
Medium Was Perfect… Too Perfect
I remember my first 800 view article like it was yesterday. It happened in January of 2017, and I was absolutely ecstatic. I watched the views tick up and up and up until a massive green column jutted out from my 30-day stats page like a skyscraper.
“WOW,” I said to myself..
“This place sure is awesome.”
You know what I do these days when I get 800 views on a single article?
I shrug.
I brush it off — and I don’t say that to brag, I say that to lend perspective on just how spoiled I’ve become.
Medium was like the social media equivalent of Wakanda. It was beautiful. It was SO easy to grow by leaps and bounds. It was easy to get into publications. It was easy to score big green skyscrapers every week or so just as long as you published often.
But now the views are going away. Wakanda looks more like Austin, Texas, and here we are trying to figure out how the hell we’re going to get our views back — slamming our fists on the table in the process.
The truth?
You’re not going to get these views back anywhere. 🤷
..Because there wasn’t anywhere you could get them so early on as a blogger to begin with.
I mean, fuck, I would’ve killed to get 100 views on a blog post three years ago, much less 800.
Medium was a shooting star. It burned bright. It was like the cryptocurrency phenomenon of last year where my friend made $30,000 in one week selling Bitcoin.
Now that it’s over you want to bang your fist on the table demanding where you can make $30,000 in one week again?
Dude, Medium wasn’t the norm, it was the exception to the rule. It always was — but it was so good for so long that we got used to it, and now we have super high expectations about what’s actually possible as a blogger.
Blogging Is Bloody Difficult
Okay, so go to Wordpress. Try to grow there. Enjoy publishing your posts and having to turn to social media platforms (like Medium) to get eyeballs because, again, Wordpress isn’t a platform.
It’s like a McDonald’s on the side of the road that has to hire a sign-throwing wizard to get feet in the door — not the mall of a place that Medium was where there was already traffic.
Enjoy it.
Enjoy your 9 views.
Enjoy finagling Hootsuite to tweet your article 98 times per day. Enjoy competing with not just people on Medium, but the whole of Google to try to rank for search terms that get only 100 queries per month.
You’ll fail, but that’s okay, because it sure is better than Medium, right?
I mean, damn, what a horrible place Medium was.
I’ve tried Pinterest. I’ve tried Wordpress. I’ve tried LinkedIn. I’ve tried Instagram. I’ve tried Facebook. I’ve tried Youtube.
And you know what I’ve learned creating content on every single platform?
It’s bloody difficult to grow ANYWHERE.
That’s just facts.
So if you’re growing impatient with Medium, then sh*t, I don’t see you making it past a month anywhere else when you see some of the returns they’re giving you compared to this place.
Not to mention there’s no native way to monetize on any of these platforms except for Youtube.
Do you see how spoiled we’ve become?
Why Medium Is Still Insanely Worth It
Okay, I’ve bashed the other side enough. You get it — growing an audience online is hard.
“But if there’s less opportunity to get tons of views here, why should I stick around on Medium, Tom?”
You Can Literally Make Money Here TODAY
It’s as easy as locking a story. This simply wasn’t possible a year ago. For the first couple decades of the internet there was no place where a blogger could get paid so easily.
We had to create our own products.
I don’t need to explain this any more, do I?
Medium Can Be Used As Social Proof
“Hello, yeah, I’m a writer online and I can definitely help you out with…”
“Okay, but, *laughs*, we’re going to need to see some proof you’re a good writer.”
*Shows this idiot your Medium profile where you have 1,000–2,000 followers, write for some of the biggest publications, and got 1,000+ fans on an article you wrote last month.*
But you might say.. “Cool, but what are some other ways I can use Medium as social proof, Tom?”
If you want to grow a following online for whatever reason, and you want to give people a reason to check you out further, it’s nice to tell them you have X amount of followers on Medium or get X amount of page views per month here.
That can give you an insane amount of credibility. Wordpress blogs are difficult to grow.
It’ll take you a while before you get even 2,000 views per month on Wordpress (TRUST ME), so it’s best to get followers, rack up page views, and possibly even strike gold with a “viral” hit (2k-5k view article) on Medium so you can use these “proofs” to show that you’re actually a good writer in less time than it would take to grow a Wordpress blog.
It’s Easier To Network With Other Badasses Here
You know what metric is more important than views? Way more important than views, actually..
The amount of creators you know that also do what you do, and that you care about on a personal level.
Finding other cool people to network with is hard when doing a Google Search. Chances are a random search won’t return somebody who’s on your level — instead it will return some big-shot NY Times Best-Selling author.
Good luck getting them to say hi to you.
For networking purposes, as bloggers, Medium is the best place to search because searching on Twitter, Instagram, or Youtube will spit back photographers, video creators, and entrepreneurs.. not necessarily other bloggers you want to connect with.
Then all you have to do is send that person a private note via Medium, and you can talk. That’s cool.
To me it’s easier to connect with people on Medium because unlike Twitter or Instagram you can’t really send a direct message. There’s less spam here.
What better way to connect with somebody who’s got it going on than a platform that they frequent only 1–2 times per week?
Medium is fantastic for networking.
You Can Use Medium To Grow Everywhere Else
I love the way Medium can “embed” Youtube videos, Instagram pictures, and tweets. Here’s how it looks..
You know how I got 1,000 subscribers on Youtube in 4 months? I used Medium. I put embeds to my videos in all my posts.
When you share a Youtube video on Facebook, it looks really crappy because Facebook wants you to stay on Facebook.
But when you embed something on Medium it looks fantastic. It’s a layup to use Medium to grow elsewhere.
It’s so easy a caveman could do it — apologies to any cavemen out there — and the icing on the cake is you can get *PAID* to grow on other platforms by embedding your stuff in locked stories.
Ugh, what else do I have to say?
You Still Get Really Good Reach
Medium will still give you great reach as a blogger.
If you started here today and published 4–5 stories per week here, then you’d probably be standing around 2 months later with 1,000+ followers, a couple hundred dollars in your pocket, dozens of new connections, a semi-viral hit to call your own, incredible confidence as a writer, and a steady “drip” of people following you elsewhere (given you embedded your profiles in your Medium stories).
Not to mention there’s a plethora of Facebook Groups with hundreds — sometimes thousands — of members that allow you to share your articles and get instant claps, comments, and supporters.
There’s just too big of a community around Medium to ignore.
It’s Worth It To Be On Every Platform
Last but not least… it’s worth it to be on every platform.
Medium is great, but it is one piece of the pie. Creating stuff for LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter is just as important because there’s a community on every one of these platforms.
And as you know from this article, there’s still a community here. In fact, there’s a bigger community here than there has ever been, and it’s waiting for you to become a part of it.
What do you think?
Let me know.
Want to make extra cash on Medium? I’m hosting a few free trainings this week titled “How To Make An Extra $900 Per Month On Medium” Get your free seat right here!
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +367,690 people.
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