Do Google Twitter Facebook and Other Social Media Have Value for Medium Writers?
I recently read an article on Medium where a writer had many thousands of views recorded but earned less than two dollars overall.
When he looked at where his visitors were coming from it was Google and social media and very few from Medium itself.
As most people know there are several types of reader to any page.
- Free reading and random, or coming from a friend link. These readers can’t clap or earn you any money from the Medium Partner Program. They may come from a direct link left on any social media platform or search engine results.
- Members of the Medium program who have signed up for an account but don’t pay a subscription. They can clap and comment and follow but have no monetary value to you.
- Then there are all those who subvert the system to some extent and they are no use to the writer's funds either.
- The subscribed readers and writers. These are the ones who directly contribute to our monthly funding.
If you write stories and articles that aren't in the Medium Paying Program then there may be advantages to getting traffic from Google, other search engines and social media.
If you are promoting a cause, or a book or selling a product ( in some shape or form) including gathering email readers, then for sure all of these means have utility to you.
If you are writing exclusively within the Medium boundary then these readers have no utility to you, directly.
However, any reader coming from any platform may subscribe now or in the future to Medium, and progress to being a paid reader or writer and contribute to the overall writer's fund and thus benefit all of us.
Of course, there are several specific Medium writer groups on Facebook and Reddit these would be people who are subscribed, writers to the MPP program so I’m not including them in this analysis.
Even if there is no direct and immediate benefit there is a community-wide benefit from any source of readers. Medium needs a constant source of new readers and potential writers to flourish.
You need to weigh this against all the time-wasting potential of putting a lot of energy into trying to get readers from social media and search engines who will not earn you any useful income (within the criteria listed).
If I chart my own Medium history I first came here from reading a random article, probably from a twitter link. I immediately became an account member followed a few people and played with the editor. I loved it but put it on the back burner for over a year before subscribing and taking it seriously. I’m sure this is a common daily event with new readers to Medium.
