Is Medium Still Worth It In 2023?
This post will explain to new writers whether Medium is still worth it in 2023.
My short answer: yes, Medium is 100% worth it for new writers to start on in 2023.
This is because Medium is:
The easiest place to start a blog, no setup required
The best place to get paid as you explore and build
A fantastic community to learn and make friends
Let’s dive in!
Introduction: What is Medium.com?
Let's start with a quick definition. Medium.com is like a blogging website combined with a social media platform. It's kind of like if Twitter and WordPress had a baby. And every time somebody read one of your posts, you got paid.
More formal definition: Medium is an online publishing platform that aims to provide a new way to publish, share and discover content. The company was founded by Ev Williams in 2012. People started getting paid to write there in 2017. Medium provides its users with tools for them to write and publish their posts on the site, as well as read others' posts.
I've been there since 2018.
It's undergone a lot of different pivots, but with reason: Medium is trying to be the very best place to read and write on the internet and I believe they have mostly achieved that goal.
To write on Medium, all you have to do is create an account and…start writing. That's it.
But if you want to write and start getting views, there's a little bit more intricacy to it.
How do readers find your story on Medium?
Unlike other platforms, Medium has multiple features to help your stories get seen by the right readers. This is where the social media aspect comes in.
For example, Medium has what are called publications. Publications are collections of related posts from different authors around one particular topic. That can be anything like relationships, history, and cats. Anyone can start a publication, even you.
Medium also has a feature called curation or distribution. Imagine if when you posted on Twitter it wasn't just the algorithm and audience engagement that decided how well your Tweet did.
Imagine a Twitter employee read your post and said, “Oh my God, this tweet is a quality post about entrepreneurship. Let's show this to a bunch of people who are interested in entrepreneurship.”
Originally, this curation/distribution was done by human employees. I believe at this point it's now a mix of human distribution and kind of algorithmic curation. My point is that if your work is high quality, it will tend to do better than if it's low quality.
Finally, it has tags/topics. When you publish a story on Medium, you can add up to 5 tags to say what the story is about. These tags also help readers find the stories.
What happens when you publish a story on Medium?
When you publish a story on Medium, it gets shown to a group of readers. If that group reacts well - clicks on the story and reads it, or even leaves a comment – that initial group is expanded to other readers.
Those initial readers are picked depending on a couple of different factors.
Publications
For example, if you publish your story in a publication, your story will be shown to a small portion of that publication's followers.
Curation/distribution
If your story is good, it might get created or distributed on a particular topic. And if somebody has shown that they're interested in reading stories about a particular tag, if you tag your story with that tag, your story might be shown to them as well.
What this means is that even with 0 followers, you can get readers on your work.
Followers
If you have followers, it will also be shown to a small portion of your followers.
What does “Is Medium Worth It” mean to you?
That was a long introduction! But for you to understand why Medium is still worth it in 2023, you needed the backstory.
Now let me get into the explanations.
I think the answer to this bifurcates into two different answers. The first is for people who want to know if you can still earn money on Medium. The second is whether it's possible to get traction as a beginner on Medium. Let's address each separately.
Can you earn (a lot of) money on Medium?
The short answer is yes. I earned $2,800 in November. I published four articles.
How do you earn money on Medium?
There are two ways to earn money through Medium.
First is the Medium Partner Program. This is a royalty scheme. Medium members pay $5 a month to read unlimited stories on Medium.
When one of those paying members reads one of your articles, you get a portion of that $5 monthly membership fee. If many of those paying members read your story, you can earn up to $2,800 - or even more.
The second way is through the referral program. If somebody signs up for Medium through your referral link, you get half of that monthly membership fee in perpetuity. That means that as long as that member is paying for Medium membership, you get $2.17.
When you get 10 people, that's $21.70.
Now imagine you got 100 people to do– that's $250.
Imagine you got 240 people to do it. Now you got $500! Every month, whether you write or not.
This is a new program, only about a year old, but it's one of my favorite parts of Medium. You get rewarded for long-term platform engagement. You get rewarded for building long-term relationships with your audience. And it's a much more reliable income stream because it doesn’t depend on getting a lot of views. You can build this source up slowly over time, and unless a bunch of people sign up or cancel all at once, the number stays pretty consistent.
Normally, on Medium, your monthly income depends on whether or not you got a viral hit. The referral revenue is much steadier.
Wait a minute, you’ve been writing on Medium for 4 years and you have 60,000 followers. Can anyone earn money on Medium?
Yes, I have 60,000 followers, I know how Medium works, and I've been writing on the platform for four years.
But even beginners can still earn money on Medium.
The problem is that people come to Medium expecting to be able to earn a full-time wage. This may have been true for a very, very small portion of writers a couple of years ago, but it is no longer the case.
Even the biggest and most successful authors I know aren't earning more than $5,000 a month. And I only know two writers earning more than $5k/month. And of those, those two are also publishing every single day, doing a ton of research on their work, and have a lot of followers already.
Medium doesn't release data on how much money people earn anymore. But for a while, there were a lot of people making a lot of money and talking a lot about it, contributing to this false impression. However, even at the peak, no more than ~10% of Medium writers were earning more than $100 a month.
Screenshot from December 2020’s Partner Program Update
Now, you can still earn money with Medium. That's a distinction. The key is to stop thinking of Medium as a place to earn a full-time living and start thinking of Medium as a way to earn a full-time living.
What do I mean by this slightly confusing change of words? I mean that Medium is an opportunity.
Think of Medium as a vehicle to earn money by writing, not the destination.
There are three ways that Medium is a vehicle to further success: gaining freelance clients, expanding your own network, and growing your audience off Medium.
Let’s start with freelance clients.
When I publish on Medium, I can share my thoughts with the world very quickly and very easily. I can choose to put it in a targeted publication where I can do a ton of research on the readers.
The example I love to give is that if I wanted to get a job writing content for a cat blog, I could ask myself, if I were a cat blog, what publications would I follow on Medium?
The answer is probably Catness, a publication about cats.
I could then write a blog post, submit it to Catness, and
I have gained tons of freelance writing clients directly through Medium. I've even done a free workshop on how you can do it.
I've also used Medium to expand my network. I've made a lot of friends, invited a lot of guests to my YouTube channel, and made a lot of money from those network opportunities. Some cool people are on Medium and you have the chance to meet and interact with them that compares to no other platform.
Finally, I use Medium to grow my audience. I have a newsletter with over 6,000 readers. Those readers can choose to buy my products, click on my YouTube posts or Medium articles, or support me in any other way they'd like to.
In short, think of Medium as:
a platform to find a book deal (here’s just one example!)
a portfolio to attract freelance clients
a social media network to grow your connections
It does all that, and in the meantime, Medium also pays you to experiment while you grow your business.
You may earn some serious money with Medium! But you should consider that a bonus.
How hard is it to get started as a beginner on Medium?
Now let's talk about the other side of this question. Is it still worth it to get started on Medium today, even if you're a total beginner?
Yes is my short answer. Medium is the very best place to write online especially if you're a beginner. Nowhere else will you get paid to experiment, explore, and build your business. Or even just write about whatever the heck you want if that's what you feel like.
The great thing about being on Medium as a beginner is how easy it is. You can write and publish an article within hours. You don't need to get set up with a blog, you don't need to buy a domain name, you don't need to know anything about SEO, and you don't have to build an email list. All you have to do is write.
Now, if you're a beginner who wants to quickly make a lot of money writing, Medium might not be the best place for you. (But I don’t know anywhere that’s true.)
If you're a beginner writer, who wants to write and earn some money while doing so, Medium is perfect.
In other words, don't come out to Medium thinking you can get rich quick with a couple of quick listicles. That's not going to happen. It'll just irritate you when you fail, and it's a waste of everybody's time.
No niche needed
Another important reason is that you don’t need a niche. If you’re starting a blog anywhere else, the first thing you’ll hear is the importance of niching. It's true that for SEO purposes this is a very important factor for success. But on Medium, because your money and your views are driven through recommendations, you can write about whatever you want without being penalized by an algorithm
People who enjoy reading about my money articles will be shown my money articles. People who enjoy reading about my cat articles will be showing my cat articles. And people who want to read both will probably be shown both.
It's much more freeing, especially in the beginning when you don't know what you want to write about yet, just that you want to write. You can pursue that freedom and passion and write about whatever the heck you want.
Why Medium is a Must-Have for Your Business's Growth Strategy
I want to quickly address a third segment of the population – business owners. If you run any kind of business online, you should be on Medium. There are two reasons for this: SEO and additional audiences.
Let's talk about SEO first. Medium has a high domain authority. This means that you can Piggyback off of Medium’s strength by posting your blog articles on Medium too. You can do this by using a canonical link and cross-posting your content. It's very easy to do, it gives you a little SEO bonus, and with very little effort it gets you access to reason number two.
Remember what I said earlier about being able to Target readers? Medium is so good for that, especially as a business owner. You can create your whole account as a business and just reap SEO rewards. Or you can write as whoever you are – CEO, engineer, digital marketer – and get exposure that way.
For example, the CEO of the company jotform.com regularly posts on Medium talking about the challenges that he's experienced growing his product, building his team, and launching his business. He shares real insights and challenges. His work is valuable to read. It also gets him a ton of exposure for his business.
Medium is a great place to write if you own a business.
Medium vs Competitors
Now let’s quickly talk about the alternatives. I’m hyping up Medium as the best place to start a blog in 2023– what about its competitors?
Medium vs. WordPress
We can substitute WordPress with literally any web hosting site. That includes Squarespace, WordPress, wordpress.org, and I don't even know all the others.
If you want to start a blog, Medium is the best place. You don't have a lot of control over the blog. You won't be able to fully choose your URL, you won't be able to fully control the look of that, and you can't add any plugins. But you can write. So easily.
If you try to get set up on WordPress, before you even type in a word you're going to have to make a ton of decisions and choices, maybe spend some money while you decide what a word plug-in is and think about SEO if you ever want to get any viewers.
On Medium, you can write and start getting views literally within minutes of posting your first article. Now, if you're more experienced, you want to have more control over what your brand looks like, and you know more about SEO, then WP makes sense–but not otherwise.
Medium vs. Substack
On Substack, your audience pays you some amount of money a month to get access to your content. You can also upload podcasts and videos.
A lot of people prefer substack to Medium because you can have a closer connection to your audience. On Medium, you're one voice among many. On Substack, you're sending out an email to your closest followers who paid to get that email.
But – you have to bring your audience to Substack. I don't know of any creators who started on Substack and grew their readers that way without already having an audience on Twitter or another social media platform.
Of course, if you have a super-engaged audience on social media – maybe even if you have an engaged audience on Medium! – I recommend starting with Substack. But until then, I recommend using Medium.
Medium vs. Ghost
Ghost is an all-in-one creator platform. You can sell products and memberships, send newsletters, and post blogs. It’s ultra-customizable, open source, and not too expensive to get set up.
But… It has the same problem as Substack. If you don't come with an audience already built in, you'll never be able to grow.
Now, if you have an audience, I recommend Ghost over Substack.
Until then, stay on Medium. Write to your heart's content. Figure out how views work. Start getting followers. Reply to your comments. When you start seriously growing, then you can investigate other/additional platforms.
Is Medium worth it in 2023?
If I were a brand new writer who wanted to start a blog on January 1st, 2023, I would choose Medium.
You may not be able to earn a full-time living on Medium. I certainly don't. But it’s still the very best platform out there to grow your blogging empire:
It’s the easiest to get started
You get paid while you experiment
You can use it as a base to grow your business
Freelance clients, audience, networking
It’s pure fun.
Medium is absolutely worth pursuing in 2023.
Want to try out blogging as a side hustle? Here’s your free five-day starter kit to begin blogging on Medium, the easiest and best blogging platform in the world. When you sign up, you’ll get:
Your downloadable PDF template to check off each day’s activities
A daily email walking you through every single step you need to take
Links to free resources and tools
I can’t wait to have you on the list!
