How do you use Medium?
I know there are many people who don't like Medium (and for very valid reasons!), but I'd love to hear from people who do like and use it.
- How do you use Medium?
- What has worked well for you?
- Do you have any helpful links that would help indie hackers get up and running well?
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I use Medium as the main platform for publishing interesting articles that I write on a whim. While I post regularly, I don’t actually adhere to any specific schedule.
Medium has worked well for me. I consistently earn ~$1,000 per month from the partner program. More importantly, it’s been a great space to meet other writers/entrepreneurs. I have also become somewhat of a Medium platform expert and have even been paid by Medium to beta test products and give feedback which is cool!
That said, I make a point of trying to remain objective. For example I run a whole Medium publication explaining how to use Substack, Substack Writing and all blogging platforms on my main website.
If you are looking for Medium resources, I have an entire publication dedicated to that called Medium Blogging Guide. I’ve spent hundreds of not thousands of hours trying to deconstruct and explain Medium.
We love using Medium!
Right now, I use Medium to redistribute my team's existing marketing blog content. It's primarily a syndication channel for us in that sense.
We have our own Medium publication where we republish our main blog content, however we've also submitted the blog content to other publications like The Startup, Muzli, or Marketing and Growth Hacking. The good thing about getting published in other publications is that we can extend our reach by tapping into their existing following.
Otherwise, we're starting to get back into the habit of publishing Medium-specific content. That is, original content that only lives on Medium and offers behind-the-scenes stories about our company/teams/people, thought leadership content about business, tech or SaaS, or company news.
HubSpot has a good foundational guide on how to use Medium if anyone's new to the platform.
I've switched a year ago, from publishing first on my own blogs:
...to publishing my posts on Medium (https://medium.com/@EeKayOnline) first, let them roar there for a week or two and then publishing on my blogs (mentioning "also published on ..." links on both ends, and setting canonical.
After a year of joining the partner program, my income has increased from $0 to about $10 a month. One or two of my ~50 articles have been picked up by Medium, about 7-10have picked interest from other people asking me to add them to their publication (which I haven't done so far).
I love to write (sharing stuff to help people learn and/or save time), it helps me improve my English and the way how I express and explain things (useful for my app dev mentoring and consulting work https://www.eekayonline.com)
What I've noticed after a year as a Medium Partner (really about a year now; recently got my subscription refresh email):
What I might improve:
Take care, keep writing!
It is the easiest way to publish a blog post. I just write it up and hit publish.
I want to switch everything over to my personal site, but I just haven't made it a priority yet.
Yeah I feel like that accurately describes most Medium writers 😉😂
I thought if we have start from nothing write for medium first its great stregy . the article will rank quickly then we drive traffic to our new site later by some CTA . add canonical when your site have zero backlink doesn't work anymore . site that your republish article will rank over original site
This is true and partly why I suggest not using the canonical link tool unless you are ok with that potentially happening (I tried this with several articles and had same issue). While it’s a bummer, it does show how strong Medium DAis.
I write all my blog posts on my blog, and then import them into Medium so it creates a canonical link back. Medium has an audience that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and I doubt you'd be able to persuade them to leave any time soon so may as well join the platform and create something that works for you and the Medium audience.
I also joined the partner program which was easy enough, and again, if there's a paying Medium audience who are happy to read your posts despite having your own blog, and it offers them value, then I honestly don't see the harm in doing this. I felt bad before about doing it this way but thought I may as well give it a try and see what happens. So far I've earnt 64 cents which isn't a lot, but it's better than nothing.
Very good outlook!
Recently published a Medium post at https://medium.com/@upen946/why-i-built-sheet2site-alternative-4e1b96b5ef38
One Medium group you can try is my Medium Facebook group, Medium Writing.
Came across this and just wanted to call out that publishing on Medium does nothing for SEO unless you are publishing on your site first, and then importing the article into Medium. Doing that sets a canonical link back to your site, which just tells Google your site published it first so you deserve all the credit (and SEO boost).
Ultimately you want Google to recognize your site as an authority, to do that you need the content indexed and attributed to your website (as opposed to Medium).
To get a return on all your work spent on content, I'd recommend setting up a blog on your site and publishing there, then using Medium to distribute that content for a wider audience.
Nice product/website by the way, looks really cool!
Hey, Thankyou for your comments.
You are correct. For my next post, that is what I am thinking of doing and taking the advantage of canonical links.
On the product side - Yes, Thankyou. We have a few paying customers and a good number of people on waitlist!!
One Medium group you can try is my Medium Facebook group, Medium Writing.