I have a self hosted blog currently, and I’m considering posting it on medium.com
I blog mostly for fun and I have not tried to monetize it. Are there any reasons to not use medium?
What about alternatives like substack?
As someone once said:
“It’s called medium, as the articles are neither rare nor well-done”
I got curious and looked it up, that saying dates back 75 years.
I used to really like medium, cool articles written by interesting people, looked nice enough and i had fun giving like 20 thumbs up lol.
But then it went super walled, paywall for everything and its like they tried super hard to monetize. And truth is, ive never visited it since. Maybe the ocasional article, but even with an account im like urgh ill just lool elsewhere
I liked Medium for a while, but now I avoid it like the plague. Too much junk and too many paywalls it’s not worth bothering. I’m more likely clicking on anything else when it shows up in my search results.
There’s so many junk bloggers who make a small blog to become known or have it on their linkedin… when most of their posts are max two paragraphs. I don’t blame medium there, but they did lose the premium feel in my book.
Please continue running your own blog. Don’t give some other company “free” content.
I hate that the entire modern internet is controlled by a few corporates.
The downsides to running your own blog are lack of technical knowledge/interest, and reduced monetization. Since you’ve already overcome the problem of technical knowledge, and you aren’t looking for monetization, please continue running your own blog.
As for visibility, maybe your could start sharing links on lemmy? Perhaps you could start a dedicated community of your own if you’re hesitant to post it on other existing communities.
I’m not making a Medium account just to read some half assed blog post. That’s my biggest gripe with the service.
It’s not like running a Ghost instance is particularly hard or resource consuming.
I personally like the static site generator blogs people host on GitHub Pages, at least those don’t demand my personal information just to read a blog post.
I am on medium to follow one person, ecause I hate using the Reddit app, which is the other way to read them. I have tried reading other stories, but always hit a paywall. So I think it’s pointless, just my two bits.
Pop-up riddled shit that annoys anyone who tries to read it. Substack is apparently riddled with Nazis, but then that was a characteristic I heard here, so take that with a pinch of salt.
Maybe github pages?
I have been trying to get into Medium for a while now. It seems okay but lacks a lot quality content and their website somehow do not give me recent blogs. The site always gives me blogs from 2017-2020, never from 2024.
The site is immensely paywalled, almost all articles are paid. Now if the articles/ content was actually decent, I might’ve paid. However, sadly it is not and there’s a way to read the premium articles for free. So there’s that.
Been trying to find other places to read blogs but can’t seem to find a good place.
The cool thing about substack is that it’s part of a community of writers. Especially with the “notes” aspect.
How’s that different from medium?
Well, on substack, that community of writers includes nazis who are able to monetize their hate through that platform. So, if that’s what you’re looking for…
Does Medium have a platform where writers and readers can all talk to each other? Substack has “notes”, their twitter clone.
Ahh, I thought you meant like literal notes at first. I understand now. Thanks! :)
It’s fine but self-hosting is better.
If I was one of your readers, I’d much rather read on your self-hosted blog (bonus points if there’s RSS)… But I’m not. Since I’m neither a reader, nor the one who defines what fun means to you, I’m not sure my—and other commenters’—words should have too much bearing in your decision.
I say, do what makes you (and your readers) happiest. Even if medium is by some measure bad, I’d guess it’s “only” about as bad as every other closed-up commercial option—I think they all suck. Look into what you actually care about, though, e.g. privacy, then make your own call.
For what it’s worth, I agree with people saying medium is almost inexplicably annoying. I consider myself a patient person most of the time, yet nothing kills my interest in an article faster than seeing websites like medium full of dark-patterned cookie banners and popups and newsletters and signups on the other side of a link.
But maybe we’re simply the wrong crowd to ask.
Substack seems way more in vogue, but I don’t know why.
It requires an email to even read the first article, or at least has appeared to any time I’ve tried to go over there and read stuff
Most places that do that, I am fine putting my email into, sometimes even paying for them, but for some reason I don’t understand, medium.com has some kind of anti Feng shui that makes me just hit the back button annoyed any time I click on an article and the thing pops up. It’s like somehow their web site design has it timed and positioned at the perfect psychological moment to create irritation
It is purely irrational and purely only my personal reaction to it but that is how I react to it
likewise. i hate it
I just skip Medium due to the walled garden. Even worse than Reddit. I have never come across a link to substack… are they an even higher wall that search engines are stymied by?
I fail to get why you think putting your stuff on Medium is a good idea.
The appeal I see in medium is more visibility for my content. I write for fun anyways, would be cool for more people to see it.
I’m liking Medium less lately because of the number of pop-ups. I have to close three, maybe two sometimes, to get to the content.
I get the appeal of visibility, but I’d still suggest trying a WriteFreely instance; you’ll get (and support) federation, and you can still self-promote on Lemmy and Mastodon - I’ve yet to see any real push-back on self-promotion, unless it’s a controversial position, such as taking a strong stance on a divisive topic and acting as if you’re an authority when you aren’t. And even then, the push-back is the same whether or not it was self-promoted.
I never come across Medium articles unless someone creates a Lemmy or Mastodon post linking to it, anyway, so I’m guess you’re expecting higher visibility on the Facebook/X platforms?
I would rather post something on a neocities or custom website