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Honest presentation of the first 52 days of writing on medium with screenshots (medium.com)
submitted 2 months ago by Free_eye@lemmy.world to c/keepwriting@lemmy.world
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If anybody is interested in writing on medium, I'm here for any first-hand questions.

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[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

When it comes to Medium vs Substack or Ghost...

  • Can you customize the Medium interface to support custom widgets and themes?

  • Have you tried cross-posting between Medium, Substack, or Ghost? Like, posting a long piece to Substack, with a shorter version on Medium and links for people to subscribe to the newsletter version there?

  • How much traffic are you getting from the Medium recommendation algorithm, vs organic discovery, vs social media?

  • For analytics, do they offer their own or is there a way to integrate 3rd party ones?

  • How is Medium for complex content? Like text, graphs, videos embeds, gifs, Markdown, tables (HTML or Markdown), animations, and interactive scripts?

  • Is there a posting API so you can automate or schedule postings?

  • There's a mobile app. How much traffic do you get from there vs web or emails?

  • Does the mobile app support mixed content widgets like above?

[-] Free_eye@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I just spend 20 min on writing my answer just to delete it by clicking something wrong...... will write one more time XD

[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

😔 We've all done that. Thanks again!

[-] Free_eye@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

  1. I think not, as far as I can see, you can edit your header and banner, not many options are offered, but I'm not sure

  2. I don't have Substack or Ghost, I only use Medium and share friend links to those articles on social media and online communities

  3. It depends. It is good to have this distribution system, but don't rely solely on it.

Let's say for article like this, which I shared on several places outside Medium - external traffic referrals are 60% and above.

Some traffic comes from algorithms and internal distribution system, some from email subscribers and followers, some from shares, but what can really improve your traffic in terms of reads and engagement is reading other's work and engaging with the articles you find good and interesting.

Participating in writing challenges is also a great way of boosting activity. Since it is a reader fund platform, it is a sort of hybrid between blog and social media.

So I can say, depending on my activity and efforts, the numbers will change accordingly.

And be sure to connect with real people, since there are a lot of bots, which I wrote about in a few articles.

  1. Analytics is their own. I doubt you can integrate anything here.

  2. I think there is no problem with incorporating various kinds of content in your article. I only put photos and You tube videos sometimes.

  3. When you hit publish, you can choose to publish or schedule for later

  4. I don't know if there is more users using the desktop version or the mobile app. As I said, for the traffic is really good to engage with other writers.

I have some that I really appreciate. Some are poets, some write essays, some are professionals in certain fields of work and write about it, and some are here to heal.

Getting to know real authors from all around the world with unique voices is such an awesome feeling, and the benefits of connections like this are a lot. Not just personal, but it also moves the algorithm, I guess.

What I want to say is, it is better to have 50 real, active followers and readers, than 1000 empty ones, just numbers.

  1. I don't quite understand this last question. If you can clarify a little bit. Sorry, English is not my native language.

I hope I offered some answers!

[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Thank you! Great insights.

[-] Free_eye@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

And just one more thing. When I wrote this article, my earnings for December were 0.56$

Today, 19 days later, my total earnings are 3.93$

I hope to earn a little bit more this month to cover the monthly subscription! :D

[-] ecvanalog@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I have been struggling with finding a viable platform. I was getting 2-3x as much traffic on Substack as I do on Medium or Ghost.

[-] Free_eye@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

More traffic on Substack? How is that possible? I mean, I didn't try it, but does it also have its own distribution system?

And what platform do you use now?

[-] ecvanalog@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I’m primarily a journalist, so Substack is optimized for my type of work.

At this point I’m just putting stuff on Wordpress where nobody finds it but it’s archived and I can monetize it later in print.

[-] Free_eye@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

How do you find new readers for your Substack account?

[-] ecvanalog@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Organically through sharing my work on Bluesky and such. I really don’t do anything to promote my blog. I SHOULD but I don’t have time for all the things I should do.

this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
15 points (100.0% liked)

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