Happy Friday, It’s not often that a comment sticks with me for days, following me around and poking its head up when I least expect it. Common for a lot of writers, I know, particularly negative comments. But it’s not common for me. I got one such comment last week, and thank you Geoffrey. Stuck with me for days, making me ponder the difference between the places for writers.
Medium has two roles, for me. One is to earn some money, because let's face it, it's pretty easy to build an audience, if you just keep consistently publishing. The other role is to feed my Substack newsletter with new subscriptions, almost all of which have come from the footer I put on all my Medium articles. I don't charge for my Substack, it's a freebie.
The key difference between the two is that Medium owns my audience and they can take it away at any time. Sure I have some people who have signed up to get my Medium articles, but it's just a handful.
But on Substack, I get the email address of everyone who reads my newsletter and I can do what I like with them. Even if Substack shuts down tomorrow, I have my list. If I create a product, there's a ready-made audience who already knows me.
So, in my opinion, the difference is about owning my audience.
For me, the thing is this. There are a million things about Medium that I hate but also, love. As you said, I pay five bucks and can read and search for whatever I want.
With Substack, I'm HIGHLY unlikely to pay any one writer $5/month unless they are step-by-step walking me through something I need to know more than I need to breathe air lol. I dunno, it's probably selfish to say that but it's true.
I'd WAY rather every writer use a tip app so I can tip them if they write ONE thing I love.
Kristi, I so agree with part of that. lol. I read that statistically, less than 10% of subscribers opt for the paid version of a Substack so there's that. At the same time, I am not a fan of tips. If they bring one to Medium, I hope it can be turned off. Because honestly, if I spend an entire weekend researching one of my history posts and someone threw me a dollar? Yeah... no. lol
People tip far more than that though. In the few months I've been using Buy Me a Coffee, the smallest tip has been $5 and the largest, $50. I've also tipped $50 on occasion.
I was on Medium for a couple of years before I discovered Substack and it had its moments, especially when I headed Indelible Ink, my publication there. But I never felt proud to be a part of Medium, mainly because there's so much awful stuff and much of it migrates to the front pages. There is a kind of public nastiness that floats to the surface all too often, and I don't want to be seen as being any part of that.
I'm proud to be on Substack and I think it makes a difference in my writing. It feels like a real community of writers who are serious about our craft--even when we're writing light or funny pieces.
Paid subscriptions are open in both of my newsletters but my readers get to experience everything available. No closed doors there and no pitches or guilt trips to get readers to pay me for my work. I want it that way, and I confess I haven't been working hard enough at it lately to expect any more paid subscriptions than I already have.
I agree that we have to have something special to offer in order to expect continuous pay, but sometimes it's not only a service we provide; often it's something special, maybe in our storytelling or in the way we word things. There has to be a draw, even for free subscriptions. We have to give our readers a reason to want to come back. That's not always easy with the newsletter format, but I find I'm much more at ease writing pieces for subscribers than for random readers who may or may not have ever followed me before.
I do remember reading your writing on Medium. True enough there is a public nastiness that floats up now and then. I suspect anywhere people go, it inevitably happens. Curious question, what percent of your readers opt for the paid? I heard the average is about 10%, but I suspect that might be a bit high.
I have very few paid subscribers at my newsletters. Of around 200 subscribers at each newsletter only a handful are paid. I'm grateful for all of them and, honestly, they keep me going. I owe them something now!
I do have a Kofi account and I sometimes ask for one-time support. They actually do much better.
Jul 26, 2022·edited Jul 26, 2022Liked by Linda Caroll
I stopped and read these two lines about 3 times.
Medium is readers making a commitment to pay the platform.
Substack is a reader making a commitment to pay the writer, not the platform.
I'm surprised I hadn't realized this before, but you are completely right.
The other thing that I've noticed is that on Medium, I've always perceived a vauge feeling of "hurry up and post...keep up with the rest of the writers...you're falling behind"
Here on Substack, I don't feel that. It feels much more like a community that genuinely wants to hear what I have to share.
My most popular newsletter here, "Brace Yourself" (which is free) discusses ways to make our dollar stretch with a variety of intentional actions. It's not financial advice. It's a neighbor leaning over the fence and saying, "Hey, have you tried this...?" We talk about growing your own food, in pots even! We talk recipes that will relieve our dwindling grocery budgets a little, we talk about hobbies that will help us in the days to come, how to re-grow food cores and bits from the grocery store...friendly neighborly advice.
No one has ever written me here on SS to tell me to dumb-down my language, write in bullet points and which headings I shoud have used. They have on Medium.
I appreciate my subscribers over there, and I appreciate my subscribers here. But Substack feels a lot less cut-throat and a lot more welcoming.
The two places do have a different feel, for sure. I have been on Substack over a year and have yet to get any vitriol in the comments. On Medium, that's a daily occurrence. If I could figure out how to earn on Substack what I do on Medium, I'd spend more time here than there. :)
Yes, I was laughing! I wonder, though, if you reversed the number of readers on Medium and Substack. 6000 on Medium? Or 6000 on SS?
If you're gaining that many on Medium, is your income dropping like so many others? Or are you maintaining or increasing that income? That wouldn't surprise me.
Please move The History of Women and the other historical articles to SS!!!!! Pleeeeeeese!
6000 on Medium and 1000 on Substack in roughly the same time frame. Though to be fair, I write 2-3 times/week on Medium and only once/week on Substack. And yes, income dropping like crazy. I'm about on track to make 1/3 of what I made last July which truly sucks.
I will very likely move my historical pieces here. Just need to figure out a name for the publication. I don't want to just directly move the History of Women pub. I'd like to move all my historical pieces and need to figure out what the heck to call it that doesn't sound stuffy, but fits all the pieces I write. :)
Wait a minute! I think you could be onto an interesting new phrase. Vice Verse. What is it? Perhaps information about immoral behavior written in a poetic form? :)
I write on both. I do not have a paid newsletter on Substack because I don't provide the kind of content most people want to pay to read. It might work for niche writers but I don't think it would work for me. The reader has to believe you can provide something no one else can and be convinced it's something they need. Nobody needs to read my stuff.
I've been on Medium for years. I've been on Substack for a month. Here's the main difference I already spot:
The Substack team is really engaged. They listen to their userbase and implement feedback. The Medium team is much less accessible. Their actions are less decipherable (why was this curated and that wasn't, etc.) Medium leadership also has a history of abruptly pivoting their business model with little regard for their partners (e.g. the media companies hosting on Medium that got burned literally overnight) and their userbase. I think I commented the following in a previous post of yours: I'm rooting for the new CEO to succeed, but I'm skeptical.
That the Substack team is approachable and proactive seems to have a trickle-down effect on Substack's culture. Most Substack users I've encountered adopt a give-to-get approach. Substack users also seem generally optimistic. Medium users, by contrast, are always kvetching and reminiscing about the good ole days.
Medium made a grievous error by forgoing rewarding writers for bringing in external views. I understand that it made sense from a Medium-centric financial perspective: "We have a limited pool of funds from our members, and we can't overextend by paying for the eyeballs of non-members." But it seemed like a solution they retrofitted for a strategy they didn't think through. Unfortunately, this encouraged Medium users to cater to other Medium users, which created this weird, incestuous culture in which Medium users wrote and marketed to each other.
I have 1,700 followers on Medium. I have 54 subscribers on Substack. I'll take my 54 here over the 1,700 over there any day of the week.
I am loyal to Medium and grateful forever...Have made so many friends. Some, I have even MET. One, I'm meeting for dinner next week! The support and readership - worth so much. And the worldwide network, a kick to my spirit daily
Medium has two roles, for me. One is to earn some money, because let's face it, it's pretty easy to build an audience, if you just keep consistently publishing. The other role is to feed my Substack newsletter with new subscriptions, almost all of which have come from the footer I put on all my Medium articles. I don't charge for my Substack, it's a freebie.
The key difference between the two is that Medium owns my audience and they can take it away at any time. Sure I have some people who have signed up to get my Medium articles, but it's just a handful.
But on Substack, I get the email address of everyone who reads my newsletter and I can do what I like with them. Even if Substack shuts down tomorrow, I have my list. If I create a product, there's a ready-made audience who already knows me.
So, in my opinion, the difference is about owning my audience.
Yup, that's a really good point.
For me, the thing is this. There are a million things about Medium that I hate but also, love. As you said, I pay five bucks and can read and search for whatever I want.
With Substack, I'm HIGHLY unlikely to pay any one writer $5/month unless they are step-by-step walking me through something I need to know more than I need to breathe air lol. I dunno, it's probably selfish to say that but it's true.
I'd WAY rather every writer use a tip app so I can tip them if they write ONE thing I love.
Kristi, I so agree with part of that. lol. I read that statistically, less than 10% of subscribers opt for the paid version of a Substack so there's that. At the same time, I am not a fan of tips. If they bring one to Medium, I hope it can be turned off. Because honestly, if I spend an entire weekend researching one of my history posts and someone threw me a dollar? Yeah... no. lol
But maybe Medium would only pay you a dollar lol.
People tip far more than that though. In the few months I've been using Buy Me a Coffee, the smallest tip has been $5 and the largest, $50. I've also tipped $50 on occasion.
Wow. Really? Holy crap, I had no idea. lol
Yup. I find it's worth it even if it only happens once in a month. I mean, some months lately tipping pays more than Medium 😂
I was on Medium for a couple of years before I discovered Substack and it had its moments, especially when I headed Indelible Ink, my publication there. But I never felt proud to be a part of Medium, mainly because there's so much awful stuff and much of it migrates to the front pages. There is a kind of public nastiness that floats to the surface all too often, and I don't want to be seen as being any part of that.
I'm proud to be on Substack and I think it makes a difference in my writing. It feels like a real community of writers who are serious about our craft--even when we're writing light or funny pieces.
Paid subscriptions are open in both of my newsletters but my readers get to experience everything available. No closed doors there and no pitches or guilt trips to get readers to pay me for my work. I want it that way, and I confess I haven't been working hard enough at it lately to expect any more paid subscriptions than I already have.
I agree that we have to have something special to offer in order to expect continuous pay, but sometimes it's not only a service we provide; often it's something special, maybe in our storytelling or in the way we word things. There has to be a draw, even for free subscriptions. We have to give our readers a reason to want to come back. That's not always easy with the newsletter format, but I find I'm much more at ease writing pieces for subscribers than for random readers who may or may not have ever followed me before.
I do remember reading your writing on Medium. True enough there is a public nastiness that floats up now and then. I suspect anywhere people go, it inevitably happens. Curious question, what percent of your readers opt for the paid? I heard the average is about 10%, but I suspect that might be a bit high.
I have very few paid subscribers at my newsletters. Of around 200 subscribers at each newsletter only a handful are paid. I'm grateful for all of them and, honestly, they keep me going. I owe them something now!
I do have a Kofi account and I sometimes ask for one-time support. They actually do much better.
I stopped and read these two lines about 3 times.
Medium is readers making a commitment to pay the platform.
Substack is a reader making a commitment to pay the writer, not the platform.
I'm surprised I hadn't realized this before, but you are completely right.
The other thing that I've noticed is that on Medium, I've always perceived a vauge feeling of "hurry up and post...keep up with the rest of the writers...you're falling behind"
Here on Substack, I don't feel that. It feels much more like a community that genuinely wants to hear what I have to share.
My most popular newsletter here, "Brace Yourself" (which is free) discusses ways to make our dollar stretch with a variety of intentional actions. It's not financial advice. It's a neighbor leaning over the fence and saying, "Hey, have you tried this...?" We talk about growing your own food, in pots even! We talk recipes that will relieve our dwindling grocery budgets a little, we talk about hobbies that will help us in the days to come, how to re-grow food cores and bits from the grocery store...friendly neighborly advice.
No one has ever written me here on SS to tell me to dumb-down my language, write in bullet points and which headings I shoud have used. They have on Medium.
I appreciate my subscribers over there, and I appreciate my subscribers here. But Substack feels a lot less cut-throat and a lot more welcoming.
The two places do have a different feel, for sure. I have been on Substack over a year and have yet to get any vitriol in the comments. On Medium, that's a daily occurrence. If I could figure out how to earn on Substack what I do on Medium, I'd spend more time here than there. :)
Yes, I was laughing! I wonder, though, if you reversed the number of readers on Medium and Substack. 6000 on Medium? Or 6000 on SS?
If you're gaining that many on Medium, is your income dropping like so many others? Or are you maintaining or increasing that income? That wouldn't surprise me.
Please move The History of Women and the other historical articles to SS!!!!! Pleeeeeeese!
Hugs
Linda
6000 on Medium and 1000 on Substack in roughly the same time frame. Though to be fair, I write 2-3 times/week on Medium and only once/week on Substack. And yes, income dropping like crazy. I'm about on track to make 1/3 of what I made last July which truly sucks.
I will very likely move my historical pieces here. Just need to figure out a name for the publication. I don't want to just directly move the History of Women pub. I'd like to move all my historical pieces and need to figure out what the heck to call it that doesn't sound stuffy, but fits all the pieces I write. :)
I like your clarity as a writer. You do need to pay an editor's attention, though. It's "vice versa" not vice verse."
lol. Hah, appears I missed that in the final edit.
Wait a minute! I think you could be onto an interesting new phrase. Vice Verse. What is it? Perhaps information about immoral behavior written in a poetic form? :)
lol. Well there would be no shortage of topic matter.
I write on both. I do not have a paid newsletter on Substack because I don't provide the kind of content most people want to pay to read. It might work for niche writers but I don't think it would work for me. The reader has to believe you can provide something no one else can and be convinced it's something they need. Nobody needs to read my stuff.
That's pretty much how I feel. I'd have to think real hard about what I wanted to offer before I'd flip a paid switch.
I've been on Medium for years. I've been on Substack for a month. Here's the main difference I already spot:
The Substack team is really engaged. They listen to their userbase and implement feedback. The Medium team is much less accessible. Their actions are less decipherable (why was this curated and that wasn't, etc.) Medium leadership also has a history of abruptly pivoting their business model with little regard for their partners (e.g. the media companies hosting on Medium that got burned literally overnight) and their userbase. I think I commented the following in a previous post of yours: I'm rooting for the new CEO to succeed, but I'm skeptical.
That the Substack team is approachable and proactive seems to have a trickle-down effect on Substack's culture. Most Substack users I've encountered adopt a give-to-get approach. Substack users also seem generally optimistic. Medium users, by contrast, are always kvetching and reminiscing about the good ole days.
Medium made a grievous error by forgoing rewarding writers for bringing in external views. I understand that it made sense from a Medium-centric financial perspective: "We have a limited pool of funds from our members, and we can't overextend by paying for the eyeballs of non-members." But it seemed like a solution they retrofitted for a strategy they didn't think through. Unfortunately, this encouraged Medium users to cater to other Medium users, which created this weird, incestuous culture in which Medium users wrote and marketed to each other.
I have 1,700 followers on Medium. I have 54 subscribers on Substack. I'll take my 54 here over the 1,700 over there any day of the week.
I'm a writer on Medium, thinking about joining Substack. So thanks for this.
I am loyal to Medium and grateful forever...Have made so many friends. Some, I have even MET. One, I'm meeting for dinner next week! The support and readership - worth so much. And the worldwide network, a kick to my spirit daily