Medium & Substack Stats Don't Match. :(

I did a little experiment to see if I could get a "boost" at Medium and discovered something terribly disappointing that I wasn't even looking for.

photo by Andrea Piacquadio at pexels

Happy Friday!

Life is weird. Sometimes you go looking for something and you don’t find it, but you find something else. Sometimes, it’s a good find. Like when I went looking for a citrus candle and didn’t find one, but found a really nice mug I had to have.

Not all finds are good. Like when I was digging potatoes in the garden last fall and dug up a mouse. Oh wtf, a potato moved…. gahhh! Omg, that’s not a potato!!!

I was testing the “boost” theory on Medium…

Last month I wrote about a video in which the new CEO at Medium said posts on Medium are more likely to get a “boost” in visibility if the writer shares the post elsewhere and drives some external traffic.

So last week I decided to test it out. I wrote a 3500 word Substack tutorial, posted it on Medium and shared the link here. I wanted to see if I’d get a “boost” in views by intentionally sharing the post here and driving “external” traffic to Medium.

As you can see from the graph below — no boost.

Pretty much as expected.

I didn’t really expect to get a boost because of a handful of clicks from Substack. According to Similarweb Stats, 60% of Medium’s traffic is external to being with and comes from search. See? You can see it yourself, here.

Now, I don’t know how accurate that is, but if it’s even remotely close, that’s too much external traffic to the site to be a boost indicator. You know? But I wanted to see for myself what would happen if I sent external traffic intentionally.

As it turns out — not much.

Here’s what I was not expecting to find.

The mouse in the potatoes, so to speak. lol.

** ** **

Medium and Substack stats don’t match.

I’d posted two links. One was a regular link, the other a friend link. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a “friend” link bypasses the paywall and lets anyone read the article even if they do not have a paid membership at Medium.

Substack says 15 people clicked the “friend” link. Medium says 2.

Substack says 57 people clicked the standard (non-friend) link. Medium says 13.

That’s a pretty big difference. I don’t know why. It’s possible Medium counted the visits some other way. Maybe they’re counted in the “email, IM and direct” links. Maybe some of them were using an Android device but not using the Medium app.

But the one that’s most telling is the friend link.

Because a friend link is a specific link that bypasses the paywall. There’s not really a different way to list that link. It’s a pretty specific link, you know? Doesn’t make any sense to me at all. 15 clicked at Substack, 2 arrived on Medium? Weird.

They’re small numbers, so whatever. You know?

But what if they weren’t small numbers. Wouldn’t it be maddening if there was a couple extra zeros? If it was 1500 and 200 instead of 15 and 2. You know?

Maybe worth experimenting?

If you write both places, might be an interesting experiment to try. Use a friend link on Substack to link to your stories on Medium. Then compare the stats.

If you do, I’d be curious to know what you find.

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On Medium…

• Did Virginia Woolf Survive Incest?

• Everything You Need To Know About Growing On Substack: A Tutorial

• Stop Writing About Crap You’re Not Qualified To. You’re Hurting People

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xo
Linda