Is Medium A Good Blogging Platform? (My Thoughts)
One of the most popular blogging platforms is Medium.
The main reason why it's popular is that, it's free!
Anyone can setup a blog on Medium in just a matter of few minutes without having to worry about setup costs.
Not only that, but the platform is also easy to use – since it involves less tech staff i.e. compared to other platforms like WordPress.
Thus, this platform is definitely good for someone who's just looking for a fast way to get started with blogging.
But the biggest question is;
‘Is Medium A Good Blogging Platform?’
The honest answer is YES & NO – and I will explain why in just a moment.
As mentioned earlier, Medium is a free blogging platform which allows anyone to setup his/her blog for free.
This is great for people who're so eager to share their ideas online – but they don't have any money to pay for a custom website.
Thus, if you're someone like that, then Medium might be your saviour.
Also, this platform is very beginner friendly in nature – since it doesn't involve any complex coding staff like CSS, Java, HTML, etc.
Instead, the platform is already customised for you – though you may make your own changes i.e. twerk the colours, fonts, banner, etc.
Thus, if you're someone who's less tech savvy, then Medium might be a good platform for you.
Another reason why Medium is a great platform is that, it has a high domain authority of around 94.
This is great since this allows your articles to rank better on Google without doing too much SEO staff to your content.
If you're not familiar with domain authority, it's simply a metric that's used by Google to determine the authoritativeness of a website i.e. from a scale of 0 to 100.
High authority websites have high chances of ranking higher than low authority websites – thus, you'll have a big advantage if you leverage Medium’s authority.
Also, Medium has a huge built-in audience which visits the platform on almost a daily basis.
For this reason, your articles have high chances of being read by some of these people who're constantly browsing through the platform on a daily basis.
Besides, Medium also sends some newsletters to their readers on a daily basis – and they feature some articles in those newsletters i.e. Medium Digest.
For this reason, your articles might be featured in some of the newsletters – thus, allowing you to get some traffic to your content.
Last but not least, Medium also allows you to monetize your works through the Medium Partner Program.
This allows you to earn money from your articles i.e. when Medium partners read your articles – thus, allowing you to make money whilst doing your passions.
However, l have to mention that, the Medium Partner Program pays very little amounts – thus, it's difficult to make significant amounts on this platform.
You need a ton of readers to make significant income – which is quite hard TBH.
But hey, if you're getting something for your efforts, it's still a great deal than not getting paid at all.
Besides, you can also monetize your content through other means like affiliate links – though you may need to disclose that it's commercial content.
Now that I've covered why Medium is a great platform, let me quickly discuss the drawbacks of Medium.
And I can present this in just one short sentence i.e.
‘Lack of control'.
If you're on this platform, you don’t own it – Medium does!
For this reason, they might decide to shut down your account at any time without any notice i.e. if they feel like you've violated their terms of services
For this reason, you might lose all your articles in just an instinct – thus, you'll go back to square zero.
I've seen it over and over again where people writes hundreds of articles on this platform, get some decent traffic – but then, all of a sudden, Medium decides to shut down their accounts simply because they forgot to disclose an affiliate link or they wrote about a sensitive topic.
Thus, you shouldn't entirely rely on this platform.
Still on the same issue, Medium decided to de-rank some articles which they thought are too promotional in nature i.e. back in March 2021.
For this reason, most people lost massive amounts of traffic – since their articles were moved from page 1 to lower pages of Google i.e. where no one can see them.
It's also impossible to fully customise your Medium blog – because the platform is already designed for you.
Although you can change some few things, you don't have much freedom to fully customise your website i.e. as you can do with WordPress.
Last but not least, you don't own the readers who reads your articles – Medium does!
For this reason, you wont be able to communicate & build relations with them – since you don't have direct access to them.
And if Medium decides to terminate your account, that's the end of the story i.e. you wont be able to get in touch with all those people again.
~~~~~
So what's my final thoughts?
I think that you should have both a Medium blog & a personal website.
This allows you to re-post your blog articles on Medium i.e. as canonical content – thus, allowing you to drive traffic from Medium to your own blog.
The reason being that, SEO takes time – thus, you might struggle to get traffic to your own website in the first few months.
But if you leverage a platform like Medium which already has a built-in audience, then you can be able to get some early visits to your site.
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