Submitted 8 months ago by PlanetOfOrd@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I ask because for the last year or 2 I’ve been financially strapped, unable to make ends meet most months, so I haven’t been able to afford paying for the $5/mo Medium membership. Because it’s often “do I eat this month or pay for a membership?”
However, I post Medium articles fairly regularly, and each email update shows I get ~500 reads total.
Is that enough to cover the $5/mo? Would it be a wise financial risk?
Are people willing to share their readership and total MMR?
Dude, if you’re struggling that much, I’ll pay for a few months for you so you can try it out. $15 for 3 months, or do you have to pay yearly? I have no experience with medium but I get a ton of good info from medium articles and it’s a great resource.
I almost never got anything useful out of medium. It’s kinda mediocre. The best people usually don’t give their texts to a company like medium for almost nothing. They usually have their own websites.
My favorite quote from the interwebs about medium.com is “they call it medium because it’s rare to find anything well-done there.”
Oh shit.
The thing about medium is that it’s a trusted domain + mailing list + blog + search engine in one. All you have to do is sign up and start writing, for free.
Sure you can have your own domain, and spin up a cheap VPS which has WordPress or other blogging software, pay MailChimp to actually inbox your emails, use Google Analytics or some open source complex privacy-focused analytics, and then set up your advertisements if you actually want to make money from it. That’s a lot of time invested and very expensive relatively (compared to free).
Or you can use something like Squarespace or Wix and have a fully functioning website with everything you need in a few hours and start monetizing your views with ads. Both start at $16 a month so it’s a larger hill to climb sure but you get custom branding and don’t have to deal with the baggage of a Medium page (largely that it’s considered in many circles an untrustworthy source for pretty much any topic mainly because of how easy and barrier free it is to write there. They also have a pretty well established history of working to screw over contributors to profit off of your work including you automatically giving a full license to medium for everything you post).
If all you want is a newsletter though without a webpage to back it you can setup something in mailchimp with a custom domain (.coms start at about $10 from cloudflare). Again an hour or so of reading and configuring and you’re on your way, with an Adsense account you can even embed inline ads to your newsletter.
If you have to pay to submit articles, it’s a shit site.
Oh, no, I don’t have to pay to submit articles. I’ve already published dozens of articles. It’s just that in order to participate in profit sharing, you need to become a member: $5/mo or $50/yr.
Haha it looks like a Ponzi scheme…
I’ve never heard of Medium, so let me get this straight. You’re giving them content AND paying them? That’s like going to work and paying your boss.
If that’s true and you’re struggling to get food at the same time, there are some serious issues going on and you should reconsider what you spend your time and energy on
Yeah. It’s been a struggle these past few years. I’ve been getting creative to find any source of income, but it seems like no matter what I try I always hit a wall. But I found out I have a new contract starting soon (🤞) that will definitely cover costs for a while. This season is critical for me, and I often check my priorities often. Thanks for the encouragement.
Don’t give your stuff away to Medium. Buy a domain and host everything from there. Sites like square space can be used to help you monetize.
Hm…I’ll consider this. I 100% believe in self-hosting, but I’ve had to compromise lately. Thanks for the suggestion.
How does the membership work? If you contribute and you’re a member you’re eligible for compensation?
Yup. Once you’re a $5/mo / $10/mo member, then you can profit share.
You can eat for a month for $5?
why not write and share thru substack?
I’ve seen that site occasionally. I’ll consider it. The only downside is that I already have a medium audience so I"d have to rebuild my audience. But I’ll consider it. Thanks.
make a post on your medium page directing them to your substack
This is the answer, it’s friendlier to authors trying to get started.
thorbot@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Damon man if you’re struggling to eat don’t spend money on a subscription! Get a meal plan figured out and budget it out. Your body can’t sustain itself on words