1000 to 1: Why I Left Medium
When I started blogging in 2014 I choose Medium as my platform because it offered a great value-added proposition: A clean, simple interface and algorithmic promotion of my content to readers. After a few posts I was further convinced:
- Getting over being an imposter – 300 medium referrals
- My Experience With Apple’s Culture – 2000 views in two days!
- How to get a Job in Silicon Valley – 2000 medium referrals!
Sobering Up
As a new blogger, Medium was like a drug at first. It was a rush to reach thousands of readers in just a few weeks. However, my 5th blog post bombed with under 50 views in its first week. What happened? I had no idea so I reached out to Medium on Twitter only to be completely ignored.
An Experiment
With no guidance from Medium I ran a couple experiments dual posting content on my own site and on Medium. Sometimes I promoted the Medium content, sometimes I promoted my own website’s. The result? For each post I received a single Medium referral and I found no difference in readership. To summarize:
- I went from one-thousand to one medium referrals per article in just a few weeks
- Medium had not responded to any inquires regarding this drop
- Experiments proved Medium was not helping promote my content to readers
Reading another blogger’s experience with this honeymoon period I wonder if Medium promotes your content more heavily when you first engage with the platform only to leave you on your own later.
But Wait There’s More
At this point I began contemplating the many other reasons not to use Medium as a content creator:
- Medium is a walled garden with no control over things like your URL for SEO
- Medium has minimal analytics and provides no transparency on how your content is promoted on their platform
- Traffic you bring into Medium is distributed across the platform rather than directed toward your content
As a result, I’ve decided to move all my content to my own site and send my traffic there. I had thought Medium was a technical solution to promote blogger-diversity, but it turns out to be just another a magazine sustaining big fish.