Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
The Dirty Secret About Writing on Medium
|
Hi Reader I've been writing on Medium for a few years now. I earn a few hundred dollars a month, most months. (5 figures if you count secondary sales of courses and products) Less so these days, at least from Medium… I'll explain why in a moment. Medium is best for personal development, life lessons, entrepreneurship, and coding. Story-first and click-worthy content STILL works great on it. You can build a list on Medium and link to your list. It’s easier to build a list on Substack though. Some SEO and AI nerds are hijacking Medium, these days. I'm unconvinced about the parasite SEO model as a long-term strategy. But I can see how this could work in the short term if you can get it to rank. I'd rather focus my time elsewhere. It's also easy to cross-post on Medium. You can import URLs and pull through your posts. There’s no point doing this if the content isn’t Medium-friendly though. Did I mention Medium hates AI content? They have a policy against using it. Reading between the lines... The algo on Medium doesn't like content about making money either. It's a fine line. I've had a few 4 figure months from Medium over the years. These days, I get low 3 figures from Medium. If you get boosted, you can earn 4 figures from a story. That's human-curated. I was boosted a few months ago. My article went viral on the platform. Lots of people read it. And one reader plagiarized! He copied and pasted the article onto his account. But Medium is not my primary platform. I wouldn't rely on Medium to pay the bills. If you're serious about it, try writing for the bigger publications rather than your own. They all have different guidelines, similar to guest blogging. Many creators I know have pivoted from Medium to Substack. But... I like Medium a lot. Easy to use. Built-in audience. No tech skills or SEO chops needed. And they don't mind if you cross-post. Nice to get a few hundred bucks when you're starting out, too. But you’re better off building an asset of your own, which I cover in the below video. Write on, Bryan Collins
|
Letters From the Desk of Bryan Collins
Do you want to grow a profitable content business? If so, join 25,000 readers. I share daily insights about personal brand building, writing online and growing a profitable business. It's for creators, coaches and business owners.
Hi Reader, Do you find writing content hard? Figuring out what to post online takes time. And that’s before factoring in writing the post and turning followers into email subscribers or, gasp, clients! I get it. Lurking online is easier than writing and pressing publish. Sometimes, I fool myself into thinking it’s “market research”. But I know if I don't press publish, I won’t grow my brand. I almost always feel better when I write a post and press publish. If you’re feeling stuck like me,...
Hi Reader, This week, I launched a private Telegram community for readers of this email list. My goal is to share insider content about how I run my six-figure content business and help you add $3k to yours by 2025. I also want to explore other distribution channels that don't rely on an algo. Then, I can share the results with you so you can do the same. After I launched my Telegram community, a few subscribers emailed me to ask, "Why not WhatsApp?" Well, I picked Telegram because of its...
Hi Reader, For a few years, I was a content strategist for a Fintech. One of my projects was improving a newsletter for small business owners. The newsletter enjoyed a lousy 5% open rate. The back of a cereal box was more engaging than the boring product content inside the newsletter that a developer banged out between coding sessions. So, we stripped out the boring product content and started sending customer stories and how-to guides. And open rates slowly climbed towards 20%. My open rates...