When it comes to blogging in 2020, there are a number of options for writers. In fact, it has never been easier to create and monetize a blog. However, when comparing platforms for new writers, Medium has become a popular choice. Few blogging platforms offer the range of features found on Medium’s digital publishing platform. Any blogger should consider writing on Medium and leveraging the platform’s tools, reach, and audience.
What is Medium?
Medium is a digital publishing platform that allows anyone to easily write, publish, and monetize their writing. Medium was created by Ev Williams, one of the founders of Twitter and Blogger.
In many ways, Medium is the natural extension of Williams’ previous companies. Medium makes writing and publishing content longer than 280 characters incredibly simple.
Writers can submit their writing to Medium’s in-house editorial team or create their own publications to feature their work.
Writers are eligible to monetize any article through the Medium Partner Program. Writers in the Partner Program earn money writing on Medium when subscribing members read their work.
Why Blog on Medium? – Advantages of Writing on Medium
Medium has several advantages over rival blogging platforms, including the platform’s appealing design, large built-in audience, pre-monetized structure, high domain authority, and platform stability.
1. Design / Aesthetic
Medium’s layout is simple, clean, and allows anyone to create a stylish post or publication with minimal technical expertise.
Medium’s engineers and designers have spent a lot of time developing fonts, page layouts, and formatting features which all display beautifully, on any size screen.
Clean design is not only reassuring to writers who are investing their time in the platform, but readers who are confronted with a deluge of websites, blogs, and articles on a daily basis.
This concept, that clean and simple design attracts more readers, is backed by scientific studies.
A study by Google had two key findings:
- Users will judge websites as beautiful or not within 1/50th to 1/20th of a second.
- “Visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts.
In other words, the study found that the simpler the design, the better.
Medium makes this process seamless for writers, allowing them to focus on writing as opposed to mastering WordPress.
2. Large Audience
Medium has nearly 100 million unique monthly readers. It also has somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 paying subscribers.
For a new writer, Medium has an unparalleled built-in audience.
While there is plenty of competition among writers, you can gain a following and earn money for your articles, due to this built-in audience, in a relatively short period of time.
It would take years to replicate even a fraction of this traffic on a new self-hosted blog.
3. Pre-Monetized Structure
After a writer finishes an article on Medium, they have the opportunity to submit their article for curation review and distribution across Medium.
Submitting their article through this process also means that their story is also eligible to be part of Medium’s metered paywall, and can earn money writing on Medium if the writer is enrolled in the Medium Partner Program.
You don’t need to install on-page advertisements, use affiliate links, or promote products (which is how you would typically monetize a self-hosted blog).
Medium’s Partner Program allows you to instantly monetize your content.
Write. Publish. Earn.
Every month, without fail, you will be paid through Stripe for your writing.
4. High Domain Authority
Medium has extremely high Domain Authority (DA).
Source: Moz
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
Medium’s 96 Domain authority makes it a force to be reckoned with when it comes to competition among otherwise equal pages in search engines.
This means that the content writers publish on Medium have a higher chance of ranking among the first few search engine result pages.
5. Platform Stability
Medium was launched in August 2012. This 8-year track record is pretty solid in the high turnover world of tech startups and online news media.
Why does this matter?
If you are going to invest your time and energy into a third-party publishing platform (like Medium), you want to pick a winner.
Moreover, you want the platform you choose to actually exist in the next few years.
Medium is founder Ev Williams’ main project. The company has received $132 million in funding. Ev Williams himself is a billionaire and is not new digital publishing.
While nobody can guarantee Medium’s long term structure or payment methodology, it is probably safe to assume it won’t disappear overnight.
That said, it never hurts to use Medium’s Backup Tool to export your articles and save them offsite.
In Conclusion
Hopefully this article helped underscore some of the main reasons that all bloggers should at least consider writing on Medium.
If you want more resources on how to be successful financially with writing on Medium, purchase Blogging Guide’s Medium Writing Course.
Or, you can up the ante and go for the Blogging Guide bundle with the Blogging Guide’s Newsletter included!
While Medium is not perfect, it does offer several advantages over rival blogging platforms, including the platform’s appealing design, large built-in audience, pre-monetized structure, high domain authority, and platform stability. And if you’re wondering how to get more page views on your non-Medium blog, simply linking to relevant blog articles within your Medium stories will work wonders.
This post was proofread by Grammarly Premium.
