Medium and Substack – the Strange, Lonely Business of Finding Readers

Medium and Substack are great in their own ways, but after months of earning almost nothing on Medium while my ‘weird history’ Substack grew, I changed my posting routine and suddenly everything shifted.

I have oscillated between various writing platforms over the last five years or so. Since deciding to write entirely freelance and online, I have focused on three websites. (Not including this one or ScifiWard.com.)

I used Fiverr a lot and rose to become one of the top journalists on there with 200 five-star reviews. The main problem was that I hated it and stopped working there. But I managed to get some nice clients from it and I still work with them now.

But the main oscillation has been between Medium and Substack. And to make it more confusing, each time I decide which one I will spend more time on, something drags me back to the other.

My first Substack did nothing, but the second one is growing… slowly

About two years ago, I started a science fiction Substack. The idea was to do a weekly roundup of sci-fi news. No one else was doing it, so maybe I had found a gap in the market. I did it for six months. I only got my first subscriber around month four and she was just a nice older lady, who wasn’t that into sci-fi.

So I cancelled it and started a new one called Intriguing Times. You can check it out here. It is basically the same ‘Weird History’ stuff I write on Medium. I thought that it had proved popular there, so people clearly like that kind of thing. It has the added bonus of being really fun and fascinating to research. I have been posting some of those articles here as well.

This proved more successful, although the low bar of one subscriber (who didn’t actually like the topic) after six months was easy to beat. My Substack now has over 600 followers and around 230 subscribers, which sounds quite impressive until I add that only four of them are paid subscribers.

Obviously, this isn’t paying any bills. It could buy you a pint, maybe even a pint and a half, in London. Still, it’s free beer. This is both encouraging and but nothing to get too excited about – a common emotional state for anyone trying to make money on the internet.

This was all going on while my Medium was in a bit of a slump. To be fair, I was only posting there every couple of months or so and I got a dollar or two a month. I was toying with focusing entirely on Substack.

But that felt lazy. So I decided to post once a week on both platforms. This was a massive improvement.

I changed a couple of things and Medium massively took off

Once I was posting weekly on both platforms, I saw a gradual improvement. Nothing spectacular. On Substack, my followers and non-paying subscribers grew – albeit slowly. On Medium, the $2 rose to about $3. But Medium costs $5 a month, so I was operating at a loss. I then tried two further changes and the result was pleasantly surprising.

The first thing I did was start my own Medium publication. It was called Intriguing Times because of branding or whatever. (It’s the same name as my Substack.) It seemed like a good idea. The advantage of doing this is that in addition to getting followers, you also get subscriber emails. So now when I write, my followers get the usual mention in some list or other, but those who subscribe also get an email. Which increases reads. You can also build an email list.

The second thing was to post two articles a week. Posting once a week made a big difference, and I saw subscribers tick up a little and the same with reads. I am far too lazy to research and write another fascinating article on top of my weekly Medium and Substack pieces, so I thought I’d try importing a Substack article from a few months back. It soon became a routine – Tuesday was a new Medium article, Thursday was a Substack, and Saturday was an import to Medium from Substack.

And holy crap did that work. I went from around 20-30 reads a day to 320-330 reads a day within a couple of weeks. And I have stayed at that level ever since. This isn’t to gloat – I am just sharing something that really helped and you can try yourself.

This also meant my earnings went from around $2-3 to around $150 a month. This isn’t quit my main writing work kind of money, but it pays all my bills. (I live in Bangkok and it’s cheap.) I try not to think about how much beer that buy.

The combo of starting my own publication and publishing twice a week caused a massive uptick in every metric and it really caught me off guard in most pleasant way. The fact that the Saturday article is an import hasn’t made any difference to readers, so if you write elsewhere – keep that in mind. Medium makes it really easy too, with an ‘import article’ function.

So now I’ve found a Medium and Substack routine I’ll stick to

Five years ago, I was trying to decide if Medium or Fiverr were better. I am happy to say Medium won. Now my focus is equally on Medium and Substack, and I am hoping it will stay that way for a while. Medium earnings have suddenly shot up, but Substack is growing too – although painfully slowly. The good thing is that both are gaining subscribers and I am slowly gathering emails like a digital hoarder.

In case you are reading this and trying to decide between Medium and Substack, they both have advantages.

On Medium things can suddenly take off, or bugger all can happen. But if you have a publication, you can hopefully at least grow slowly and get emails. However, always keep in mind that if you don’t have a publication, you are truly at the mercy of the platform and the algorithm. I really enjoy writing there though.

On Substack, you keep your audience and your lovely digital stack of emails. If you are booted off the platform, you can easily start again elsewhere. From a purely personal point of view, growth has been steady but really slow. There will never be a spike in earnings like there has been with Medium, but then it is equally unlikely that an algorithm will change and I am suddenly earning half of what I used to get, as has happened to many on Medium.

I guess it is all down to what you want. I would suggest giving both a go, as it seems like different topics do better on one than the other. I’ve had articles that were incredibly popular on one platform but when imported, didn’t do so well, and vice versa.

Apologies if you came here looking for a conclusive answer, as I’m going to carry on writing for both. But now I have a fixed publishing schedule. Give them both a go.