Last month, I wrote that I was launching a new publication on both Medium and Substack.
On Medium, it would just be a place to put all my articles, rather than various other publications getting them. There will be new stuff added there regularly.
But Substack is where the real action will be. It is currently what I’m finding more exciting to work on and it is doing surprisingly well. But if you are thinking of starting a Substack, there is probably some info you need to know. More on that in a second.
Interesting Times on Medium versus Substack
It has only been a month since I started the Interesting Times publication on Medium and Substack. Slightly coincidentally (given that my output is fairly consistent), both have six articles, with a couple of articles being repurposed on one or the other.
On Medium, the publication and articles have been viewed a whopping 25 times. The Substack was viewed 200 times. On Medium, my followers went up slightly, but are still only around 1000. On Substack, they went from 0 to 50.
Financially speaking, Medium wins. I haven’t monetised Substack, so the only site I got money from was Medium. But the majority of the Medium money was from older stuff still in other publications. Also, to be fair to Medium, I have published there on average once every 5 months, which will seriously damage any algorithm. Of the six articles, five were moved from other places; only one was new. In comparison, on Substack, I looked pretty prolific.
Publish six times on one platform and once every five months on another, and the results aren’t all that surprising.
Just a word for those just starting out
Both platforms have their pluses and minuses and results depend on how far down each journey you are. I have been on Medium for over four years. Since the start of the pandemic, in fact. I wrote a lot more back then, and published one or two articles a week. I also had a few articles go viral, which rapidly drove up my number of followers and earnings. Several articles made four figures each.
This amount has slowly declined. It has dropped in line with how regularly I have published. However, there has also been a reported drop in earnings across the board. Or people are complaining more – it’s hard to say. So, while I can no longer live on the money like I used to, at least some of it is because I am focusing more on Substack. I also don’t like Medium’s new boost program, but that is a topic for a whole other post.
On Substack, I think it is harder to start making money, but once that is achieved, it should be more steady. I read somewhere that only around 1-10% of free subscribers become paid subscribers when there is an option, so I will wait until I have a couple of hundred subscribers. I suspect that will be a couple of dozen articles at minimum. On Medium, I was making money pretty much from the start.
A couple of final thoughts
Both platforms have their benefits. Also, both might cater more to certain types of writers. Or not. I tried writing about science fiction and fantasy, and it wasn’t great. So I tried again on Substack, which resulted in one subscriber and ten followers after a month. Instead, I switched to what had proved popular on Medium – evergreen articles about fascinating historical tales – and within a month, I had 50 subscribers and over 100 followers.
So, if you plan on writing on either platform, pick something that works and don’t be afraid to experiment. Also, be prepared to wait. These things take time and differ for everyone.
