Is Medium Worth It in 2024?
This video is an interview with Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, where we both try to answer te question of whether Medium is worth it for new and existing writers in 2024.

We talked about:
Whether Medium is good for beginners
How beginners can succeed on Medium
The Boost, or Medium's way to handpick great stories from new writers and show them to more readers
New features like the Friend Tier
How Medium plans to deal with AI writing and AI companies
What's next for Medium

Enjoy!

Useful links:
How to get started on Medium:   / howtogetstartedwritingonmediummediu...  
What is the Medium Partner Program? https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/what...
Tony Stubblebine's take on AI:   / defaultnotoaitrainingonyourstories  
Info on the Boost program:   / meet60publishersintheboostnomination...  
Is Medium Still Worth it (2023 edition): https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/ism...

What is Medium?
Medium is a blogging platform. It's free to join and write. And in my opinion, it's the best place to write on the internet for beginners.

My short answer: yes, Medium is 100% worth it for new writers to start on in 2023.

This is because Medium is:

The easiest place to start a blog, no setup required
The best place to get paid as you explore and build
A fantastic community to learn and make friends

What is Medium blogging?
Medium.com is like a blogging website combined with a social media platform. It's kind of like if Twitter and WordPress had a baby. And every time somebody read one of your posts, you got paid.

More formal definition: Medium is an online publishing platform that aims to provide a new way to publish, share and discover content. The company was founded by Ev Williams in 2012. People started getting paid to write there in 2017. Medium provides its users with tools for them to write and publish their posts on the site, as well as read others' posts.

Why is Medium so good for new writers?

Unlike other platforms, Medium has multiple features to help your stories get seen by the right readers. This is where the social media aspect comes in.

For example, Medium has what are called publications. Publications are collections of related posts from different authors around one particular topic. That can be anything like relationships, history, and cats. Anyone can start a publication, even you.

Medium also has a feature called the Boost. Imagine if when you posted on Twitter it wasn't just the algorithm and audience engagement that decided how well your Tweet did.
Imagine a Twitter employee read your post and said, “Oh my God, this tweet is a quality post about entrepreneurship. Let's show this to a bunch of people who are interested in entrepreneurship.”

That's the Boost.

What about Substack vs Medium?
I think the right answer is both. Use Medium to grow your audience, and bring them over to Substack (or Ghost, or any platform like it). Then you can build a deeper relationship with your followers there.

Can you make money on Medium in 2024?
Yes, as we discussed in the video, you can earn money on Medium. But you should think of Medium as just a starting point of your writing earnings.

What about AI writing?
One thing I especially love about Medium is that they are not going to sit on their laurels and see what happens. They have already taken an antiAIscraping approach, negotiating on behalf of Medium writers to ensure we get consent, credit, and/or compensation for our very human words and work. Tony and I talked about AI at length and I really liked what I heard.