The End of Medium? What About Substack?

Just went through a bunch of posts and comments about that place...

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

It is not nice to look at what is going on at Medium these days.

I know, I’ve left the platform, but I still check the new posts there now and then. And some of these have appeared here on Substack as well.

What happened, if you didn’t notice it already, is that Medium apparently has made adjustments to their algorithm in order to get rid of some of the spammers and scammers that they see increase on the platform.

However, most of the ordinary writers have been directly hit, seeing lower engagement rates in terms of views, reads, claps, and comments, and what worries most of them more: they earn close to no money on their articles now.

People went from earning several dollars, or even tens or hundreds of dollars on each article, to now earning cents. They show examples of how even well-visited articles with many readers still earned them 3 cents.

It is of course a sad situation for everybody there — disruption isn’t nice, and we can expect many of them to move over to Substack, just like it has happened before. I, myself, had long planned to set up “a substack”, long before I left Medium, but since things began getting bad for me there a while ago, my old plans were brushed up and effectuated.

I am happy that I made that choice. I never earned a lot on Medium, but there was an increasing earnings curve, until there wasn’t. When I quit the Friends of Medium (FoM) program, I sort of lost all readers, and all earnings. This happened to collided with the time of Medium opening their commercial doors for 175¹ new countries, so it may not have been because of the FoM exit — it could have a stronger connection with many new people wishing to earn money.

Whatever happened back then is the past now, I don’t think much of it any longer.

What I do think about is how people see these platforms, and how they react to changes.

Medium has been in a death-spiral for a long while. Every now and then, some changes are introduced that effectively leads to their most earning members earning less, and some of those then decide to leave the platform. This seems to have worked its way down the hierarchy, so that smaller and smaller accounts were hit by each new change. This time, it hit everybody.

Every single account making money there, now makes less.

And what happens each time?

The biggest earners bark the loudest about their losses. Maybe that is natural, since they are losing the most, but it reveals how everything they do there is tied to the earnings. With reduced earnings, they feel personally attacked by the platform, and they start looking for a new platform that will treat them better.

Substack isn’t much different. The discussions here are not about the platform ruining their earnings, but there is a lot of talking going on on Notes about which kinds of contents fit in, and which other kinds not.

Another popular topic on Notes has a dualistic nature: On one side, people try to convince others that they can teach them how to gain more paying subscribers; how to earn money, in other words. On the other side, there are people complaining about this kind of posts and activities, as these people would rather see discussions about the written, not so much about the earnings.

What very many writers/members on both Medium and Substack have in common, is, hence, an interest in how to earn money on the platform, and how to increase the earnings.

There is an old saying about “when the money goes in, the friendship goes out”, and I believe that it counts for social media too. The money may be what the platform owners earn, or want to earn, or it may be what the users potentially or really earn.

The money, and all the talking about it, steals the attention and makes people think about all kinds of tips and tricks for earning more, rather than about enjoying their time here, or writing better texts.

Medium is, as I see it, in serious trouble right now. Not because they are about to lose all their users — such a thing will take some time, and not because they now again have managed to scare away another bunch of their better earning users.

The trouble for Medium is in the reputation they have built for themselves: That they used to be a place where you could earn money on writing, but now it isn’t anymore.

How are they going to attract new users? What should convince people that there is a good reason for joining that platform?

If it had been only about the money, then it may still have worked, but there is another part of the reputation, saying that Medium is now full of spammers, scammers, and AI-written contents. This, along with readers having left, somehow, and everyone getting a lot of attention only gets it from bots.

While Medium still has many users who can talk friendly to each other in the comments, that part seems to be in decline as well — the horses start biting when they are running out of food.

What the reputation said previously was basically the opposite, that you could find great writing there, as well as a “built-in audience”. So, anybody, even those who were not already active online, could start writing, see some comments and appreciation for whatever they did, and they could develop their skills and build up an audience of their own. At the same time, they could take part in a big and friendly community, where everybody was there to help and share.

As I see it, Medium has killed off all attractive elements there once were on the platform.

Substack is spoken about by its users in much more positive terms, and the reputation among all other people who have heard of the place but are not users yet, is at a much more positive level.

There are some negative stories about Substack refusing to demote Nazi contents and other bad things, but it doesn’t take up a lot of space in the media in general.

So, Substack still has tailwind and can keep growing, people using it can stay happy.

Until… I think it is expectable that Substack will think out various changes and additions to the platform, that can help them earn money on it. I don’t know yet what that could be, but it is likely that it can cause some of the users to become less happy than they are now.

Over some years, Substack may develop a similar track record as Medium by changing things over and again, each time making it less easy to earn money here.

My take on the situation with Medium is that Substack must pay attention to growing some values for the users that are not about earning money. So far, this is not what they have done.

It has from the start been clear that users should be attracted to Substack by the knowledge that some other users (the initially invited celebrities) could earn millions here. After a while, it will become clear to more and more people that they cannot repeat this trick – the number of millionaires on this platform will not continue growing. Instead, like with Medium, the investors will start demanding from the management that Substack will start earning money. And the management will willingly obey, since they will get shares or more millions as bonuses, if they deliver this.

I am not sure what else than money could be the attraction. The point is, if users are not earning money, then Substack will not earn any either. So, focusing on the social aspects, better promotion on the rest of the Internet of your writing, etc., would probably lead to a need to pay for being a user. Or, alternatively, have an A-team and a B-team, where the first one earns money, the other one either pays or gets it all for free, since giving back some of the earned to this group will help keeping things running.

The money aspect is not possible to avoid completely, but as others have suggested, it can be problematic to continue with a model that requires readers to subscribe to individual substacks at a rate of minimum $5 for each. This price level means that most people can subscribe payingly to a few substacks only, but we all subscribe to dozens or hundreds, and, hence, many substacks will have to provide contents for free.

A model similar to the one at Medium, where those who pay, can earn, those who are here for free, cannot, could be a way forward. And a way of bundling or pooling subscriptions could also be a way forward.

Whatever will happen with the money, I just hope that it will not become like on Medium, where the perceived benefits of being a user once per year will be reduced, so that there will be an increasingly bad mood hanging over the platform.

It is better to aim for a model that regularly can add something positive to the experience.

1. It was, in fact, “only” 77 new countries, making it a total of 119. Just checked to be sure and found the numbers in an article by Medium.