“Should I write on Medium?”, you may ask yourself if you are an aspiring writer or content creator.

Those of us already writing on the platform may wonder if it’s still worth it to put in any time and effort into crafting original articles meant to exclusively live in this virtual environment.

I will list below several potential answers to these questions, a short analysis outline that will maybe help some of you decide whether Medium is the platform for you — or not — in 2022.

Please note that by “writing on Medium” I mean writing content that is specially tailored to the platform’s audience.

Stories that one can repost here from their own website or promotional content only meant to drive traffic toward your own platform deserve a separate type of assessment, and I will refer to them below as well, with a special mention.

Here is how I would go about analyzing whether it’s still worth it to write on Medium in 2022.

Write on Medium in 2022 if:

• You have no website domain of your own or for some reason, you want to try your hand at online writing on a platform you do not own and do not have to manage.
• You have a large following in another virtual environment and are willing to promote your Medium content to them.
• You don’t have a large following and want to benefit from the distribution of similar content on the platform, i.e. Medium will somewhat promote your content to their existing audience.
• You don’t want to manage a website of your own and want to benefit from Medium’s domain authority, i.e. Medium is liked by search engines and the content posted here will likely be indexed quicker and will rank in search results sooner than if you would rely on search engines indexing and ranking a new website. However, I would not recommend you solely rely on a platform you do not own. I wrote about this topic more, here:

• If you want to republish your old content or publish content that does not fit the style or the niche of the platform you own. This is what I decided to do lately. I give my older articles from my main website, Psychology Corner, a new life on Medium.
• You have a lot of free time that you’re willing to potentially lose writing pieces that don’t truly push your career forward. Medium is known for the low-quality content that drives tons of traffic — not necessarily matched by earnings. You may have to write a lot of uninteresting, clickbaity stuff, to “make it” on Medium. That stuff won’t help anyone’s career as a serious writer. It will waste your time though and will drain you of the energy you could’ve used in better endeavors. Don’t get me wrong, silly or easy content can and is part of an online writer’s portfolio, most of the time, but it helps to have the option to choose when and why you would want to post something of that nature. It should be a fun, easy thing to do when your inspiration won’t hit just right, not a soul-crushing neverending experience.

• Finally, write on Medium if you don’t expect to make a lot of money from your writing, especially as a new writer, with no following.

Don’t Write on Medium in 2022 if:

• You have a large following on your main platform and don’t want to dilute your traffic or marketing efforts. Here’s the thing: if you can reach a large number of people on your own, you don’t need external platforms such as Medium to “steal” your users. I choose to never promote content for platforms I do not own — except for the occasional social media shares — and not to share my website’s traffic by redirecting it toward Medium. Medium should do their own part in the collaboration: writers bring the content that justifies membership payments on the platform, and Medium should promote it to new audiences.
• You’re a new writer and want to establish a powerful and reliable voice in your field or niche. People need to know where to find you. A website you own is a better virtual home, I think, than a rented online property where the owners can either decide they no longer want to do business with you or simply close the shop. Plus, think about others mentioning you and your work online — “So and so from This Totally Cool Website” or “So and So, writer on Medium”. Which byline would you rather prefer?

• You want to republish your work in a book, at a later time. If it’s on Medium, it’s everywhere on the internet seconds after you hit Publish. Tons of websites aggregate content from this platform, and other writers may directly steal ideas and even full articles. I think it would be close to impossible to market a book when its content is already scattered online, and more importantly, you lose the chance to design a marketing strategy. It will all become entangled with the ghosts of past Medium posts.
• You want to be paid for your work at a level that reflects your efforts and the article’s quality. Medium is a place where in theory at least, anyone who manages to convince 100 others to click “Follow” can start making money from their writing, regardless of the quality of their content. Unless you’re willing to chase people or, as I mentioned earlier, already have a huge following, you’ll likely be paid way less than what you’re worth. It’s not fair and can be frustrating. Not to mention that new writers could even mistake the feedback received on and from Medium for a fair assessment of their value as writers or content creators. You don’t want that demotivation, trust me.

These are the main things that I would consider before choosing Medium, or any other platform I do not own, to host my original content.

Thanks for reading.

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