Medium vs Substack — Which Platform is Better for Readers and Writers?
There are many platforms out there that are available for writers who want to share their work with a wider audience. However, two of the biggest are Medium and Substack, and having used both for a while now I thought it might be useful to share my experience of using each.
I started writing on Substack in May 2023, and Medium at the start of August this year. I usually publish weekly on each platform, with most content cross-posted as I have entirely different audiences on each, but with occasional content that is more targeted to one set of readers and so is only posted to one or the other.
I’m going to assume that anyone reading this is at least a little familiar with how Medium works since that’s where this article is hosted. But just in case you’ve found this article via an indirect channel, let’s start from the basics: Medium is a membership-based site where most articles are behind a paywall, and can only be read by other members who are paying the monthly fee, which is around £5 or the local currency equivalent.
From a reader’s point of view, the site is fairly useless without paying the monthly fee, as the vast majority of writing will be kept behind the paywall. From the writer’s perspective, there’s no additional monetary charge to submit articles to the site or to publications — you can just start posting from day one.
The way that a writer can make money on Medium is to join the Medium Partner Program. Again, there is no additional charge for this, although you do have to be an active paying site member. More on the Medium Partner Program later.
Substack has a very different model. Unlike Medium, there is no mandatory cost to read work people have posted — or at least not always: I’ll come back to that. There is no cost at all to set up a Substack and start writing and posting.
Substack is billed as more of a newsletter model, or like blogs of the early 2000s — but with a significant tech and user interface upgrade. The difference is that any subscription costs are borne by the reader. Once you start following writers on Substack, you will find that, while some offer all or most of their writing for free, many others will have some, most, or all of their content behind a paywall — Substack calls it a subscription. The subscription amount is set by the writer but is usually in the region of £4-£7 a month, or £50-£80 annually, per writer whose work you want to read.
Photo by Life Of Pix
So what are the main differences between the platforms? There are a few other key variations in the way the sites work. Let’s look at a few of these in turn.
Writing and Editing Tools
The content writing tools on both Substack and Medium are fairly similar. Both provide for a headline, sub-title, and main text body editing space. Both contain the tools most writers would need to insert pictures, weblinks, footnotes, linebreaks, and section markers and the main text impact functions (italics, bold, quote style, etc).
Both let you add code blocks, and embed certain media into the posts. Poetry block functionality exists on both platforms — I don’t write poetry personally, so I can’t speak to the user-friendliness of that, but would welcome input in the comments from my bard-pals. Substack also provides for the creation, transcription, and distribution of podcast content, which some writers may find useful.
Substack has a few more options than Medium in terms of buttons, polls, and header style levels, but most writers will find everything they need in either to present their content in a way that suits them.
Both platforms also allow editing of previously-posted content, although of course anything that was already distributed by email will not be updated — so that annoying typo or wrongly-used apostrophe will live on in people’s inboxes!
Followers and Subscribers
On joining Medium you choose topics and areas from a list that interest you, and the Medium algorithm will begin to show you Stories (this is the Medium name for a piece of content, whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry, science, technology…) that align with your interests. If you read a Story by a writer that you enjoy, you can click to Follow that writer, and the algorithm will begin to show you more content from them and writers like them. You can also choose to be notified of new Stories from individual writers via email, but this is very much an optional extra.
Substack in contrast has the concept of ‘subscribers’, whereby a reader will enter their email address on the website or app page for a specific writer, and will then be subscribed to receive new content whenever the author posts. You find new writers by links that people share either on- or off-app, or by in-app recommendations or promoted content from Substack.
If the subscriber has the Substack app, they can choose ‘smart notifications’, which means if they receive a notification of new content via the app, then they won’t also receive an email. I personally prefer this, as it helps me keep control of my email inbox!
You can be a Free subscriber to someone on Substack, or a Paid subscriber. Paid subscribers will receive whatever benefits the author decides to offer — this could be access to paywalled posts, additional content on top of what Free subscribers receive, a full backlist of previously posted content, podcasts, more personal interaction with the writer via Chat threads or 121 sessions, or early access to news, book releases, and so on.
You can also Follow someone on Substack, which means you’ll see their Notes (I’ll get to that!) but not receive their posts.
Finding and Sharing Content
While almost all Medium content is behind a paywall, writers can share a ‘Friend link’ for a published post and use this to share their work on social media to gain traffic. From Medium’s perspective, this is of course a good approach because they hope that new members will join off the back of seeing the content, and gain new membership income that way. The old ‘referral bonus’ is no longer active, so Medium writers will not directly be credited for driving new subscriptions.
Medium distributes content internally using organic and algorithmic methods, and externally using search engine traffic. There are many Publications on Medium, and being accepted to write for a Publication can significantly widen the distribution of an author’s work, as both the writer’s own followers as well as those following the publication will potentially see their writing. Stories can also be ‘boosted’ by Medium, which means it is chosen for even wider distribution for a period of time.
Substack promotes content mainly internally to their site and depends perhaps more heavily on writer self-promotion. There are various site-owned Substacks (Substack Reads, Substack Politics, etc) that create their own content but also share and collaborate with writers who are in that niche.
Substack utilises Notes which is like a mini-Twitter (X!) or Threads equivalent — this lets writers share their own content, but also Restacks. A Restack is where a reader may highlight a sentence or small section of an author’s post, share it with their own followers, and add their own thoughts or responses if they want. Each Note can be liked, shared, and replied to. I have found some really interesting new writers to subscribe to from reading Notes and replies.
One thing that many Substack writers find helpful is Substack ‘Office Hours’, where once a week both Substack staff and users can post questions and advice on using the platform, how to increase discoverability, turning on Paid subscriptions, and other burning issues.
Both Medium and Substack have mobile apps as well as their websites, and these have the benefit of making it easier for readers to dip in and out of content they wish to engage with.
Getting Paid to Write
If you’ve jumped straight to this section, I won’t judge! — this is the most commonly asked question for writers who want to make any kind of income from their work.
Medium members need to be registered with the Medium Partner Program if they intend to make any income from their writing on the site. The MPP is not available to writers in every country due to complexities with the mechanics of payouts in different locations, although I know that Medium is actively working on widening access to the program.
Once part of the MPP, writers are prompted to place each published piece behind a paywall, and this then makes it eligible to earn income. It’s not mandatory to paywall any or all Medium writing, but if it’s not paywalled it won’t be eligible to earn.
Stories earn income from a complex combination of calculations which look at the volume and read-time on Stories, claps (people can ‘clap’ up to 50 times for a Story, though only the first one counts for income), highlights and comments, and when a reader chooses to Follow a writer after reading their Story. The calculations are a bit of a mystery, and seemingly unpredictable — you’ll find any number of Stories on Medium bemoaning a lack of transparency — but broadly speaking engagement = money.
The earnings are broken down by Story on a writer’s dashboard, and shown in USD. They stack up throughout a calendar month, then the total is paid out in the first half of the following month.
In terms of amounts — how long is a piece of string?! I’ve seen it estimated that around 6% of Medium writers make over $100 per month, so it’s not a viable full-time income for most.
Read more about the Medium Partner Program here.
I’ve previously mentioned that Substack offers a subscription model, which a writer can manage in terms of £value and additional benefits (if any). If a writer switches on paid subscriptions for their Substack, and someone signs up for one of the paid levels, the amount that subscriber pays is taken according to the reader’s own payment preference — eg one-off card payment, monthly direct debit, etc — and is transferred to the writer minus the 10% Substack platform fee.
Substack has an excellent writer dashboard that provides all sorts of graphs and statistics about subscriber numbers, email deliveries, read numbers, and reader sharing.
Read more about the Substack subscription model here.
Both Medium and Substack require the writer to first link their accounts to receive payouts via a service such as Stripe, which manages all the receipting and record-keeping such as tax information, and charges an additional small percentage from the amount to be transferred to cover their overheads.
In terms of my personal experience, I’ve made more money so far on Substack than on Medium, but when you split by month (as my Substack subscription income has been annual payments) it’s probably more or less the same on both platforms. Neither is going to provide me with anything close to a liveable income any time soon — but it’s a nice additional income stream.
Conclusion
So Fiona, will you ever hurry up and tell us which platform is better?!
It’s not as straightforward as ‘better’ — sorry! Both platforms have benefits and drawbacks.
For me, Medium’s key strengths for a writer are in providing a ready-made audience and in the discoverability of getting your work seen more widely by use of internal and external search engine visibility and routes such as Publications. Once a reader has paid their monthly £5 (or equivalent), they will have access to all the writing on the platform with no additional outlay. There is always something new to discover, read, and follow.
Substack, in contrast, provides significantly more control for a writer in terms of ownership of their subscriber email list, and control over the price they can charge for access to their material, as well as the benefits they will offer.
The app is more user-friendly than Medium’s and looks great for readers. You can get closer to readers by using comments, Notes, and chats, and your income doesn’t directly hang off the back of variable engagement calculations — either you have new and ongoing paid subscribers, or you don’t, so it’s a bit more predictable.
Substack is great for writers who already have a substantial following or email list, and they often find that their starting point for free and paid subscriber numbers at launch is much bigger than a regular writer could ever dream of. If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll likely find that your growth is slow, though you may be lucky enough to find and grow an audience quickly.
If your social media game is strong, and you’re willing and able to commit to networking with other Substack users, that will really help. I see a small bump in subscribers every time I share a link to a post.
Quality and authenticity matter on both platforms. Readers will sense content that has been churned out, re-packaged, or is AI-generated, and will disregard, block or hide it. Both Medium and Substack are vocal in their determination to prioritise original and authentic content.
There are concerns that there is a natural ceiling for sustainable income growth on Substack — there are not many readers who can afford more than a handful of paid subscriptions. For every writer who says “It’s just the price of a cup of coffee per month” — I’d say a) that’s an expensive cup of coffee, and b) I’m already paying a lot of writers the price of a cup of coffee on a regular basis. It really saddens me to say it, because I deeply believe all creatives should be paid for their work — where is our society without art, music, writing? — but not many of us are in a financial situation so comfortable that we can just keep piling on regular costs for individual writing.
In this way, the Medium model has greater accessibility and sustainability for most readers — and no writing platform is likely to last long if there is not a regular and engaged community of readers.
While I haven’t been able to give you an outright answer regarding whether Medium or Substack is better, I hope you’ve found the information here useful to help make the decision that is best suited for you as a reader or writer.
Have you used both Medium and Substack? Which do you prefer?
© Fiona McDerment, 2023. All rights reserved.
Article originally published via Medium - visit my profile here