Medium is a fantastic blogging platform; yet, it does have certain shortcomings. In the event that you are a writer, you should be aware that there are several alternatives to Medium that may assist you in expanding your readership, reaching a different user base, or increasing your revenue.
On the other hand, not every platform is made equal. There is a possibility that some will limit your income possibilities, while others could not have the audience reach that you are now seeking.
We have researched nine of the greatest alternatives to Medium, where you may convert your passion into a real revenue stream, in order to assist you in making a decision that is in your best interest.
There are several reasons why Medium is a good platform to use, including its user-friendly interface, its vibrant community, and the opportunity to generate revenue from your writing via their Partner Program.
Nevertheless, given the intense competition that comes from its more than 100 million monthly contributors and the geographical restrictions that are placed on revenue, it is possible that some authors may look for an alternative.
The good news is that there are a lot of different options accessible. Each one excels in at least one area that other platforms, including Medium, are deficient in. Medium is one of those platforms. For example, if you want to build a paid newsletter, Substack is your best choice. In a similar vein, if you wish to enhance the visibility of your material inside the search results, Hubpages is the superior option.
of help you discover the perfect blogging platform for your requirements, we’ve developed a detailed reference of the top Medium alternatives. We’ll explain what each platform is great at, then compare them on essential characteristics like usability, monetization, earning potential, and more. (Medium Alternatives)
Pro Tip: If you want to generate an income writing, the only platform we honestly suggest is WordPress. The other Medium options discussed in this post significantly restrict your revenue maximum, and you should only use them if generating money isn’t a priority.
Medium is a platform where users get information and professionals and unknown voices contribute their expertise on any subject. Readers and publishers alike will profit from this internet platform. A plethora of information is accessible online for readers, and publishers and experts may offer tales ✍️on a broad variety of subjects, from health to social media and technology.
Getting started with Medium as a reader or publisher is incredibly easy. Simply join up for the free account, and you are ready to post and read tales. More interestingly, Medium Partner Program allows publishers monetise their content depending on the interaction of Medium users.
In a word, Medium is no doubt a prominent platform in the world of blogging and publishing. However, many of you as publishers may hunt for Medium alternatives to be highlighted on multiple platforms, and as readers may wish to receive diverse knowledge from various professionals.
To make you aware of some of the major and ubiquitous Medium competitors, I have created two lists for readers and publishers. Based on your job, you may switch to any of the lists. Let us examine these lists below.
Top 5 Medium Alternatives for Readers
1 NewsBreak
Best For: News-style items and issues on a local or national scale.
Ease of Use: Simple, intuitive, and readily navigated. Ad presence might make the UI seem crowded.
Monetization Potential: Good potential via viral news content that pays depending on view count.
Monthly Traffic: 18.6 M
Pros:
- One of the leading news applications in Google Play Store, delivering access to 50 million monthly users.
- Payout is dependent on the amount of views, making revenues predictable.
- News material is more likely to become viral, which may improve your revenue.
Cons:
- You have to satisfy specific standards before you can apply for monetization.
- Limited content variety.
- Ad presence in the UI.
- NewsBreak is a popular online news magazine. Their focus is local and national news in the US. If you want to cover huge local events or evaluate the new donut store in town, this is the platform for you
- To monetise your material, you need to post at least 10 articles and have 100 registered followers. Accepted contributors will start generating money depending on ad impressions each item receives. The actual compensation rate might differ from article to article.
- NewsBreak’s major benefit is that news may rapidly become viral, leading to huge earning potential. Just remember that news has a limited half-life, and any viral triumphs will be short-lived.
Pro Tip: If you want to optimize your revenue, design captivating headlines. Also, concentrate on hot themes. You may locate them by checking for the articles with the most likes and comments.
2 Steemit (best Medium Alternatives )
Best For: Transparency and freedom.
Ease of Use: You need to become acquainted with blockchain and crypto to understand how the site performs. (Medium Alternatives)
Monetization Potential: High earning potential dependent on user involvement with your content. All payments made in cryptocurrency.
Monthly Traffic: 4.2 M
Pros:
- Great for crypto aficionados. Rewards contributors with STEEM cryptocurrency.
- High engagement owing to rewarded comments and upvoting.
- Complete openness with public information regarding prizes, upvotes, comments, and transactions.
Cons:
- Uses markdown formatting. Potentially challenging for certain authors.
- A high learning curve for people new to blockchain and bitcoin.
- Your profits will drop if the STEEM currency loses value.
- At first sight, Steemit could appear like a Reddit clone, but the content viewing experience is more analogous to Medium.
- What sets this network different is its unique architecture and monetization mechanism; Steemit employs blockchain technology and has its own cryptocurrency, STEEM, which users can earn by participating with and generating content. If you can continuously connect with consumers, earning potential is fairly great, as a viral article may yield upwards of $100.
Pro Tip: To earn more on STEEM, concentrate on crafting appealing headlines to generate visitors. Then create an intriguing open-ended piece that generates a discussion.
If you’re new to the world of crypto, you’ll encounter a bit of a learning curve in moving your STEEM to a crypto wallet. I suggest checking out the Steemit FAQ page for further details.
3 Tumblr
Best For: Audience engagement and multimedia content. (Medium Alternatives)
Ease of Use: Functions as a social media network and simple to use.
Monetization Potential: No built-in monetization mechanisms, however you can add your own advertising and affiliate links. Hard to create substantial revenue.
Monthly Traffic: 215.6 M
Pros:
- A greater user base than Medium.
- Powerful content recommendation system to help you get noticed.
- Tons of social network tools to assist enhance userFAQteraction with postings.
- Supports a broad variety of multimedia assets, including photos, GIFs, video, and audio.
Cons:
- There’s no built-in monetization option.
- The platform lacks manual SEO tools.
- Both Tumblr and Medium provide a mix between a blog and a social media network. The key distinction is that Medium concentrates on being a writing site, while Tumblr stresses social sharing of numerous forms of material.
- It’s also worth noting out that Tumblr skews to a younger demographic, and the material is more targeted towards video games, pop culture, and artistic imagery.
- Tumblr doesn’t provide any built-in monetization possibilities. However, you may use third-party ad networks like Google AdSense to monetise your site. You may even promote affiliate items and offer sponsored articles if your site is large enough.
Pro Tip: increased followers indirectly lead to increased profits. Concentrate on a certain topic and post high-quality material to develop more followers. You should also watch what the large blogs in your field are doing on Tumblr and utilize comparable tags for a chance to go viral and be listed on the trending page.
4 Quora (best Medium Alternatives )
Quora is a worldwide platform for posting questions and answers. It is roughly identical to Medium, since both are community-driven platforms for sourcing content. The main distinction is that Medium is geared at long-form publications, while Quora concentrates on questions and answers.
When you submit inquiries on Quora, subject experts or intellectual persons offer their expertise by answering them. You may even answer questions that correlate with your expertise and area. You may discover solutions to every issue from cuisine and health to technology and business.
Moreover, you may upvote or downvote responses depending on your choice, follow experts who you believe offer the best answers, and follow various queries and themes. Like Medium, Quora is equally easy and uncomplicated to use. Simply join up, and there you go!
If you prefer to enjoy exploring Quora ad-free and have access to unique content, you may subscribe to Quora+, which is $6.99/month.
5 LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a prominent social networking tool for developing and maintaining professional relationships and networks. Besides professional networking, LinkedIn provides a home for a variety of online learning courses that are free as well as premium. These courses help you upskill, get credentials, and obtain your ideal career.
Besides these features, you will discover articles on the official blog website of LinkedIn. You will discover information on workplaces, careers, and job searches here. In summary, LinkedIn is exclusively focused on delivering information about career and self-improvement.
This platform is also perfect for publishers, where they can market their brand and establish a large network of prospective consumers. When you create and post an article on LinkedIn, it reflects on your professional profile. As a consequence, this provides you a stronger advantage over other candidates when you are seeking for a job or a freelancing chance.
6 Dev Community
As its name indicates, Dev Community is an excellent Medium alternative for developers. So, if you are an ambitious developer, Dev Community is a go-to site. You may discover useful blogs about numerous programming languages and associated technologies, such frameworks, libraries, etc. (Medium Alternatives)
Besides blogs, this site also contains podcasts, videos, manuals, software comparisons, job postings, and mentors that lead you through your learning path. No matter if you are a rookie developer or a seasoned one, the DEV platform is a wonderful solution for you to build and improve your abilities.
When it comes to publishers, it is equivalent to Medium. You may develop your own blogs that meet with DEV’s rules and standards and post them.
In a word, DEV Community is a forum for software engineers to support each other by sharing their expertise and code. It believes in networked learning.
7 HubPages
Best For: Greater control over SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and stable revenue prospects.
Ease of Use: Has a modular interface for writing your blog content. Can take some time to get accustomed to.
This platform is roughly comparable to Medium, which offers a community of authors who generate both sorts of material – lengthy and short. So, you obtain knowledge on numerous areas, ranging from art, gastronomy, and business to tech and entertainment. Choose the domain you are interested in and start reading the articles.
The nice part about HubPages is that you discover information handpicked by individuals with experience in their subject. So you acquire the finest understanding about the field you choose to learn about.
Like Medium, HubPages also enables authors to monetise their sites. Moreover, HubPages serve as a forum for questions and answers as well. One benefit of HubPages over Medium is that this site is free and makes all material public.
Monetization possibility: Limited ad and affiliate commission possibility. You’ll need a ton of traffic to generate considerable cash.
Monthly Traffic: 1.9 M
Pros:
- Consistent monetization possibilities such as display adverts and Amazon affiliate links.
- Greater manual control over SEO for your content.
- A modular authoring interface for complicated content arrangements when appropriate.
Cons:
- A substantially smaller built-in audience.
- A higher payment threshold at $50.
- Display adverts might impact user engagement.
HubPages is a straight Medium alternative with numerous similarities. You may make money by presenting display advertising and suggesting Amazon items via the HubPages Ad Program and Amazon Program. (Medium Alternatives)
While it can’t compete with Medium’s big built-in readership, it does give greater SEO control. You won’t receive as many visits via the Hubpages platform, but you may improve your content to attract more people via search engines.
And because your paid material isn’t confined to paying subscribers (which is how Medium works), you’re motivated to employ SEO or social media campaigns to attract outside visitors to your content. More readers equal more ad impressions leading in increased profits.
HubPages promises you may make roughly $50-$100 a month as passive revenue from your work. However, you will need to publish a ton of articles to attain this goal.
Pro Tip: Because HubPages involves attracting outside visitors to generate substantial money, you may want to explore developing your own affiliate marketing website instead of utilizing HubPages if earning money is your primary aim. Although it’s more sophisticated, the earning potential is substantially bigger.
8 Vocal.Median (best Medium Alternatives )
Best For: Cash-prize writing contests and instant exposure to a big audience.
Ease of Use: Simple, intuitive, and readily navigated.
Vocal Media is similarly a comparable platform to Medium, where creators can share their tales, grow a following, and monetise their material. Like Medium has articles, Vocal Media has multiple communities. Choose a community based on your interest and passion, and start reading or creating your own tale.
The biggest benefit of this site is it gives out $3.80 for each post you create and acquire 1000 readers. However, if you are a plus member of Vocal Media, you may earn $6 for 1000 readers on your article. So, this platform promises 100% revenue from creating articles.
Whether it is tech, beauty, entertainment, food, or anything else, you may discover any stuff to read. If you like to subscribe to Vocal+, you need to spend $9.99 every month. The main downside is this platform is not accessible for Android and iOS mobile phones.
Monetization Potential: Decent potential via viral postings that pay depending on view count, writing challenges, and advice.
Monthly Traffic: 3.0 M
Pros:
- Predictable revenue with $3.80/1000 readings and an in-built tipping mechanism.
- Writing challenges to earn large and gain a huge audience rapidly.
- A clean, ad-free user experience.
Cons:
- Limited built-in audience.
- To earn more – $6.00 per 1000 readers — you need to become a paying Vocal+ member for $9.99/month.
- Higher payment threshold at $35 (or $20 for Vocal+).
- If your writing abilities merit acknowledgment, consider Vocal Media. This blogging site routinely runs writing contests with cash rewards ranging from $500-$1000. Sometimes, the prize pool might be as large as $10,000 or even more.
Pro Tip: Read the articles that previously won these competitions to learn what the judges prefer.
Even if you don’t win, Vocal.Media pays a flat $3.8 every 1000 readers your works get or $6 per 1000 reads by becoming a Vocal+ member for $9.99/month.
To optimize revenue, concentrate on pulling in additional readers. You may achieve this by generating appealing headlines and marketing your work on social platforms. If you strike a very deep connection with someone, they may even leave a tip.
Top 4 Medium Alternatives for Publishers
Though Medium and all the other alternatives have billions of views or users every day, they are not suitable for promoting and establishing awareness of your company.
In addition, Medium does not enable you to create your own domain unless you have it already. However, integrating your domain name to a Medium account is a laborious procedure.
The following are the finest Medium alternatives for publishers to make money ad develop their own personal brand:
1 Substack
Best For: Building a direct interaction with readers via newsletters and monetizing it with premium subscriptions.
Ease of Use: Clean, straightforward, easy to navigate. Managing subscriber lists and comprehending analytics will need some study.
Substack is one of the top platforms that has earned its reputation in publishing. Like Medium, Substack also enables authors to monetise their pieces.
Whether you are a beginner-level writer or an expert, this platform is appropriate. There are no editors or ad sales to submit your material. Simply write and have it published with a few clicks.
If you already have active following, submitting articles on Substack and earning money is one of the finest methods to start your company. When you get 1000 subscribers, Substack pays you $5 per month for each article. In addition, you may publish your post either to make it accessible for all readers or exclusively for subscribers.
Monetization Potential: Huge potential via highly monetizable newsletters.
Monthly Traffic: 44.5 M
Pros:
- Connect directly with readers via newsletters.
- Monetize your content utilizing paid email subscriptions.
- Simple, focused writing experience for newsletters.
Cons:
- The platform has a terrible recommendation engine.
- 10% platform charge on profits from premium subscriptions.
- One of the most popular Medium alternatives, Substack gives a clear UI for writing content and links you with a wide audience. But unlike Medium, Substack doesn’t compensate you for the material you publish or the interaction it generates.
- Instead, you may design a newsletter using a straightforward UI. Users viewing your material may subscribe to your newsletter, enabling direct access to their inboxes. This is incredibly powerful, since it’s simpler to approach someone via email than a third-party site.
- You may monetise your content with affiliate links in your emails or market your own product or service. Substack also enables you build up paid subscriptions for a 10% charge, where you may establish your own pricing for subscribers to view your newsletter.
Pro Tip: Maximize your email subscriptions by delivering excellent material that demands periodic updates. This might include fresh topics you’re learning each week, updates on your approaching book launch, your own weight reduction journey, etc. (Medium Alternatives)
2 WordPress
Best For: Establishing a blog or website with considerable control over its design and functions.
Ease of Use: Tons of features that you’ll need to understand before you can get the most out of it. You’ll need to host the CMS platform which demands a certain amount of technological know-how.
WordPress is the greatest choice if you are truly serious about advertising your company or developing a personal blog website. It is a prominent content management system (CMS) that requires no introduction. It powers 43% of the total webpages accessible on the internet.
WordPress comes with a spectrum of plugins and themes that enable you develop fully-functional websites for your brand per your demands. Also, the themes provided are adjustable, so you may alter their appearance and feel and build it as you like.
The website you build with WordPress requires a domain name and hosting. Once you accomplish everything, your website will be up on the internet and available for money creation.
Monetization Potential: Huge potential via affiliate marketing, advertisements, and ecommerce.
Monthly Traffic: N/A
Pros:
- Create a separate blog with its own rules.
- Use themes to change the appearance and plugins to increase functions.
- Add whatever monetization element you desire – from adverts to e-commerce.
- Powerful SEO capabilities to reel in organic visitors.
Cons:
- Technically more sophisticated with a large learning curve.
- A lot of management tasks, including platform maintenance, content marketing, content development, and curation.
- WordPress is our #1 recommended blogging platform, particularly if you want to develop a company around your writing. WordPress powers 43% of all websites, in large part because to its user-friendliness and great ecosystem of plugins and themes.
- What makes WordPress so remarkable is its unparalleled customizability. You may make the website appear and behave anyway you like. And the main WordPress software is entirely free; you just need to pay add-ons for enhanced features.
- To establish a WordPress blog, you’ll need to learn to subscribe to a web hosting provider and link it to a domain name. What’s more, you’re in total charge of your blog, so you must learn how to publish and curate content, construct menu systems, develop web pages, handle comments, and manage all the themes and plugins you install.
- WordPress may have a high learning curve, but the benefits of your effort can be incredibly gratifying. To give you a sense of the possibilities, here’s a case study of an 18-month-old WordPress site we sold for 6 figures.
- This gets us to one of the most useful parts of a WordPress blog – you’re constructing an asset you can sell. We’ve sold many blogs 6 figures since we owned the blogs and all of the rights connected with them. You can’t generate a comparable asset by writing on someone else’s platform.
(Medium Alternatives)
3 Ghost
Best For: Creating a customized blog to promote, curate, and share content.
Ease of Use: The overall UI is clean and straightforward. You’ll need to host the CMS platform, which needs a certain amount of technical knowledge-how.
Like WordPress, Ghost is likewise a fully-featured content management system that is the finest alternative to Medium. With Medium, you cannot customize the UI. However, you may simply construct a customized website and administer it using Ghost.
Moreover, you receive a well-structured editor with Ghost to modify your content. The style, design, and method you want your material to be presented is entirely in your control.
Read top fiverr alternatives top site
In summary, it is a platform to develop a blog website where you may promote your business and reach a broad variety of people. However, it is not free to use. It costs $11 or $9 per month if invoiced yearly.
Monetization possibilities: Huge possibilities by selling premium memberships.
Monthly Traffic: N/A
Pros:
- Full control over your blog’s appearance, content curation, and distribution.
- Access to in-depth statistics to analyze content performance.
- Nobody can erase your material.
Cons:
- No built-in audience.
- Initial expense of purchasing a domain and hiring servers to host your Ghost-powered blog.
- A greater degree of technical expertise is essential.
- Ghost is an open-source blogging platform – formally known as a Content Management System (CMS) – that enables you to establish your own self-hosted blog. You don’t need to worry about any platform restrictions; you determine the rules.
- The major advantage of a self-hosted blog is that you may monetise your material via many paths, including display adverts, affiliate commissions, newsletters, and even selling premium subscriptions.
- But with tremendous power comes enormous responsibility.
- In this instance, you’ll need to acquire and set up a custom domain, purchase web hosting, remember to update the Ghost software, manage the content curation, and so on. You don’t need to know this right out of the gate, but you do need to be comfortable with learning.
- If you want assistance setting things up, check out this fantastic Ghost guide.
- You’re also in charge of generating traffic to your blog. Thankfully, Ghost has a powerful SEO system to optimize your content for organic visitors. You may also get advanced statistics to evaluate how your content is doing and adjust it appropriately.
7 Write.as
Best For: Privacy and anonymous or pseudonymous content publishing.
Ease of Use: A highly clean, basic, and straightforward platform with a laser emphasis on producing content.
Write.as is a plain and clear platform for authors to post their blogs, newsletters, and journals. It offers a simplistic but attractive user interface that exploits negative space. If you want something comparable to Medium, Write.as is a wonderful alternative.
Moreover, if you wish to keep anonymous and yet write things on the internet, Write.as enables you to do so. No need to join up; curate an essay and upload it to showcase it on the web. The main drawback with this platform is that it is not very well known, and the membership plan is pricey. (Medium Alternatives)
Monetization possibility: Very minimal possibility. Only able to obtain microtips from readers.
Monthly Traffic: 2.3 M
Pros:
- Publish papers using pseudonyms.
- Monetize your content by allowing microtransactions.
- No account required to post material (but this precludes monetization).
Cons:
- Lacks content categorization tools like tags or collections.
- Only paid accounts beginning at $6/month.
- Write.as delivers a sleek, ultra-minimalistic, and ad-free user experience where the content takes center stage. Even the author may take a backseat, since one of the key benefits of the site is anonymous blogging without having an account. That noted, account-less postings only remain online for 1 hour.
- If you opt to make an account, you’ll need to subscribe to their premium membership plan beginning at $6/month. This will enable you to post anonymously or under a pseudonym. You may also create private and password-protected blogs.
- You may also set up microtransactions and take tips from people who truly enjoy your work. However, if generating money is your primary aim, Write.as may not be the ideal alternative. It’s best utilized as a distraction-free writing environment to swiftly (and sometimes anonymously) communicate your ideas.
Conclusion About Medium Alternatives
There are numerous possible Medium alternatives, each of which has distinct merits.
However, if you’re wanting to generate big money from your writing, WordPress stands head and shoulders above the rest. We don’t advocate you utilize any of the other platforms mentioned since you’re constructing someone else’s platform – not your own.
If you want to learn more about how you can construct a WordPress site that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, check out our free course.
We’ve spent over 10 years producing and selling WordPress sites, and we’ve condensed all of that expertise into this free webinar. In it, you’ll uncover the 7 secrets that make new websites 83% more successful.
Here, I finish my list of the finest Medium alternatives for readers and publishers. Quora, LinkedIn, DEV Community, HubPages, and Vocal Media are good for readers and publishers but are more relevant to readers or learners. However, Substack, Write.as, Ghost, and WordPress, enable you to market your business, connect to new audiences, and generate money better. (Medium Alternatives)
FAQ
Is Medium Still Popular In 2024?
Medium is still popular in 2024. In fact, it’s never been more popular. As of December 2022, Medium has over 100 million active users — it’s greatest total ever. It remains one of the greatest blogging sites to publish on because to its large reach and potential to monetise content with their Partner program. (Medium Alternatives)
How Is Substack Different From Medium?
Substack and Medium vary mostly in their revenue techniques. Medium rewards artists depending on reader interaction, whereas Substack allows writers to profit directly via paid subscriptions to their newsletters. This business strategy enables Substack users to create a direct contact with their followers via their email inboxes, while Medium interactions mostly place on their blogging platform.