Medium is Dead, Long live Substack
The way we think about digital media and the personal brand is shifting.
Substack takes 10% of the revenue of its Writers, podcasters and community managers, plus + 3% from its payment process Stripe. Medium takes 50%.
To say that Eve Williams had a God complex as a founder, would be an understatement. It’s almost understandable how a Silicon Valley founder and venture capitalist would get this way, considering he co-founded Blogger and co-founded Twitter. We came in with high expectations for Medium, which in retrospect were likely more than a bit unrealistic.
Ev was too directly attached to his belief of what Medium should be, that directly impeded his actual ability to manifest it.
This is perhaps, the true tragedy of Medium, if you followed it from the beginning.
At the heart of the matter, we wanted Medium to work. The internet was cheering it on, until it became clear what it would become. The leaders of Substack need to be students of history, less they don’t repeat the same patterns.
A Celebrated CEO Steps Down
Eve recently announced he was stepping down as the CEO of Medium, after a decade and several serious blunders. His ideology around Medium, was like a bad prelude to crypto ideology (public relations). The vision of Medium was always so deceptively different from how it was run as a business. This is the betrayal I most remember.
Sadly all those promises didn’t manifest into a good app, a decent reading experience or high quality audience experience. Writers were also not treated with respect. It’s not as if Medium didn’t try, perhaps the only thing it got right down the years is that it survived long enough to become a SEO power-house, a bit like Forbes, not exactly known for its original investigative reporting.
Let’s not forget, content platforms are among the toughest startups. Helping writers monetize or build an audience is a very difficult businesses, especially competing against wall garden platforms with deeper pockets. The media industry has changed so much in the last decade. Medium was an interesting experiment, it just lost traction rather quickly.
Medium some might argue, is not entirely a failure. It has 135 million in monthly visits. But with the founder stepping down as CEO in mid 2022, it is functionally dead.
I can’t stress enough how much of the blame is on Ev. I cannot emphasize enough if you know the story, how much of a tyrant Ev became. Multiple pivots, purging of employees, writers and gradual lower and lower levels of quality in the product meant Medium’s hype lost credibility pretty quickly. It became one of the laughing stocks of the internet. I’m not proud to say that. But it’s important to tell the truth.
What is becoming clear is that Twitter Notes, LinkedIn and Substack will kill Medium in 2023. The moment Ev tried to create expensive in-house publications with poor leadership, it was the beginning of the end for Medium’s ecosystem. Medium’s pivots were a genuine attempt to move away from Ad-networks, Substack inherited some of that challenge including some aspects of the ideological baggage.
Beginning of the End
It’s hard to believe Medium was first launched by Evan Williams in August 2012. The end of Medium was when Eve hired editorial VP Siobhan O’Connor to create a new model of internal magazines, a very dated model of a media business. That experiment alienated much of the independent talent on Medium at the time and the app never recovered. Ev made a lot of mistakes, along with a deceptive ideology, but that was the biggest tactical mistake.
Formerly the executive editor of TIME Magazine, Siobhan O’Connor came to Medium following Time Inc.’s sale to Meredith in February, 2018. She didn’t understand how Medium worked and what she proposed ended up being costly and not able to drive enough revenue. To this day, Substack spin-off Every.to’s content feels a lot like those in-house warped magazines. Anyone remember OneZero?
Substack Past, Present and Future
Substack pushing “culture publications” is reminiscent of part of Siobhan’s obsession. However for revenue generation, it’s actually politics, education for professionals, investors and startups that truly matters. Culture while being important for creativity, is not a niche that will drive the future of the Creator Economy monetization wise.
To establish better revenue and growth, Substack should focus more on high-value niches such as focusing on professionals, gaming, investing and categories more in line with GenZ and contemporary internet trends. Food, comics, sports and literature are not the answer. However beloved those niches may be.
Medium’s Best Days are Over
Medium at its best was where in its early days where it led startup and entrepreneur thinking, trends and thought leadership.
That was an era of optimism back in an age where Silicon Valley tycoons like Ev Williams hadn’t yet perverted the internet. The best days for Medium were circa 2012 to 2015. That Medium as an app or platform has lasted a decade is only due to the personal wealth of Ev Williams. Herein, lies the crux of the problem. It should have died a long time ago.
A platform should celebrate writers, not exploit or offer them gimmicks. Medium could have been creator-centric, but it chose to be more like a Silicon Valley platform, simply using writers as gig-economy workers in a never ending content-mill of an internal gimmick attention microcosm.
The product in the end is always a reflection of its leaders, not necessarily its stated vision or mission statement to users. Medium was built in an era where the user was the product and giving Creators a fair cut of revenue was unthinkable and not seen as a business model that could scale.
While Substack struggles to attract real talent organically even five years in at a level that would enable sustainable growth, Medium had few gifted writers in its entire decade history that would end-up calling it home on any permanent basis. It was more of a drop by station on the road to PR. It was also a listicle SEO stable of gimmick content around dubious categories like self-growth, life, life lessons, love, self-improvement and various subjective themes that unfortunately lowered the quality of the reader experience, including being a vast array and echo chamber of writers on how to monetize writing online. Basically, writers exploiting other writers for profit.
Suffice to say Medium was short on good ideas.
Medium’s internal paywall became an amateur writer ecosystem without a real growing audience. In essence, the product didn’t achieve scale due to quality issues. Substack needs to think long and hard how to avoid the same fate. Luring journalists, professional writers and promoting themes they think are important is their attempt to do this.
As for Medium, around 2017, it started to display signs of being really toxic where amateur writers were coming to the platform even as real regular audiences and apps users churned from it. It has since deteriorated further after multiple firing cycles, pivots and more of the same.
More promises from Ev.
Ev Williams must have learned a lot in the last decade, mostly about himself.
Ev can spin it however he wants, but Medium has been a terrifying failure. It’s obliterated the dreams of thousands of writers, at pennies to the article.
Its missteps have felt like punches to the gut in the early Creator economy for writers.
It’s been one painful crisis and frustrating pivot, after another as Medium’s reputation was eroded from the inside, in more ways than one.
Content is Hard: the Writer’s Challenge
While a few writers were lucky enough to grow up on Medium and thrive on Substack, and even as some Substacks have become so successful that it’s time to move on, these are rare exceptions.
For amateur writers to thrive on platforms like Medium or Substack from scratch is a nearly impossible challenge. The rags to riches story of independent amateur writers was simply a promise that Medium couldn’t deliver on outside of a few examples.
The Great Betrayal of the Dream
Medium’s history is tumultuous and it’s been a “crazy ride” for both employees and writers there. By 2022, most writers have churned from Medium and many of the legendary publications there have died or are dying.
In January 2017, Medium laid off 50 employees as it suddenly abandoned an ad-supported strategy and closed offices in Washington, D.C., and New York. Four months later, it announced a $5 dollar per month membership program.
With each prior and subsequent pivot, Medium sold a bit of its soul to a perceive future that increasingly didn’t make sense from a reading or a business model perspective.
From about 2015 onwards, growth dwindled, the hype faded and reality set in. A very mediocre reality of writing online. Medium perpetuated a scam of underpaid freelancers.
Medium didn’t democratize a way for writers to make money online, it helped break even the dream of the possibility.
The Problem with Creator Ideology
Ev’s true talent was spinning a vision, not running a business.
Back in 2012, he wrote:
Now that we’ve made sharing information virtually effortless, how do we increase depth of understanding, while also creating a level playing field that encourages ideas that come from anywhere?
That’s exactly what I expect to happen with Facebook Bulletin, Substack, Twitter Notes and other newer platforms not named Medium in 2023.
If writing matters, the audience experience really matters.
Medium’s app and algorithm were never up to the challenge.
Medium’s quality of writing was disappointing at best.
Unfortunately Medium failed to pivot into audio or video in any tangible way to cater to a broader range of Creators, even as it pivoted to Subscription revenue in a timely fashion.
For Medium, it’s vision was actually a bar in its evolution, and not a great help. The ideology became a crutch. Just as Twitter nostalgia kept the product in the past for far too long to the Elon dilemma we have today settings in courts of law.
When Nathan Baschez, decided to write about Medium, I was amused. This included tidbits from Substack, where he once worked. Oddly Nathan’s Op-Ed didn’t get much right, but just provided an alternative perspective. As Nathan and Substack influencers pound the pavement of Twitter in equal parts of their search for “hits”, unfortunately I’m not sure they understand the future of content.
Where Do we Go from Here?
That writers, artists, crafters and E-commerce stores are left hanging is a bizarre experience as startups have layoffs, including Substack. To succeed, Substack needs to become the “Shopify for Creators”, not just writers. Or for that matter, just Newsletters.
By focusing just on writing, Medium was at odds with mobile trends of media consumption. Substack cannot afford to make the same mistake. Substack cannot become the heir apparent of Medium or be a home for amateur writers, fiction types or the listicle growth hackers - it needs to forge its own special destiny far from the traps that Medium set for itself.
Even with a pandemic bump in traffic, it’s not clear if Substack is being strategic enough. Substack needs to ruthlessly select quality writers and not simply let supply-demand take its course. This is because due to Advertising’s own supply-demand incentives on the internet, much has been corrupted due to pressures like SEO.
SEO became just a method of Google creating a walled garden it could control in its absurd dominance of Search, and subsequently advertising. Its rules became the arbitrary default of just how the “internet” worked. That Medium became a content mill within such an architecture, is thus not so entirely surprising when you realize the downward trajectory and state of written content over the last 15 years on the internet.
This was by design to prop up other asset of Google, like YouTube. Today in 2022, most people don’t actually read so much on their mobile devices as they skim, while TikTok, YouTube and Instagram have a significant share of time spent on video for mostly “entertainment” purposes. Reading about politics, crypto or investing happens to be somewhat entertaining, as Substack has figured out.
While Microsoft can hype the “Creator Economy” for subscription services like LinkedIn Learning (courses) and LinkedIn premium subscriptions, for Web3 or Substack to change the game of walled garden platforms and the internet they control, would require very different incentives and a creator stack of tools. Substack has maybe at best, 30% of that in place, five years into its journey. Not exactly impressive, but the best in the Newsletter paid subs niche.
The Legacy of Ev Williams
When a founder steps down as a CEO, it’s symbolic of another phase of a startup, either they made it or they didn’t. In the case of Medium, this is a retreat. Ev should have never stayed a decade as the CEO, it was a poor business decision that doomed Medium.
Ev’s a visionary, he’s clearly not talented in either product or engineering or in managing others.
For almost ten years, we’ve been striving to answer that same question. Along the way, we’ve given millions of writers and billions of readers a place to share and find knowledge and ideas. - Ev Williams
But Medium was just the writing platform that came after wordpress blogs, it didn’t make it to the future.
Ev Williams Never Admitted he Failed
The legacy of Medium is what it didn’t dare to do or become. As digital media pivoted to podcasting and behind paywalls, Medium surprisingly didn’t follow very well. Ev was stuck in 2012, and it showed. His best years as a founder were over. The era of worshiping Silicon Valley Tycoons was also getting old, as early Silicon Valley leaders got stuck in group-think and old ideas. It turned out, they weren’t the trail blazers, innovators or even the leaders we had imagined they might be.
Nobody is perfect and the window to scale a product or a platform is short. Media is constantly evolving, as too are digital norms.
Ev sought to reinvent publishing on the internet and he failed. Mr. Williams — known as “Ev” in tech circles — said in those early posts that he was planning to form a company that would allow him to “spend the next few months (or years) learning as much as I can about things I don’t know a lot about.” He ended up spending a decade demonstrating exactly how little he knew.
For the bitter and sad Tycoon, even admitting defeat was not an option. The Venture Capital PR, that was fake and inauthentic, would only continue, even as a whimper or a whisper in some arcane hall of Twitter’s history.
August, 2022 would have been his 10th anniversary as chief executive. The Silicon Valley model of exploiting writers for profit, had failed. Medium today as an app or platform, is a shell of what it once had been. There’s no other rational way to look at it.
As usual to the pattern of Ev’s leadership he said recently:
“To be clear, Medium’s story is far from over,” Mr. Williams wrote.
Unfortunately we’ve heard that tune about a dozen too many times.
Even how Medium has treated its own employees at various stages is well known, and it’s not good. Medium today is the spawning ground for freelance writers from India, where Stripe is not always a consistent partner.
While I am a student of the emergence and nascent Creator Economy, I’m not as optimistic as some of my peers. Content remains a tough sell, since platforms on the whole do not share enough revenue with the independent Creator.
Substack taking just 10% at least makes the equation a bit more practical for established professional writers with a considerable marketing budget. Any major YouTube, can and should spin out a Newsletter for more revenue. If you are not a professional writer with a not insignificant budget to grow, you may not be Substack’s ideal user. That’s the catch and one of the main reasons Substack has in reality so few serious writers who work full-time on its platform today in 2022.
The barrier to entry on Substack to have a side-hustle is a lot higher than amateur writers on Medium are used to, but so are the rewards of success more lucrative.
If Medium is a decade old, Substack is just getting started.
Can Substack Scale where Medium Failed?
While Medium succeeded in creating a sleek online canvas for independent publishing, it never achieved the breakout popularity or appeared to seriously value its Creators or readers. This was contrary to much of the rhetoric of Mr. Williams. The Silicon Valley lies just kept adding up, leading to a lot of frustration.
How Substack treats you is based on your commercialization potential. As a small startup, they still have to devote most of their time and resources to creating more success stories around people who are already fairly successful with big pre-existing Email lists and wide social media marketing appeal.
The roots of many Substack employees is much more writer-centric than business centric. For good or for ill, this presents some special challenges with how its ecosystem scales and the various strategic decisions it makes in its product timeline. Substack has not rushed to launch an Android app, it’s trying to get the product and Substack Network right, before it does so. The (android) app launch will be one of the most critical things it ever does.
The Shopify for Writers
Newsletter
Community development tools
Podcasting
Video
App
Substack has a good Newsletter core product and is scaling how it offers podcasting, which is a great tool for those writers who have paid subscribers. But it’s how it does its app, video and improves its community management stack of tools (a bit limited now) that is the key to its future. What it offers now, it does well.
Substack is not Medium, it’s a stack of Creators tool specialized in Newsletters.
Substack has more than just writers, it has illustrators, comic makers, artists, poets, crafters and a wide range of hobbyists, book clubs, local Newspapers, and so much more. It has fiction writers, business writers, investor analysts and futurists.
Substack is a solo-entrepreneur utopia, if you were made for being self-employed. However in a recession being self-employed or a freelancer is challenging at best. The macro economic outlook does not favor Substack’s growth in 2023 or 2024 at the same rate it grew in 2020 or even 2021. It thus needs to be very smart in 2022.
Substack has the advantage of being founded by a team of co-founders with an early string of acquisitions that means it has a stronger internal identity. These are people with significant startup equity that should be motivated to make it work. Whether they have the leadership experience, right advisors and ability to scale over the long-term with an easy path to more funding is of course a work in progress.
If Medium belongs to the past, Substack has a path to a good future.
As impoverished as many Creators are in reality, Substack has good monetization potential if you are aligned with its opportunities and tools. It’s not Medium, it’s not going to screw you over. At worst you are going to fail to grow fast, and one day give up.
Publishing is Not Easy
In content platforms, the top 1% makes about 95% of the profits, it’s not even the 20/80 rule any longer.
Substack’s top 10 Newsletters typically make the majority or nearly all of its major revenue. This used to be viral Political writers, but there are some small signs in 2022 that this trend is changing and diversifying more.
Substack is not for any independent writers circa 2017, it’s for professional writers with an established following. If you are not a major Creator with an established following on a platform, you may struggle to grow your Newsletter.
Substack’s total number of Creators and audience is far smaller than many claim. What it does well is utilize a SaaS model that scales very well for its top performers. The Substack Network is a top down model, not a bottom up one. This enables Substack to maximize revenue generated by its already top performers.
Substack’s various categories are leaderboards. It’s a gamified pyramid. Not all of those writers are great writers or even objective sources of knowledge in their domains. What they are is popular, they have a real following all around the internet or concentrated on one other platform. Substack lets the market decide. Substack only facilitates the direct 1-to-1 relationship.
There is a fairly good business reason why Substack brands itself as a free speech platform.
Timing is Everything
Medium was founded in 2011, and it never took off in the way that Williams imagined. Substack was just getting started when it got the Pandemic bump in traffic. This revenue pump in 2021 likely saved it future and will allow it to survive the downturn. Some writers may churn or leave for other projects, but natural selection is occurring.
With $82.4 million in funding thus far, and likely revenue around $20 million in 2022, Substack can methodically focus on product and building out its future even as the crypto winter unfolds. a16z won’t let Substack fail. It’s June, 2019 round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. Medium raised $163 million and was propped up by Ev Williams himself a $Billionarre (around $2 Billion net worth).
Medium’s timing was poor doing only written publishing at a time when everyone was spending more time on mobile. Substack is pivoting with audio and community at time when the Creator Economy has more hype and funding. This is the critical difference.
Substack’s American readers love politics and with the 2022 and 2024 elections coming up, they will have a lot of material.
Finally what do you think of Medium contrasted with Substack?
Thanks for reading!
I'm not as knowledgeable as you about it, but I thought Medium was a logical step up from blogging platforms that charge writers for services, and Substack is a logical step up from Medium. I think that people are craving any platform that treats them better than a commodity. I think there's a big gaping hole for platforms that are good for their users, right now.
Tomas Pueyo, the last "graduate" of Medium to Substack summarized it in a viral hit here: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-future-of-substack