Why I Finally Decided I Needed Medium: Or What it Takes to Convert a Skeptic

Medium confused me for a long time.

I have had several of my own blogs, websites, and platforms for a long time, with my current being Scientific Nutrition. I always had this conviction that it was better for me to control my own platform, so that I was not the whims of a corporate overlord who could change an algorithm and tear my readers from me. This is the same reason I have been building up an email list, as Facebook has continually shown my work to fewer and fewer users. Because of this one of my objections to Medium is that I was giving up control over my platform. My position has changed recently for several reasons.

First and foremost, it is hard to build an audience and traffic.

What I mean is that it takes a long time to build up an audience and traffic for any single website. Why does this matter?

Well because secondly, I have many interests.

It is easiest to build up traffic for a website with a very specific use. Meaning I would either need to create a different website for every single different topic I am interested in, or struggle to build up a way to market a site that is basically: “Hey these are the things I care about talking about today.” Because of this a huge amount of my writings and thoughts have never been published.

Medium gives me an opportunity to discuss topics that are outside of my specific niche I have decided to specialize in for now (nutrition), but are still topics I feel I have interesting thoughts on. It is also removes the friction of running a website from my view. Simplifying the process in this way, makes it easier for me to focus on clarifying my thinking.

This combination of factors has convinced me not just that Medium is valuable platform, but that it has the potential to become THE platform for discourse of ideas in the future.