So Many Platforms, So Little Time

How Do Medium, Substack, And Ghost Stack Up, From The Perspective Of A New Writer

I’ve been trying to decide how I want to organize my content across three writing platforms. And, I’m starting to get burned out.

Currently, I’m posting to Medium as my primary source, with Ghost and Substack functioning as mailing list and free-to-read solutions. I’m posting to all three platforms.

Something tells me I could be making a rookie mistake, but I figured I could build them all together to keep them synced, while I figure out which platform (or two) to stick with.

Here are my first impressions of Medium, Substack, and Ghost:

Medium

I feel like Medium could be the best place to start as a new writer. You only have to pay if you want to earn money on your stories, otherwise it’s free to post. If you are just experimenting, it has the lowest barrier of entry of the three platforms, in my opinion.

Also, writing on Medium immediately places you in an ecosystem full of potential readers. As a new writer that just wants to write and have it potentially seen by others, this is the place to do it. Medium felt like it was the easiest to just get moving on. I did opt to join the Partnership Program at $5 a month. This fee also allows me to read articles on the platform as well, which has been nice.

I’ve been having the most fun posting on Medium. It is the platform that I am getting the most reader interaction with, by far.

However, there are access limitations for non-Medium members. They can’t easily read all of my work. This makes me feel like I need to have a solution in place for potential readers to be able to read for free, while also allowing room for me to grow with my audience.

Medium does allow free article reads, but only for the first 3 stories read by a new user. After that, readers have to join the platform to read entire articles. As a result, your story will likely get paywalled a paragraph or two in with a pop up window asking your readers to join Medium in order to finish reading.

I don’t want to recommend someone to my work only for them to get locked out of my story a paragraph in.

Substack

I actually started writing on Substack first, a month or two before trying Medium and Ghost. I wanted to start posting my writing online and I stumbled across Substack, so I signed up.

I remember it being relatively easy to get started. However, it does feel a little more confusing to use when compared to the other two platforms.

First of all, there’s their ‘Notes’ function, which looks like a normal social media post and appears in a social-media-like feed while your looking at your home screen on the platform.

Then, they have ‘Posts’. You can build longer content, like articles, videos, and podcasts (audio) using Posts. I’m sure that I’ll get more familiar with these options the more I write, but when your new it’s just another thing to try and sort out.

In the ‘Settings’ menu, there is a lot going on in Substack. For someone who is just starting out, it would be cool to have a lite version of the settings that can be toggled on and off. It would be nice to be able to hide the non-imperative customization options. I am still pretty new and don’t know the ins and outs of the system, so it still feels a little overwhelming to deal with.

I don’t like the text editor in Substack as much as Ghost or Medium, maybe only because it’s different than the other two, which are very similar to each other.

Medium and Ghost have a plus button to the left of a new line. Just click it to add a title, photo, or whatever. Substack presents these items in a menu bar present at the top of the editor. It just feels like it takes me out of my flow when I look to the top of the page in order to add stuff, taking my eyes off of where I was just focused.

Once I found Medium, it just felt way easier. Since then, I have primarily been writing in Medium and reposting to Substack and Ghost. The only reason I am still using Substack is to give readers the option to read for free and to subscribe to the mailing list, if they so choose. Now that I’ve found Ghost though, I am trying to figure out if I want to let go of Substack all together.

Ghost

I’m not sure how I feel about Ghost yet, but mostly due to it’s cost, not it’s features.

I decided to use the hosted plan, so I’ll be speaking from that perspective here.

I like the editor the most out of the three options.

A non-trivial reason for this is the more advanced photo editor. It’s easy to make adjustments to not only your own photos, but to the stock images as well. Recently I needed to crop a stock image to be more horizontal than vertical. Seconds later it was done in Ghost.

You can also write in dark mode, which also sounds benign, but is actually significant. It’s so much easier on the eyes, especially when writing at night.

I also like that the webpage itself is mine and I get to decide how the page looks and operates. I can send people there and I know that they’ll be able to read my articles without issue.

Not only that, there is a lot more customization (even in the Starter plan) than in Substack or Medium. This customization does have a down side early on though. It can make it feel a little more overwhelming when your also dealing with the design of the page, on top of all of the writing.

However, I was able to quickly get something together that looked decent using their Casper template. It is an easier way for me to share my stories with others. They just go to my URL, right now it’s mrjsn.ghost.io, and boom they’re on my page.

I can post whatever I want to my Ghost site. I’m not trapped in the confines of the Substack or Medium ecosystems. It feels cool to have the option to build out something that matches my goals and personality. But it definitely feels like this is all stuff that can, and maybe should, come later.

If I eventually have paid material, I can release it through the integrated mailing lists functionalities that Ghost has. So, not only can I build a custom site, I can also manage a mailing list there.

It feels like everything is built for speed on Ghost. I like the editor and it feels really streamlined.

The downside, it cost much more than the other platforms. The cheapest option is a single month at $11 (you can get it for $9 a month, but you have to pay for the year up front).

Here’s what I’m trying to sort out:

My ultimate goal is to have a place on the web that I can send people to in order to read my stuff. Medium feels like it has the least amount of friction as a writer, but not so much for the reader.

I want to give people the experience of just going to my website to see my writing — no membership required.

I’ve been posting to all three platforms while learning the strengths and weaknesses of each. My frustration lies in the time that it is taking to post to all three places, every time I write something. Not to mention if there are edits that have to be made across all three posts, after they have been copied over.

I’m trying to find the most efficient way to set this up in the beginning, to avoid headaches later on.

Conclusion

I think I’m going to stick with Medium and Ghost.

I can focus on writing in Medium. I can focus on building my own site, the way I want it to be, using Ghost.

It may be time to shelf Substack, at least for now.

I don’t have any subscribers there yet, so it’s better now than later. I’ll keep the account open, but redirect readers to the other sites.