I love data. I trust my intuition—to a point—but I’m always most secure when it’s supported by facts and figures. So, I’ve decided to try a little experiment. If I want to become more resilient as a freelancer then diversifying where I get visibility—and earnings—is key. Creators can’t rely on just a handful of clients or income streams. It’s easy to lose that revenue, and with it, our security.
I am—above most other things—a writer. And for writers, two of the most talked about creative platforms are Substack and Medium1. So, what will happen if I post identical content to both? What type of engagement will I get from readers? What has the most growth potential for the future?
I’m going to find out, and share the results with you. But first, we need to lay some ground rules.
The rules of the experiment
I’m going to do what I can to make this a fair comparison, so here’s how I’ve set things up.
Basic rules
I have created two identical publications at the same time. They’re both called Ironclad Creative—you can find them here on Substack and here on Medium.
I’m using similar taglines, descriptions, and other factors for both publications.
I will post exactly the same content to both places, on the same day.
I am not charging for any of that content—all of my Medium posts are unmetered (free to view without a membership) and none of my Substack content is behind a paywall.
I will run this experiment for three months, from April to July 2023, and make update posts every two to four weeks.
Visibility of content
I am not carrying out any special SEO activities for either publication—I’m purely relying on whatever either platform does internally for promotion and visibility.
I’m not linking to either publication myself, to ensure this remains fair.
I’m not concerned about duplicate content flags from Google as I’m mostly interested in the internal network effects on both platforms, not the external SEO performance. That can come later.
Activities to promote content
Here’s how I’ve decided to promote content on these publications.
I’ve been on Medium since 2015, and already have 630 followers, a couple of existing publications, and a handful of email subscribers. This does give Medium a head start.
I’ve been on Substack since April 2023 and have a handful of email subscribers as of right now.
Because of the headstart on Medium, I’m going to limit how much I promote my publication there—I’ll restrict it to replying to comments, sending out emails to subscribers, and anything else that doesn’t take too much time and effort.
On Substack, I’ll limit my promotion to contributing to the community—making and responding to comments either on my publication or the “On Substack” Office Hours discussions.
I’m hoping this will create a roughly equal testing ground—and if it doesn’t, well, it’s the best I can do!
Measuring the results
I will be using interior metrics from both platforms. For Medium, that means the “stats” page of the publication:
For Substack, that’s my dashboard stats:
I’ll send out updates every two to four weeks to keep you appraised of my progress, together with my thoughts on how things are progressing.
It’s (very) early days, but I’m excited to see how it all turns out!
I know that there are other platforms and networks out there like personal blogs, Ghost, Quora, Hubpages, etc—but for the moment I’m comparing two of the most popular.