Comment by franzen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by franzen | Hacker News Reader

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Okay, that's a fair criticism. I don't have inside info on The Ringer's page views. I have info on another dozen or so publishers though, and the ~1:100 ratio generally sticks.

Since you're a Medium advisor, maybe you can shed some light: how many of The Ringer's page views are coming because of native Medium readers vs. because Bill Simmons is linking to articles?

If I'm a deep-pocketed advertiser with little social media engagement (unlike Simmons), how does posting to Medium benefit me? Why am I not better off paying Bill Simmons to tweet about my product than pay the Medium middle man?

Relatedly, is it fair to extrapolate Medium's "10x on page views" on your blog to the average user, who doesn't start off with 20k Twitter followers? (Note: Medium uses Twitter followers to kickstart your Medium following.)

For the average user who doesn't know how to market their posts, I agree, Medium is a godsend. There's a small community of committed readers (good for page views) and the design is great (good for sharing.) But do you really think that these are game-changing advantages? Do you think that these advantages will survive once/if Medium starts plastering its posts with banner ads?

Here are my recent stats. I don't know really that the 1:100 ratio is real at all: https://www.quora.com/profile/Tony-Stubblebine

I do know though that specific to The Ringer that their page views are completely decoupled from what you can see in engagement. I have no idea where that's coming from or even what's required for them to be a media success. But I do know that they are getting heavy traffic.

Re: game changers. I wrote in one of the other threads that my analysis of the market is that there is has been a non-stop demand for personal publishing products since 2000: blogger, MovableType, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Twitter, Tumblr.

And we're in a moment now where many of those seem institutionally unable to modernize. This word "game-changer" is so loaded. Is changing the game the goal? Or just serving a huge market?

From the start, I've seen Medium as at minimum a modern version of an evergreen class of software. Obviously, they've done that by simplifying out features that end up not mattering a lot (customizable themes) and making a beautiful text editor.

On top of that, none of those other platforms ever did anything to boost my page views. I think that's a real benefit of the platform that goes well beyond whatever audience you bring with you.

I see my own stats (based on 20k Twitter followers) and the stats of people in my publication (Better Humans). It really seems like the pairing of a strong title with strong content is the primary driver of traffic. Publications will take those articles and then recommends will drive a ton of traffic.

Many of the people who write on BetterHumans are starting with no audience to speak of. It's certainly a huge ego boost to experience a few thousand page views for the first time.

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