The only reason I can think of for posting to Medium is revenue sharing, and I am not interested in pursuing a career as a creator at this time. Putting up content people MIGHT find via SEO tactics, only to have people driven away via a pay wall, seems self defeating.

I suppose you can always post to Medium you and somewhere else, unless that is a violation of Medium's terms of service. Then your basically turning yourself into someone who spams everywhere, not just Medium.

So I guess Medium is for creators and spammers. Am I missing something?

Medium basically killed the incentives to publish outside their paywall. For most people, free hosting isn't enough.

But posting within their paywall is generally a pretty good deal.

Medium gives you some small amount of revenue. $50 to $200 is common, but I've had several authors in publications I run make $3000 or more for a single article.

Medium also tries to promote the best articles to people who care about the topic you're writing on but who might not have any idea who you are. They do a pretty good job of this. New writers might get an audience of a few hundred readers they wouldn't get otherwise. Committed Medium authors seem to get audiences of a few thousand people for each article.

And the author isn't giving up much for those two benefits. They get to keep their copyright and could publish anywhere else. The article still qualifies for SEO even though it's behind a (metered) paywall. Authors have a "friend" link that bypasses the paywall altogether.

cuz it's the cool thing to do. although way past it's freshness. it's like a fish on a hook.