A Professional Freelance Writer Gets Snarky About Medium
Hmmmm. So, this is Medium. Let’s kick the tires, shall we?
I am a professional freelance writer. That means three things. Professional means that I get paid to write. Freelance means I get to decide when I work and when I shower. Writer means that I… well… write stuff.
So, what does Medium have for me?
As a professional, people pay me to write, or I write stuff and then publish it and earn money from advertising or affiliate links, or whatever. I haven’t looked too deeply, but so far it doesn’t look like Medium allows for any of these things, which means it’s yet another place that wants me to write for free.
*Glares derisively*
On the other hand, it appears that there is no requirement to write at specific times, or for a specific length, nor to shower to be here, so…
And, finally as a writer, Medium does let me write.
Medium for Writers
While I encourage writers (myself included) to always get paid for their writing, or at the very least, share in the revenue their writing generates, the reality is that not everything that pops into my head is going to earn money.
For example, no one is going to pay me to quickly bang out an article about Medium and what value it might, or might not have, without doing the slightest bit of research, like I’m doing here.
You see, out of all the words in my self-important title of Professional Freelance Writer, the most important one is writer. I can’t help but write. I write all the time in my head: in the shower, in the car, while packing the kids’ lunches. You name it, if it doesn’t require my full attention to avoid certain death, chances are that I’m writing in my head while doing it.
If even 10% of what I wrote in my head actually ended up published somewhere, I’d have enough money to fund secret lawsuits against publishers. (Too soon?)
Unfortunately, much of my wonderful, oh so clever, and poignant prose gets lost in between its composition in my head and the time when I sit with fingers on keyboard.
Even if I could keep everything in my head long enough to publish it, not all of it has a home. My freelance writing blog could hold this article, but I’d want it to sound more “professional” and less rambly. (Plus, I couldn’t use fake words like rambly, nor edit it AFTER hitting Publish.) This doesn’t belong on my personal finance blog, or my parenting blog, or just about anywhere else I generate some dough with my own writing.
So, I guess the occasional post on Medium can’t hurt anything.
And, since Google is still pretty much just a really advanced link counter, it can’t hurt to have a few of them pointing back to my stuff from another domain, eh?
Oh, wait! I forgot to try and put in a picture…
My Point Is
What is my point?
Oh, I don’t have one. I’m just here to try this out.
How easy is it to use? Pretty easy. I like how highlighting brings up my formatting options, and the keyboard shortcuts thing at the bottom is helpful as well.
Pasting random links into my work makes nice little boxes of content with no effort.
I’ll have to hit publish and load the page to find out if these links are follow or no-follow. (Although, my current theory is that Google no longer completely disregards nofollow links, in no small part because of rampant abuse of the tag by sites trying to maximize their own rankings. — We’re all looking at you Huffington Post.)
Overall, I’m going to have to say that Medium is much easier to use than my former random content dumping ground over at HubPages. (To be fair, HubPages splits ad revenue with you.)
Alright, that’s enough testing for now. I’m going to hit publish and see what I can do after that. Then, if I figure it’s worth it, I might try and read some of the directions or whatever.
Are there comments? If so, and you made it this far (Seriously, don’t you have better things to do with your time?) leave me a comment. It doesn’t matter what it is at this point in time… How about, what is your favorite opera?
