Medium is launching a set of tools to help publications publish and make money on the web. Dubbed Medium for Publishers, the WordPress competitor will offer publishers a free content management system, a standalone URL, and the ability to participate in two beta experiments—one to host promoted posts, the other to offer paid memberships.
A dozen sites have signed up at launch, including The Awl, Pacific Standard and Femsplain. The ten to follow will include Bill Simmons’ new site, The Ringer, and Time Inc.’s Money and Fortune.
In Williams’ version of the future, it will no longer make sense for publications to publish directly to the web at all.
Medium founder Ev Williams hopes that, as publishers struggle with the rise of ad-blocking software and the falling price of display ads, Medium for Publishers will allow them to focus their energy on creative work, rather than trying to master ever-evolving tricks, viral strategies, and social services involved in reaching their audiences.
Even two years ago, most publishers would have balked at setting up their websites on another platform, preferring to maintain a direct line to their readers on the web. But as more readers find stories via social networks like Facebook rather than individual sites’ homepages, it’s growing harder for those publishers to reach audiences directly. What’s more, they’re competing with viral experts like BuzzFeed—not necessarily on the ideas they’re covering, but on their ability to game Facebook’s social algorithms in their favor to reach people.
From the start, Williams has endeavored to create a beautiful, easy-to-use platform for very good writing online. He has nurtured the persistent belief that people will want to write and read good ideas. “There’s an obsession with video today, but it’s not like the written word is going away,†says Williams, who also helped found Twitter. “For thinking people who want to understand things and engage in discourse, the written word is superior.†Nearly four years after he launched the site, this belief has propelled Medium into a network of more than 25 million monthly readers that is valued at $457 million.
A Third Way
In Williams’ version of the future, it will no longer make sense for publications to publish directly to the web at all. If they want an audience, they’ll have to choose a platform. Already, they’re increasingly dependent on Facebook and Twitter to get attention, and they must constantly tweak their social strategies to stay ahead of evolving algorithms. “It’s not a game they’re set up to win and not a game to help them at what they’re great at,†says Williams.
Williams is trying to position Medium as a third way—a platform that can bring the benefits that come with large audiences while also allowing publishers the autonomy to preserve and build their brands and manage their own relationships with readers and advertisers. “Across the board, 30 percent of all page views on Medium are driven by Medium itself,†he says. That could provide publishers an immediate boost.
A Medium-powered site will also be able to integrate with other platforms and services on the web like Facebook’s Instant Articles or the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP), a Google-backed open-source endeavor to help publishers with mobile. “Medium is an alternative to having an island on the web. It’s not an island to itself,†says Williams.
A Platform for Getting Paid
Medium for Publishers will be free to publications, offering them myriad ways to customize site design to support their brands. They’ll be able to migrate archives to the site and preserve their PageRank, the analysis algorithm Google uses to determine where a page falls in search results. Readers will be able to search sites independently, and they won’t need to be logged into the Medium network to read. Want to see what it looks like? Check out Billfold, a millennial finance site. In a December test, it moved 8,000 posts to Medium.
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Medium will benefit because it will expand its network of readers, and it’ll take a cut of the revenues from the two sales strategies it will offer: Publishers can also opt in to host promoted posts, in which a brand sponsors a post on a Medium feed. This ad product launches in beta this week with five sponsors—Nest, SoFi, Bose, Intel and Volpi Foods. Medium will broker the deals and take a cut of the profits. The startup also plans to let publishers offer paid membership for members-only content and other perks. Readers will pay Medium directly (so potentially they can manage several memberships in one place), and Medium will take a small fee on each transaction.
Of course, in setting up shop on Medium, publishers are making a bet that Williams’ version of the future is right, and that Medium will continue to out-innovate competitors and provide its writers the very best publishing tools available. That’s a big bet for an 87-year-old brand like Fortune, say, to make on a three-and-a-half-year-old startup. Medium’s new product could prove to be a siren song: the false promise of a chance to preserve the legacy and quality and depth of the journalism we grew to love and respect before the Internet came along and disrupted it, while ensuring the people who create it get paid. But as the climate grows increasingly challenging for publishers on their own, Williams’ product also offers these publishers hope for a more promising future.
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