That’s actually a great question — does Medium truly gives you that many readers that it makes sense to live in the closed ecosystem? I have its app installed and subscribed to a bunch of people but I still only go there via the links on the web and I feel like a lot of people do just like me.
As some anecdotal evidence, I get about half of my Medium views from people browsing the Medium app/feed. That's definitely been the number one reason I've stayed on the platform.
Perhaps someone should develop a platform that creates the same discoverability, but while allowing people to retain control of the content?
No. I started my own site around this time last year with a CSS / HTML template I modified and I did everything myself. I even wrote the static site compiler. This is really not hard.
I have somewhere between seven and nine[0] articles out and my work has been translated into French, Portuguese (twice), Russian, and Uzbek.
Medium isn't a source of traffic unless you're one of the very few writers they intentionally push. People share high quality work or new ideas, and audience engagement helps too, so link to your Twitter and share your email.
[0] Since starting the site I've started writing for other publications and the audience flows back and forth between the sites, so it depends on what you think counts as an article.
