Bye bye Medium! This is a farewell

I am moving out to my personal newsletter

Alfonso de la Rocha
3 min readAug 18, 2019
Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

This may be my last article in Medium, at least for a while (you know, never say never). For the last few years, Medium has been the destination of almost all my writing pieces. I have written articles with a greater or lesser frequency, getting more or less acceptance depending on the article. I had the chance to write for some of the coolest tech publications around here, such as Coinmonks and Hackernoon; and I had the enormous honor of even getting paid for writing (obviously, I am not some kind of idiot, if someone still wants me to write a tech article for them I am open to any kind of offers ;) ). And despite all this, I am still leaving Medium.

But why? You may ask. The main reason is my inability to build an audience here in Medium. For starters, Medium’s new “metered paywall” is a pain in the ass. If I want one of my articles to reach “the masses” I have two options: using the “metered paywall” so Medium “advertises” my content in exchange for my readers spending one of their precious “free reading passes”; or submitting my article to a high-quality publication, getting it accepted, and hope that the publication’s audience likes my content enough to commit the effort of following me. In the former, Medium gets paid for my content without assuring me any new followers; in the latter, I get more people to read my content and my thoughts (something I really love), but in the end, is the publication’s audience that I am building.

This is why I decided to build a weekly newsletter (which has been already going on for more than a month as a test run). The purpose of this newsletter is two-fold: firstly, I want a platform where I can build a high-quality and loyal audience with whom I can interact, discuss and share ideas. I am committed to this idea even if I end up with a dozen weekly followers reading my content (compared to the hundreds or thousands I have now in Medium). Secondly, as you may have realized if you have been following me for a while, I am not really consistent with my publications. I may publish two articles one week and publish nothing for the following two months. With this weekly newsletter I want to give my followers a constant and predictable rate of publications (for better or worse).

So this is my story, this may be the last time you see me around here for a while, so if you want to keep reading me from time to time… DO NOT HESITATE TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY WEEKLY NEWSLETTER!

And to you Medium, I wish you all the best.

https://adlrocha.substack.com

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