If I leave for Substack, will you follow me?

After more than three years on this platform and 900+ stories of varying quality, I’m considering switching to Substack. I don’t want this to come across as a rant about Medium, but there are reasons why I’ve been falling out of love with it. Although I often proclaim that I don’t write for the money, I still notice the trends on Medium. Over the last couple of years, my earnings have tanked. This first happened after Medium proudly announced algorithm changes in August 2022, if I remember correctly, and it has continued since then.

It’s not the income loss that bothers me but the direction. Imagine doing something where you don’t see any potential. I can’t be blamed for wanting some immediate gratification; I’ve been consistently writing on this platform.

While I’ve had an overall good journey on Medium, I now question this journey both retrospectively and as I look into the future. My past stories are still available, of course (every few months, I organize them in lists in the “library”), but no one reads them. They’re digital trash now, except for maybe a couple of stories pinned to my profile. And while Medium offers the potential to reach a very large audience, I ask myself — so what if there’s this huge audience? I want real, genuine followers.

But I have a few dilemmas. I already write on Substack; my publication, Running Writing Living, is dedicated to running. My audience there is much smaller than on Medium, but because it’s a niche publication, I feel like I’m writing to…