How good a community citizen are you?
AI disclosure: two images and a video have been made by AI.
I went to my Friendly Neighbourhood Bike Shop today. I needed to buy a couple of drink bottle cages to hold my pair of Zojirushi bottles, purchased online.
To my sorrow, it had closed up.
Oh, the horror!
I’ve been going there for about twenty years. What am I going to do now?
Uhm, not that I’ve bought anything there for a while. I kind of went online during the pandemic. Even my latest bike was mail-order. It’s so convenient to buy at a discount online and have Amazon Prime handle the shipping.
But now, when I wanted something immediately, my loyal local bike shop that had served me faithfully for years, was gone!
Melbourne was hit hard by the pandemic. A lot of places that depended on actual walk-in customers — cafés, restaurants, hairdressers and the like — simply shut up shop and many never re-opened.
My bike shop as well, I guess. Now, if I want something in a hurry, I have to go a little further and deal with strangers.
Bookshops, cafés, corner stores. So many places that struggle to compete with the big chains and online sales.
I guess the answer’s clear. Without customers, these places can’t stay open. The owner might work for free, hoping for better times but the rent has to be paid, the power bill, the internet, the water and utilities, all sorts of regular expenses need to be kept up.
I can pop in from time to time, buy something small — or place an order for something big — chat with the owner, and keep the place ticking over.
The same goes for Medium (and Substack) in a big way
Sure, you pay your five bucks a month on Medium — or a bit more if you are a Friend of Medium — and you can write away as much as you want, hoping for enough readers to “pay the rent”. It needs a bit of regular writing and posting to make your money back but if you are any good at all, you’ll do it month to month.
Rather selfish, though?
What about all the other writers out there? The ones you read regularly. Or used to.
Are they paying the rent? Are they struggling?
Could be. You might never know until one day you go looking for one of their old articles you bookmarked and find they haven’t written anything in six months.
Here’s a thought. If you have a spare minute or two, go and look up the writers you follow — you’d think Medium would feed you their stories on a regular basis but nooooo — and see what they have been up to recently.
Pay the rent. Clap, highlight, comment.
Unless you are reading one of the big accounts — and they have no trouble meeting expenses, for sure! — you’ll usually get a bit of friendly neighbour interaction from a like-minded soul. Another writer at the coal face, swinging a keyboard.
They might have some gossip, some tips and traps, some news you can use. They might come visit you back, comment on one of your posts.
You are helping to build a community. You’ll naturally gravitate to writers you like, or are useful, or have ideas you can steal, um refine for your own use.
And, let’s face it, these interactions help to “pay the rent” for you both.
On Substack, you can generally subscribe for free - and I urge you to do so - but those paid subscriptions add up quick.
If you want to upgrade your subscription, especially if the paid content, participation in community, or access to archives is important to you, then do so.
But at the very least participate in discussion on articles or on Notes. Leave a heart, leave a comment, restack, share on social media. These little things tell the writer that they have an audience. You can have a conversation, you can tell the writer what you liked, what wasn’t so great, and with honest feedback, everyone improves.
In a nutshell
You have a say how Medium - or Substack - develops. You want it to attract writers like you — or writers you like — and have at least a bit of the enterprise be a fun and useful place to hang out, then “pay the rent”.
Make a visit, read the articles, highlight something that catches your eye, leave a comment, have a conversation.
It can be like social media but let’s face it, Facebook and all the rest aren’t paying you, now are they? Not even a few cents for a long and thoughtful discussion with a friend.
They see you as targets for advertising.
Medium doesn’t. From day one, no ads.
Just good articles well written. Go out and find them, follow their authors, pay their rent.
They’ll stay in business. And so will you.
Britni
First published in SYNERGY 25 January 2024