Embedding Medium posts on my website

A tutorial and short story about the beginning of my journey using Medium

I’ve recently decided to use Medium as a blogging platform. I chose it for the great combination of effective reach and quality reading experience it provides. Especially on the distribution forefront, Medium seems to be way ahead of other platforms I’ve tested, even if you’re new to it and do not have your network of readers formed yet. This is most likely due to it being a mature product, profiting from a combination of network effects and improved recommendation algorithms.

From a writer’s perspective, bootstrapping an audience is essential and poses a substantial challenge. To solve it, you need a combination of great content and discoverability, both of which aren’t precisely straightforward puzzles to solve. Creating great content by itself implies an effortful and time-consuming activity. So having a platform like Medium helping you on the audience front comes in handy.

On the other hand, choosing Medium as a blogging platform has its downsides. One of them is that you lose flexibility regarding your personal brand on the web. Internet professionals and hobbyists alike are used to the idea of having an exclusive corner on the web to experiment and express themselves. A place where they can develop their digital identities, and forge their brand, be it for fun or profit. As a matter of fact, this empowerment of individuals made the internet such a successful communication channel in the first place. The idea that google.com or yourownwebsite.com are equally available for most internet users is revolutionary.

As a software developer who built a career working with the web, I, too, own a humble place like that. And although this place is now just a modest home page with a sentence and a couple of links, I have always had big plans for it. I envision a future where I can transform my website into a true platform for expressing myself creatively and connecting with others—a digital manifestation of many ideas I have and that I would like to explore.

This poses a conundrum. On the one hand, you have the independence, freedom, and control of owning your own place. On the other, you get a specialized infrastructure and a network of readers…