Substack vs WordPress vs Medium: which one actually pays?

The platform question is really a question about where your readers come from. Search traffic and email traffic reward almost opposite setups, and picking the wrong one costs you a year.

The short answer

If you want affiliate income from search traffic, self-host on WordPress. If you want paid subscriptions and you already have an audience somewhere, use Substack. Use Medium only to test whether you enjoy writing, and move off it once you know.

What each one actually earns

The row that decides it for most people is the last one. On Medium the audience belongs to Medium, which is fine while you’re learning and a serious problem once you’re earning.

WordPress: the ownership option

Everything is permitted and nothing is provided. You get full control of URLs, page speed, ad networks and affiliate placement, which is why nearly every blog earning real affiliate income sits here. The cost is maintenance and the fact that no reader arrives unless you bring them.

Choose it if your plan involves search traffic, product reviews or comparison posts. Budget roughly $100 for the first year and an afternoon of setup you do once — Hostinger with WordPress on top is what I run now, having started on Bluehost; WordPress.com is the managed alternative if you’d rather not touch hosting at all.

Substack: the subscription option

Email is the strongest relationship you can have with a reader, and Substack removes every technical obstacle to starting one. Paid subscriptions work from day one and the network sends some genuine traffic.

The trade is search. Substack posts rarely rank, so growth comes from recommendations, social sharing and cross-posting rather than Google. It also takes ten per cent of paid subscriptions permanently, which is cheap at small scale and expensive later.

Medium: the practice option

Zero setup, readers immediately, and almost no control. Affiliate links are discouraged, you can’t run ads, and the audience doesn’t transfer when you leave. It’s a good place to find out whether you’ll actually publish weekly, and a bad place to build anything.

Pick the platform that matches where your readers will come from, not the one that’s easiest to start on this afternoon.

Moving later

Migration is normal and not especially painful: Substack exports posts and subscribers, Medium exports posts. What doesn’t transfer is ranking history, so if search is part of the plan, starting on your own domain saves you repeating work.

Some links in this post earn a commission if you buy through them. They point at the tools I pay for; the comparison above is the same one I’d write without them.

I write up the platform and hosting decisions as I make them, with the bills attached.