Beehiiv vs Medium – Which Should You Choose?

If you are wondering whether you should use Beehiiv or Medium, you’ve definitely come to the right place.

I personally use both products, and I use them every single day. 

I’m going to tell you the pros and cons of each, and why I personally choose to use both.

First of all, I actually think this is a funny question. 🤣

Beehiiv and Medium do have some overlap, but they certainly are NOT the same thing.  

You can’t just look at a side by side list of features.  This is where you need real experience.  

Note:  You may also be interested in our Beehiiv vs ConvertKit comparison

The simplest way I can break it down is this:

Beehiiv is for emails

Medium is for blogging

I know you can technically blog on Beehiiv.  I also know that you can have people sign up to get emailed whenever you post on Medium. 

But don’t lose sight of the main idea.  

The fact that they specialize in different things is the reason I love them both.  They work together synergistically.

Let’s start with what I love about Medium.  

Here is a link to my Medium Blog:  Andrew Best Medium 

I have 162 followers.  Only 3 email subscribers from Medium (lol!)

But in the last 28 days I have over 9500 views of my articles and over 6500 “reads” of my Medium articles.  This means that a high % of people who click on my articles actually spend a significant amount of time on the page (30 seconds minimum).

Medium gives me a ton of traffic in 2 ways.  

1. I get about 40% of my traffic from Google.  Medium articles show up very well in Google search.  They show up almost immediately after I post them too.  (Sometimes within an hour or 2)

2. Medium has a huge built-in audience.  I get another 40% of my traffic right from this built-in audience.  Many people go on Medium, just to read other articles on Medium.  A lot of those people pay a monthly subscription fee of $5.00 (or $15.00) just to be able to read everything with no limits.  Medium has no ads, and it is a beautiful place to read and write.

Another cool thing is that people with websites search for articles on Medium and actually post them on X (Twitter), or other websites.  I get traffic from those links too.  

Medium also has “publications”, these are basically separate websites centered around a certain niche.  The owners of these publications curate articles and post articles they deem fit on their publication.  I write for a couple of different publications, and I get a lot of extra traffic, and credibility, from posting there.

Articles in these publications help me drive traffic and awareness to this website, AI Growth Guys.  

One popular publication I often write in is called, “AI in Plain English”.  This helps me build my personal brand – the Andrew Best brand – which is centered around being an AI expert.  You can find me here on LinkedIn – Andrew Best LinkedIn

Another great feature of Medium (I haven’t enrolled yet but I plan to soon), is the Medium partner program.  This allows you to earn money when paying members read your articles.  You basically earn a small% of the monthly fee from each reader.  This can add up to quite a bit though.

It is estimated that people can earn about $50 to $100 USD per 1000 article views.  This estimate depends on what % of your readers are paying medium members, if they actually “read” the article, and a few other factors.  Regardless, many writers earn significant income from this.

In my case, I could have earned between $500 to $1000 from my articles this past month, based on those numbers.

The last thing I love about Medium is that it fuels my email subscribers.

This is where Beehiiv comes in!

I use Beehiiv directly on Medium, to collect my emails.  

In the middle of a Medium article, I’ll write something like, “if you want to learn more about AI, sign up for my newsletter”,   which you can also do now!

Here is what that looks like:

That is a custom email signup box from Beehiiv.  Medium has nothing like this at all.  

Check out this article on custom Beehiiv landing pages  

Also, once I get an email signup, then I’m off to the races.  I have the actual email address of the person.  (Medium won’t give you the email addresses, they just email subscribers on your behalf)

Beehiiv’s email marketing is incredible.  

I’ve already started earning money from Beehiiv emails in a couple ways.  

They have a great ecosystem of email newsletters who are looking to “sponsor” other email newsletters.  In the link I just shared, we were able to earn $1.20 for each click. It was surprisingly easy to earn money.  In the first week of Beehiiv, we were already offered 2 sponsorship deals (and we had a small email list).

Beehiiv has a great editor for writing cool looking emails.  

This screenshot shows what it looks like to make a Beehiiv email template:

They also let you incentivize your subscribers to find new subscribers for your list.  This is called Beehiiv email referrals

Long story short:

Beehiiv is awesome for emails

Medium is awesome for writing articles

I think you should use both.  That’s what I do.  

If you already use Beehiiv, I’d highly recommend you start writing some articles on Medium, and try to get your articles in a publication.  Then use the traffic from your Medium articles to get more emails using Beehiiv.

If you are already writing on Medium, then I’d highly recommend you start with a free Beehiiv account.  Then you can start growing your email list immediately.  

You want to get the most out of your Medium traffic, and collecting emails is probably the most high leverage and profitable thing you can do. 

So, yes, you can use both Beehiiv and Medium together, and I think you should use both!

Sign up here to start your free Beehiiv account now.

Also, for future reference, you may wish to use our Beehiiv consulting service.

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