Clarification on Publishing My Articles on SubStack and Vocal
More free articles, More benefits for paid subscribers
I started SubStack with the hope of better communication with my readers, as suggested by some. I copied ~ 300 Medium articles over. Frankly, the outcome was below my expectations, very low percentage of paid subscribers.
First of all, rest assured, all my articles (300+) will remain on Medium and Substack. They are not going anywhere; some will appear on Vocal, a new platform, free to read. Secondly, I will continue to publish more articles on all three platforms. There will be some changes, positive ones.
The Change to my publishing on SubStack
From today, I will cease to mirror Medium articles to SubStack. Instead, I will focus on exclusive Substack content, specifically :
Selenium Training Workbook
Practical guided test automation exercises, a bite-sized web test automation training series with Selenium WebDriver. 21 so far, 50 planned.
Highly recommended for beginners!Idiom Stories for Software Professionals
Insightful stories from ancient wisdom for software professionals, 33 of them in total. I might add a few more in the future.Micro-ISV, a new series!
Mico-ISV is an independent software vendor with fewer than ten or even just one software developer. I have developed and been maintaining several highly acclaimed apps, such as BuildWise, TestWise, WhenWise and TestWisely, solo and mostly in my spare time. This series shares my lessons and things I wish I had known earlier. This will be of great valuable for ambitious software professionals to achieve their utmost dream: Be your own boss!
Please note the complete set of the above will be only available on SubStack for Paid Subscribers.
More Benefits to Paid SubStack Subscribers
In the future, I will offer specials, discounts, and opportunities to my SubStack paid subscribers.
The first special one is already on: Three My Free eBooks for Paid Subscribers (annual payment) before 2023–09–01. This effectively reduced the annual fee to ~$10 (from $50). Hurry! Subscribe Today.
If you still choose to be a free subscriber, nothing changes. But I recommend you’d better subscribe to my Vocal Media to read a big selection of articles 100% free, with no Ads.
Vocal Media: Free
I put my articles (existing and future ones) on Vocal Media to reach more audiences while still gaining a little passive income.
I like Vocal’s model:
Free access
No Ads (i.e. truly free)
Wonder how? Check out this article, “Here’s How Vocal Media Can Pay Per Read — Without Ads”.Pay content author by reads, even just $3.8/1000 views.
There are some writing challenges with small awards.
Some authors recommended Vocal for its Pledges, i.e. a continuous tipping system, such as readers paying $2.99/month to support authors. From my observation, my readers have been quite careful with spending, so I don’t count on that at all.
However, there are some limitations with Vocal:
Less formatting options, compared to Medium
Lacking some features, such as TOC generation via extension
Not well-known, i.e., very low inbuilt traffic
No code-formatting.
This is a big one for me, meaning a good percentage of my articles are unsuitable there. I already raised one ticket and got the reply, “Feedback sent to the development team.”No custom tagging
But, hey, it is totally free for readers without annoying ads, can’t complain.
Wrap Up
My writing links:
Medium: https://zhiminzhan.medium.com
Recommended for Medium Members, as most of my articles are behind the paywall. Otherwise, two reads per month, as Medium recently restricted the access.
SubStack: https://agielway.substack.com
Recommended for motivated software engineers and test automation engineers who are willing to be my paid subscribers, gaining access to a range of exclusive benefits.
Vocal Media: https://vocal.media/authors/zhimin-zhan
To read hundreds of my articles free and with no Ads.