This is precisely why I created a medium account-- because there is already an audience that is reading, liking, and commenting on articles. I tested this theory by cross posting articles to both my domain[0] and to Medium[1]. The Medium article has thousands of views in a month and my domain gets maybe 20 views a month. This is partly because "publishers" pick up articles on Medium which shows it to a new audience.

[0]: https://www.ceriously.com/blog/post.php?id=2017-05-09-nodejs...

[1]: https://medium.com/front-end-hacking/promises-in-node-js-8-x...

I think that is the main reason for most of the non-technical people too. Medium started as a great way to be discovered. They have a minimal style that makes people compare the text and content. Is something totally different from host a weblog.

That and there's every chance tight web filters will block a random domain; I can't read the linked article, for instance.