> Medium minus the bullshit

I'm actually working on something with that spirit.

https://pluma.cloud/

We will put a "subscribe for updates!" form at some point. You can follow us on Twitter though:

https://twitter.com/plumacloud

>I'm actually working on something with that spirit.

Sincere question, not trying to be snarky. Since much (though not all) of the bullshit in Medium is their weak attempts at monetization, what's the bullshit-free alternative business plan to sustain and scale pluma over the long term?

Since we won't track users, sell data, or use ads... the only ethical option is having paying customers.

If you look at Ghost, WPEngine, etc, there are a lot of people willing to pay for being able to blog independently. We are betting that within that market there is a niche of people that want to do it as easily as possible, which I think is Medium's best feature.

I’m curious. Have any company or anyone implemented something like this? Basically let people blog and let author themselves pay (instead of being paid by ads) subscription fee to pay cloud machine that hosts their content.

I think something does exist in Ethereum platform but why it doesn’t exist out there anywhere else.

I recently checked out Write.as and it fits the bill. It’s a paid blogging platform (the backend is open source so you can self-host).

Svbtle is also good if you don’t mind mandatory Google Analytics that you can’t disable (I left the platform because of that).

Squarespace can also be used as a blog although it’s more general-purpose than just blogging and a bit more expensive as a result.

This was the model back in the 2000s before monetization was big on the internet. This is really the key issue, not whether RSS feeds or dead or if it is too hard for people to self-host blogs.

The internet has changed a lot in the last ten years. People have realized that popular content has a big monetary potential, and it is far easier now to get compensated (remember when YouTube content creators couldn't monetize?). More content is created as a income source, than out of passion or interest. Search results are gamed by commerical blogs. The average hobby blogger can't compete with that.

Wordpress.com is exactly this. But it's not new and trendy.

LiveJournal has worked this way for decades and still exists.

Dreamwidth is the spiritual successor. https://www.dreamwidth.org/

LiveJournal went closed source in 2014. It was also bought by Russians, relocated its servers to Russia, and began enforcing Russian law in 2017, which included laws against "gay propaganda", which was when me and my remaining friends abandoned the service for good.

And DreamWidth.org does LJ better in every way.

Letting authors pay for hosting/infra is what commercial plans for WordPress.com do.

Ghost.org offers hosting

As an everyday sufferer of the Medium bullshit, I've this on my idea bucket list, just never got to actually build it.