A couple of weeks ago I decided to do a little experiment: post the exact same article on 3 different media outlets: Steemit, Yours.org and Medium. The goal of the experiment was to understand how and in which way each of these media channels are helping an author.

The article is [China Forbidding ICOs: Why This Is A Good Thing For The Crypto Ecosystem](https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@dragosroua/china-forbidding-icos-why-this-is-a-good-thing-for-the-crypto-ecosystem) (that's the Steemit link). Here are the Yours and Medium links as well:

* Yours [China Forbidding ICOs: Why This Is A Good Thing For The Crypto Ecosystem](https://www.yours.org/content/87b75462818c2ed49d5e746bdea90720fb1ad707dd6f1d7eb8ad353fabac0d62)
* Medium [China Forbidding ICOs: Why This Is A Good Thing For The Crypto Ecosystem](https://medium.com/@dragosroua/china-forbidding-icos-why-this-is-a-good-thing-for-the-crypto-ecosystem-df4fa65d14f1)

Before giving you the results, a few words about each of these channels (excluding Steemit, obviously, since I assume you know how this works)

* Yours is a publishing platform which pays with Bitcoin Cash (!) and it is in a very early stage, although it was announced at least one year ago. In order to generate revenue, one must tip the author of an article, by upvoting. This process triggers a transaction by which a certain amount of BCC (established by the author of the post) is transferred to the author.
* Medium is a veteran in online publishing, but recently it was also doing baby steps in the pay-per-post area. There is a metric called "clap" (a sign of appreciation, basically a vote) which can be transferred into money, by using a special fund. Honestly, this was way too complicated for me to do further research. The process of becoming a beneficiary of this fund is also complicated and it's not decentralized at all (you must be "approved").

After one week, here are the results:

* Steemit post made $17.91 (off of which there was also curation, so probably around $12). It was read by 80 people, had 20 comments and received 101 votes
* Yours.org post made a whopping 10cents, by receiving one upvote
* Medium post made 0 in revenue, generated 6 fans and it was read by 169 persons

# Partial Conclusions

This experiment was way too simple to generate consistent conclusions, so I decided to call them "partial conclusions", a fancy term for my own biased opinions. But as biased as they may be, these partial conclusions may turn useful for somebody, so here they are:

* Steemit is by far the winner, simply because _it actually pays_
* Yours is way too young to be considered by a serious author, unless you're just copy-pasting your articles, hoping Google will not penalize you for duplicate content
* Medium is the leader of the "vanity" metrics: you get fans, readers but zero revenue. Don't get me wrong, even if you don't get direct revenue, a high-profile medium author can still make some money by old fashion "audience based" tricks: selling courses, speaking gigs, etc, but these are somehow on top of the writing itself, which is not an asset anymore, but a marketing expense.
* I think Yours made a very big strategy mistake by limiting themselves to Bitcoin Cash
* No matter which platform you use, creating and maintaining an audience is still your job. No matter how advanced a publishing platform is, it won't bring you the audience, you have to work for that.
***
_I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at [Dragos Roua](http://dragosroua.com) where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua._
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***
<center>_You can also vote for me as witness here:
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***
_If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform)_:
* [Rewards: Were Does The Money Come From?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-rewards-were-does-the-money-come-from)
* [Netiquette: How To Avoid Being A Steem Douche?](https://steemit.com/steem/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-netiquette-how-to-avoid-being-a-steem-douche)
* [Witnesses: What Are They And Why Should You Care?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-witnesses-what-are-they-and-why-should-you-care)
* [How Can I Mine Steem And What CPU / GPU Power Do I Need For That?](https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/steemit-newbie-faq-how-can-i-mine-steem-and-what-cpu-gpu-power-do-i-need-for-that)