Medium feels like it's the Experts-Exchange of article publishing, it's well indexed and comes up in search results, but every time I open a link and get begged to signup I immediately close it.
Hosting on Hugo/Netlify is kind of a good solution, but I feel like there needs to be a completely free, managed version. Setting up Hugo/Netlify is mostly simple, but it's one of those things when you don't want to deal with updating your local tech stack vs a managed service.
I feel like Substack is slightly better, although it still does lean towards "subscription" first services (but at least it's per user / patronage type model)
WriteFreely [0] may be an alternative. It allows you to self-host, or choose a hosting package. It also has a companion with paid subscription that is built on top of it, Write.as [1]. The nice thing is that all server instances are federated, and are gradually more deeply integrated with other Fediverse apps.
The business is going to a subscription model, because blogging for ads simply doesn't pay enough anymore, it has long stopped doing so.
All the big newspapers, Bloomberg, now even Reuters go subscription, because ads simply doesn't pay enough anymore.
And we dream about big advertising money for our fledgling blog?
Forget it.
If you want to make money, sell your body, not your brain, go Onlyfans.
Hosting on Hugo/Netlify is kind of a good solution, but I feel like there needs to be a completely free, managed version. Setting up Hugo/Netlify is mostly simple, but it's one of those things when you don't want to deal with updating your local tech stack vs a managed service.
I feel like Substack is slightly better, although it still does lean towards "subscription" first services (but at least it's per user / patronage type model)