The 3 Things I Focus On In 2026
Simple is good
In 2026, my plan is simple:
Focus on three things that already work pretty well together in practice. Doubling down on those 3.
Writing on Medium for discovery
writing on Substack as the home base
and creating tiny Gumroad products that tie everything together.
None of these are new, but the way they interact has become clearer to me with each platform change over the last few years.
1. Medium
Discovery, experiments, and new metrics
Medium has changed a lot, and not always in ways that made writers happy, but it still does one thing better than almost any other writing platform: it can put work in front of people who have never heard of you.
That is why, in 2026, Medium stays the place to test ideas, reach new readers, and see what resonates before doubling down elsewhere.
Medium is best seen as one tool in a writer’s toolkit, rather than the main income engine.
The Partner Program can still reward longform, thoughtful writing, but payouts have become more volatile and the rules more complex, which is exactly why diversification became necessary in the first place.
3 things shape how Medium fits into 2026:
It still has a large built‑in audience of paying members, recommendations, and human curation, even if reach is less predictable than it used to be.
New stats, like “Presentations” in the dashboard, make it easier to see not just who reads, but how often stories are surfaced to potential readers.
Medium doubled down on the subscriber system and, at least for me, this has paid off immensely. My subscriber count has been exploding lately.
That combination leads to a practical approach: write on Medium to explore topics, learn which headlines and angles attract attention, and follow Presentations and reads as early indicators.
The posts that prove themselves there can then be refined, expanded, and linked more tightly into the rest of the ecosystem, especially Substack and products.
2. Substack
Home base, SEO, and stacked income
If Medium is about the article, Substack is about the writer.
That distinction is at the core of how Substack fits into 2026: it is my main home, archive, and relationship engine, while Medium sends the right people there. Often.
I use Substack to build and grow my audience. With Notes, for example. I use Medium to get discovered and distributed.
The practical layer is the redirect system: telling non‑Medium members at the top of a Medium article that they can read the story for on Substack, and telling Substack readers that Medium members can read the same article over there.
That simple loop lets readers choose their preferred experience, while you benefit from both traffic sources.
The focus is on the type of writing that fits each platform. Substack to me is:
The canonical archive: posts are public, link to each other, and can be discovered via search.
SEO basics with clear titles, internal links, and a logical structure, so that the archive keeps working in the background once posts fall out of the “latest” section.
Layer multiple income streams on top: paid memberships, affiliate recommendations, and product links, instead of relying on a single model.
Substack provides email, a public site, basic analytics, and payments in one place, which makes it a natural center of gravity when planning for another year of platform changes.
3. Gumroad
Tiny, focused products that match my writing
The third focus for 2026 is small, specific Gumroad products that sit close to what people are already reading.
Instead of thinking in terms of a single big “flagship” course, the emphasis is on tiny products that solve one narrow problem well.
A tiny product is easy to ship, easy to price, and easy for readers to say yes to, especially when it extends something they just read.
It might be a short guide that dives deeper into a popular newsletter topic, a checklist that turns an article into a step‑by‑step process, or a template that saves people from starting from scratch.
Substack handles subscriptions and ongoing access, but Gumroad makes it simple to experiment with:
One‑off purchases, pay‑what‑you‑want pricing, and bundles that group related products.
Different file types and formats (PDFs, templates, scripts) without changing anything about the newsletter setup.
If a short product connected to one newsletter issue sells, that is a strong signal about what to write and build more of.
If it does not, the downside is limited, and the product can still remain in the catalog for the handful of people who need exactly that solution later.
How the three focus areas work together
These three focus areas are not separate projects. They reinforce one another when used deliberately.
Medium brings in new readers around specific topics, Substack turns those readers into subscribers and long‑term relationships, and Gumroad products give the most engaged people something practical to act on and support.
A typical path looks like this:
A reader discovers an article on Medium, where it gets surfaced through recommendations and Presentations.
At the top, that article offers an option to read on Substack, where the same piece lives inside a broader archive and internal links.
Substack issues and pages, in turn, point to a handful of tiny Gumroad products that relate directly to the themes readers see most often.
The Bottom Line
Planning 2026 around these three pillars just makes sense to me.
Build where you own (more), grow where you are visible (and discoverable), and sell things that are small and useful enough to ship often.
Simple is good.
Like the way you present your goals, and in some ways, we align. I don't have a following yet, and a lot of what I want to accomplish seems so far-reaching right now, given my current situation. I'll continue to read your stuff and see where maybe I can learn from you. Thanks for the thought piece on this platform.