You need an email list. If you create content on Dev, Medium, your personal blog - you absolutely cannot survive without an email list.

With the news of Free Code Camp moving from Medium
https://dev.to/ben/i-m-concerned-with-the-move-that-freecodecamp-just-pulled-by-leaving-medium-io8
You need an email list.

Imagine you wrote exclusively for Free Code camp. You built up a following of 20k followers. You were enjoying your life. Suddenly, out of nowhere, with no warnings what so ever Free Code Camp moves from Medium.

You no longer have followers. Your entire following just died within a matter of seconds. Their new publication doesn't have followers. There's no way to "upvote" an article. Your entire 20k following that you worked towards has just died. This has just happened to hundreds of people. Your followers no longer exist. They are dead.

Now, imagine you put social media links everywhere in your posts. You now have a social media following. Congrats! But, the platforms change their algorithms. You're no longer relevant. No one sees your posts. Your social media channel is now dead. You've just lost most of your following.

The only thing that won't betray you like social media or a platform is an email list. There are no algorithms in email lists. Let's say you built an email list and Free Code Camp died. You've lost 20,000 followers on there, but your email list is 10,000 strong. You move to a new platform and your followers join you there. It's a lot easier to start again from 10,000 than it is from 0.

Even if you think your platform is safe, like Dev.to. Why do planes install so many crash landing safety equipment if the plane doesn't plan to crash? Because it's safe. This is the same reason you need to start an email list right now. Free Code Camp was seen as a safe bet a few days ago, now the platform is on fire and your following is dead.

If you think "Dev is great, it's not going to die anytime soon" think back to the plane example. It probably won't die for a long time, but you might want to install crash landing equipment just in case.

How to start an email list

This should take you 10 minutes. Max. 10 minutes to save you from disasters like this. Personally, I use ConvertKit. Note: this is an affiliate link. I'll get money at no extra cost to you if you use this. You can use Mailchimp (free) if you like.

When you make an email list, you'll probably be forced to create a signup form in the tutorial. At the end of all of your Dev articles, simply link to your signup form and say something to get people to signup.

This is the easiest way you can get signups and create insurance for yourself. There are many ways to do this, but this is the simplest and possibly easiest method.