Medium

I used to like medium, but while it’s pretty, I haven’t concentrated on it for months; every now and then I copy some stuff from the blog to the medium feed, but my huge problem is that I now have to pay for people’s content and they need to pay for mine. Maybe I should, but I question, as do others, whether Medium is worth it. How many of its authors can I live without.? And on the other hand, I want my content to be free. Their paywall inhibits people’s ability to read my stuff; it’s no longer solely  an amplifier. Although I conclude after research that I should subscribe, and maybe more. Subscribing and reading is good citizenship. For more, see below/overleaf …

I wrote about the problem where the distribution of ideas is critical and more important than revenue. This is a critical choice, do you want to be read or rich.

Back to Medium, in order to read more, I need to subscribe because they limit non-subscribers to 4 articles per month, and this is not enough to read and be generous with your feedback.

I have come to the conclusion that possibly the cheapest way to act with generosity is to subscribe and read those I really follow with care, I get to read their stuff and act with generosity to increase their earnings.

In order to get some money I need to join their partner programme. If I were to reinvest, I’d need to go back to the start (methodologically), concentrate on writing (probably a couple of times/week), probably focus on one category (which doesn’t suit me) and concentrate on titles. All this assumes they don’t change their model again, which has been unstable to say the least.

This is one article on increasing your followers, on Medium, and one on its viability and consistency,

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool you twice, shame on me. Fool me seven times, well…how much money do you have, again?

Not sure I can be bothered, and I need to ask why people who I really follow demand that I enter behind their paywall; it’s not as if its Patreon where I have much more say in what I support, but have to pay more! Maybe Medium’s low fee for many writers is worth while.

D&B say it made $1.95 million with three employees. (2020)

See also,

She also has a blog.

So what else is to be done?

1. Possibly pay for medium, there’s at least two writers I enjoy!
2. No competitors seem to be cheaper, and my doyens are still blogging and not monetising the blogs, but to me this maximises brand presence and would seem to be an essential part of any freemium offer. There’s some advice on google, but it may be that you have to diversify to monetise the writing. It’s what Zulie suggests. Mug’s are popular! Not sure if popular is the right word, but very easy to commission. See Photobox or Vistaprint
3. I looked at Patron, and feel that for me I must have a freemium model which requires a second site and while it may be cheaper for a single creator, they charge per following, this is not the case with Medium.
4. Sign up to Medium as a partner, it seems i have sufficient followers.
5. Use Google adsense or Amazon affiliates, although I’d have to improve my readership massively, I’d be lucky to make $150 per annum today and have always turned it down because I didn’t want to lose editorial control of my blog.

So I decided to give it another go,

1. cross post content from my blog, maybe check the wiki to see if that’s worth doing too.
2. become a member of medium so I can pass it on and before any of my followers drop off
3. fix the blog to automatically cross post
4. amend the blog’s follow me page, and maybe make a ‘follow me on medium’ page which may need me to make a referral trigger on the blog.

is there a difference between followers and subscribers? How to promote the medium blog?