Why my stories will never be part of Medium’s paywall 🤷♂️
I love Medium. It makes my articles look so much better than its content </sarcasm>.
And as a VC investor, I understand that at some point you could expect some monetization on the 100M+ monthly active Medium readers. I myself pay $5/month to read unlimited paid articles on Medium. That’s why you see that green circle around my profile photo.
If only 1% of Medium’s user base converts into paying users, you have a $60M ARR business. With 90 employees, you probably have a business generating ~85% margin. Then I am not sure how much of that margin goes back to writers. But as an investor, increasing revenues is a trend I like to witness. Especially, after the recent digital media cooldown (Where is AOL when you need them? Or News Corp?)
Medium has been incredibly helpful to some of my stories, promoting a few of them, leading to thousands of emails pushed to people around the globe, and then enormous view counts. I owe it to the Medium editors!
However, the policy has recently evolved so that if you want to be “curated” and pushed to the community, your article must go through the paywall.
It makes sense. I understand Medium. You gotta feed the hand that likes you, not the one that bites you.
Nevertheless, my main reason for writing and sharing experiences is to help entrepreneurs become VC compatible, avoid making the mistakes I did, and ensure they understand the VC point of view.
My message aims to be global and is not intended to differentiate.
I know Medium gives you 3 free articles a month — but Medium has many more good resources than my articles — see Sahil Lavingia, Jean de la Rochebrochard, or The Family for example.
So I promise here that my articles will always be “open source”, free to all, and that my inbox is just one click away. (🤞 I haven’t pissed off anyone at Medium). For writers who want to make a living out of your art, I am paying my monthly dues and I support you!