How will Medium make its money?
What’s the product, and who’s buying?
Medium is a great plaftorm for sharing thoughts. I have been using the service, mostly for reading, for about 6 months now and it’s become a big part of my daily routine. I wake up and I check out Medium, get some inspiration. Learn something new.
The design is gorgeous, mainly because it’s so beautifully simple, and the majority of the content is compelling. I have been designing and developing products for almost 4 years, and that’s a very difficult thing to achieve.
Sure, you can have a killer UI and some awesome features, but if your content sucks then nobody is going to come back for more, right?
My question for anyone reading this is not how Medium.com can improve in the future, but how it’s going to make it’s money? I mean, it has to make money at some point?
My first thought was advertising, obviously. However, I think what many users appreciate about Medium is how clean everything is, and how the whole site really is focussed on one thing. Content.
So then I thought of a much cooler way that the company could potentially turn a profit in the future. Print.
What if Medium struck a deal with major (print) publisher(s) that allowed them to take content from the site on a daily basis and publish it in newspapers around the world?
First, I thought that this would be looked at in the same light as the whole “Instagram is going to sell your photos thing…” but, it’s different with Medium because it’s your thoughts. It’s not something as simple as a picture, and that’s not being disrespectful to anyone on Instagram, or any photographers for that matter!
Maybe the author gets a %, I’m not really sure. This is just something that’s been on my mind for the past few days because a time will come when Medium *needs* to make money.
Hey, who knows, before too long we might be seeing some ‘Sponsored Posts’ in and around the site…
I would really like to hear some of your views on this, as I haven’t really thought this whole post through, I have just scraped the thoughts out of my mind and on to Medium. There could be a better way for the company to make money? If you have it, let’s hear it…
