MEDIUM STORIES
Am I falling out of love with Medium?
Feels like it…
I still remember the day when I wrote my first story on Medium, it was about the Indian farmer’s protest. I precisely came to the platform then to use its high domain authority to write something that can reach people. It was after when I wrote about the protest I scrolled writeups of people on Medium and found the abundance of poetry that the platform had, until then I was a family poet who shared my poems on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.
I tried my hands on Poetry too started writing my own, got a few readers and that’s how I was able to build a following of my own. It's been 1 and 1/2 years roughly since I joined the platform and I still love the style, template, front end, back end, and design pattern of this blogging platform.
I have made some great friends here, honest readers from whom I have garnered support on this platform. Also within a few months got a top writer tag in Fiction, Poetry, Art & Creativity topics; now this tag is discontinued but earlier it was there.
In some ways, Medium still follow this when you look at who to follow pages in each tag/topic. But I am seeing change even there as well, as the platform is including even publications in that search list. I tried writing Fiction for the first time out here and saw many of my stories getting good responses as well. To say the least, Medium was a happy time for me, and I expected a lot from it and in some shape and form, I still do.
On July 1, 2023, the Medium team came up with an expanded list of countries where they would provide MPP (Medium Partner Programme) benefits and India was on it. It suddenly created a jubilant mood back home as India had the 2nd highest user base of Medium on Desktop and the highest user base on mobile, and this was a long-due event that had to happen considering the growing number of Indian users on the platform.
It was only on August 1, 2023, that Medium came with the news that it could not start the Medium Partner Programme in the demography of India which led to a further delay of the programme’s initiation. The cause for the delay was said to be multifarious but to sum it up Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine summarized it in regards to the variations in the payout system and the minimum funds necessary for the payout to be a reason for the delay.
Payout system diversity was creating a hindrance and a new approach from Stripe was necessary to inculcate all these diverse rules and a nuanced payment system needs to come up to support a seamless transaction.
The delay however got further pushed and it's over a year now and the payout process is not still here in the nation. Whatever slight modifications regarding joining have happened are of no consequence as the payout system still does not support payments in India. I am only able to enrol on MPP but I cannot transfer any funds from my stories, when the payment system allows me to get the funds then it will be of any monetary benefit to me for using the platform.
It’s been such a long time, I even had a Medium sabbatical, but the platform is still hanging me by a thread, and that’s persistingly testing for me. It is such a sad event considering Indians are joining Medium in large numbers expecting so much from the platform, and the platform despite its best delivery is not able to meet the expectations of a large pool of writers and readers.
However, the Indian government’s non-assistance to platforms like Stripe also has to be given due attention as the regulatory environment and digital payments ecosystem is dynamic in the country and its evolving rules cause significant challenges for a platform like Stripe to operate.
I think Medium should move towards other alternative platforms to pay Indians just like others do. Indian market is big enough that they search for other alternate payment systems that can deliver the MPP payout to writers seamlessly belonging to the Indian subcontinent.
Despite all these challenges, I am still the jilted lover of Medium holding the fabric that connects me to the platform and not letting it go. And a big part of that resounding obsession has to be because of the readers that read my work. Hope the Medium team solves the problems and adds not only India but many more nations to the MPP to provide seamless advantages to budding writers on the platform who are here to write their hearts out.
Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing alright. Finally, I was able to enrol in the Medium Partner Programme and thanks to you all for your constant support in this endeavour of mine, without your support reaching this stage wouldn’t be possible.
However despite enrolling the payout is still not supportable for my country, so technically I am part of it, but still cannot avail the benefits of it. hence if you can and are willing to, do consider sending me a tip; any amount is appreciated; it just helps me keep my motivation intact to write better, think better, and form ideas better. You can also support me by buying me a book. Irrespective of the assistance, thanks regardless for reading my piece!
Thanks a lot for taking some precious time out of your schedule to read my work. If you like it, you can read some of the other writeups I have linked below. You can also subscribe to my newsletter in case you want updates on my new posts. I hope you have a great day! Thanks for stopping by!!!
