Why your $5 per month are worth it to pay for Medium
I will give you 8 reasons why Paid Medium membership is gold.
Until a few days back, I was reading articles on the Medium that didn’t have a metered paywall. Even when I read articles, either they are in the first 3 free articles of the month or I used open them in incognito and read those articles. It wasn’t always a great feeling reading in incognito. A couple of times I felt guilty doing it. But still, I didn’t pay Medium because I didn’t believe that I would be reading content from Medium regularly.
One of my friends is an author and she told me about how she was making some good money on Medium (good side income). I started writing in this lockdown on my blog and I thought of giving it a shot in Medium too.
Medium may pay for my writing when paid users read. So I thought I should sign up for Medium and see how the content would look like in the paid version. I was shocked to see Gold of content hidden behind the Metered Paywall. Now I read from Medium almost every day.
Here I am listing out a few reasons for why you should have paid subscription in Medium.
Disclaimer: In no way, Medium is paying me for this article(obviously). I felt I missed so much of good content not knowing what’s behind the paywall here on medium. I wanted to take a bit of time and convey my thoughts so it can be useful for you on how this platform will help you. (Just like I may have conveyed about a book that you would buy to read)
1) Better Quality (because writers get paid)
Writers who keep their content behind the metered paywall get money only when there are more readers. The only way to consistently get more readers and have fans is to put out more content that is useful.
For this reason, Writers are forced intrinsically to write more and better content. Now it’s not just about the content, now they think deeply about engaging you throughout the article too.
2) Exclusive Content
Since more page views will get writers more dollars, they would keep the content exclusive only on Medium. This is the content that may not be available in books or blogs outside.
Most writers here write from personal experience or with scientific proofs for most of the topics. That’s the only way to keep it relatable to the reader. This kind of content, I have seen only on Medium.
3) Read Variety Every Day
If I follow Ryan Holiday, then I know I am following only stoicism and maybe about PR hacks. With Mark Mansion, I may be learning about making my life better(self-help). But You and Me are more than one topic. I mean to say, our lives have more dimensions like work, physical health, mental health, politics, etc. Medium allows you to follow experts and publications that you are interested in. All topics with deep content.
4) Tailored Articles
The first couple of days or so, I was a bit annoyed because I was getting not so relevant articles. But Once I started reading, the platform started showing relevant articles on the home page. Now when I open my home page. I literally have to take time to select the best title to read. And the good part it. There won’t be clickbait headings most of the time. And the articles are usually great content.
5) You can Clap and Interact with the Author
If you are a non-paid member on Medium, you may be read in the first 3 free articles every month which is fine. But post that, if you are reading the article using incognito, that means you are not logged in to your account. In paid membership, you can log in with your own account and send private notes to the author related to the specific content they wrote. You can clap for them if you like their content and appreciate them. You can comment on the articles and interact with the author too. It’s a nice thing to do.
6) You can bookmark and highlight your content
I already bookmarked a few articles for future reference. There was an article about books to read for Product Managers. I cannot possibly read all those books in 1 day. So I bookmarked it. Unlike browsers, the home page shows the bookmarked pages so you will be reminded about them.
You can high light content too for your future reference. You can come back to anytime to see these references of content that you are highlighting. Keeping all-powerful points that are useful for you at one place is a nice thing to do.
7) When You Invest In Something, You Find It Valuable
When you invest(money) in something, you become more invested(time) in it. Once you pay to the platform, you will start feeling that you own something here and you want to extract the value.
Given, the content is good. You will end up reading one or more articles every day and the ball keeps rolling. You will probably learn about a lot of new things. In a few articles, you will see a lot of relatable content with your life.
8) It’s cheap and worth it.
Let’s be honest, most of us can afford $5 (Rs.300–350) per month. Maybe sometimes, its a one order cost in a restaurant. But we don’t pay to medium because we do not know if it will provide value for us.
I get it, I was thinking similarly like you. But don’t do the same mistake as I did thinking it won’t be worth it. Trust and give it a shot for a month. If you lose, you lose $5. Think it as a time where you ordered food and you dint like it and never went back to that place.
You may or may not read throughout the year. You can cancel the subscription any month you seem to be busy. You can get back, only when you want to come back.
That’s all from my side. Now it’s for you to decide.
PS: Did you find this article useful? If I kept this in metered paywall, you would have missed this content if you weren’t a paid Medium user.
