Medium put a gate in its paywall and is allowing users who arrive at Medium from Twitter to read stories without any limit subjected by the paywall.
According to the paywall rules, any user who is not a paid member can read only 5 articles under membership program for free. However, the CEO of medium.com, Ev Williams said that from now on, all the users who visit Medium through links on Twitter will be able to view an unlimited number of articles without being paywalled.
“All @Medium paywalled stories are now free and unmetered when you’re coming from Twitter,” said Ev Williams.
While practices like dropping paywalls might sound like a terrible idea for most people, the people at Medium feel something else. They think that lifting the paywall will encourage new readers to join the platform. Besides that, it is reported that only a very small percentage of the total readership of Medium is coming from Twitter.
“We will certainly watch that, and if it has a negative impact, we may change this in the future. As it stands, Twitter is a relatively small (but important) part of our traffic, and we expect this to have a positive effect,” said Ev Williams.
The CEO also addresses concerns about the paid writers getting compensated for their work. He said that the writers who contribute to the ‘Partner Program’ will definitely be compensated from all the members who are logged in. This small percentage of traffic from Twitter will not have an impact on their compensation.
Medium’s subscription charges stand at 5$ per month or 50$ per year. There are many world-class authors and publications that are using Medium as of now. One of the notable features about this content sharing platforms is the paywall setup for writers.
Unlike other content platforms, you don’t make money by being dependent on advertisements. You make money based on the readership for your content alone. According to the stats displayed on the website, 8.1% of the active writers have earned over 100$ through the ‘Partner Program.’
