Justin Zarb brought up an important point. Many of us writers publish on Medium for exposure. And it is the links from Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms that provide a good deal of that exposure. Checking my own stats, there have been times when my views generated from incoming links from social media outnumbered the views from within Medium.

If an article I write on Medium is behind a paywall then I lose all those views from incoming links and exposure to my article is significantly reduced. Of course, the only way my article would be behind a paywall is if I submit it to Medium through the partnership program in order to receive an undisclosed, mysterious amount of money. And I can’t do that unless I’m a paying member.

So essentially, as paying members, we are given the option of choosing between getting maximum exposure or giving up that exposure for an undisclosed mysterious amount of money. But we can’t have both because our article will be behind a paywall that significantly reduces exposure. And, of course, this only matters if Medium accepts our submission which they have stated that they will not do unless the article falls within a very narrow spectrum of subject matter.

So we are being asked to pay for the privilege of being able to submit an article that is guaranteed to have significantly less exposure in exchange for a very vague hope of receiving a very mysterious, undisclosed amount of money. Medium is forcing us to consider what we want the most; exposure or money. That is something all writers need to consider so perhaps it’s a good thing Medium is pushing us to think about it. ‘Do we pay for the hope of being paid? And if we do will how much we get paid make up for the loss of exposure? Will it make up for what we paid in order to get paid?’