The Medium Monetization Model

Understanding Medium, Part 2

It’s more complicated than it might seem . . .

I laid the groundwork for this discussion in Part 1. So if you haven’t yet, take a moment to look it over.

Now I’ll try to drill a little further into things that at least seem true about Medium’s current monetization structure.

From a big-picture perspective, there are two Medium platforms — one superimposed on the other. There’s the “everybody/free” Medium, and on top of that, the “member/partner/subscription” Medium.

As a matter of process, this seems simple enough: Free readers have access to all free content. Members have access to both free and gated content. Writers can produce free content, or become Partners and produce gated content also.

But there’s a catch. Writers have a choice between creating free content and gated content — and that choice is the only thing that separates the two platforms. There is no mechanism for ensuring that gated (“premium”) content meets a higher quality standard than free content.

How does that work out in practice, as a market strategy?

If we follow on with the store analogy from Part 1 of this series, the “two-platforms” model would look like this:

And they don’t necessarily know whether a given subscriber product is any better than another choice. In some cases they might recognize a brand name (that is, they already know the writer) — but if not, it’s just a leap of faith.

That would obviously be a problem if shoppers had to make a decision about each item. With a subscription approach, however, the customer is paying for access, not for the products themselves. For a relatively small monthly investment, they can ensure that whatever they see is available if they want it.

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