
Medium asks $5 a month for nothing - rohmanhakim
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/24/medium_five_bucks_a_month_for_nothing/?mt=1490509095037
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greenyoda
Extensive previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954776)

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mattbgates
A good article, actually, and it will be interesting to see if Medium could be
successful at all with their model. I definitely agree, as I looked at the
plan: What exactly are they offering? Definitely could have thought more about
what they could do. Even I have ideas that I cannot not reveal, as I'm trying
to develop my own clever pricing model.

One of the hardest things to do is getting people to pay for anything. Even $5
a month, which seems like it is a cheap price to pay, is still $5 a month that
is coming out of someone's pocket. For many people, it seems like it would be
no problem, but just convincing someone to pay is hard enough.

I've been running a website for over 4 years now,
[http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com](http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com),
that is all free content, and it is kept running by volunteers who contribute
articles. A donate button sits up top and has been on the website for a long
time. I think I've only ever received one or two donations, resulting in less
than $20. Donations get articles priority to be published faster, but not too
many people take advantage of it and would prefer to just wait the two weeks
or so that it takes to get published. This is not to say that I have not made
some money off the website -- I came up with a text ad system that lets people
purchase space on the website on articles, or space on the front page.

When it comes to asking for people for money though, people want to get
something for their money, and there are certainly clever ways to do it. It is
just coming up with those unique ways, whether a website wants to give people
a certain amount of reads a month or to get exclusive access to early features
or features not available to the general public. Medium.com surely has the
traffic to get a certain amount of people to pay, but there will still be many
who don't see the advantages of paying.

I would certainly pay the $5 if Medium.com would help get articles I write
more exposure, even guaranteeing X amount of views/visitors based on pricing.
I mean, I won't say my articles are the greatest thing ever, but I have
published some useful articles, and my exposure has only been about 100
visitors or so after I've shared to Twitter and LinkedIn, so boosting that
exposure with each post would certainly convince me to want to at least try
out a $5/mo service.

It is kind of interesting considering the owner(s) came from Twitter, who has
also failed to monetize as well as they could have. Hopefully they do
eventually figure it out. I don't want to see any company fail, but it doesn't
mean that we can't learn from their mistakes if they do.

