[nine_k]

I see why Medium is good for writers, and also somehow good for readers (it shows related articles which are sometimes valuable).

The problems with much of the audience is not that they do monetization, but how they do it.

Like many readers, I don't read enough Medium articles to pay $5/mo for it. I don't mind paying $5/mo for something useful, or sending a one-time donation. I gladly would pay, say, 25-50¢ for a good article, if I could do it without subscription. Such a commitment just feels unnecessary.

One way to do it is ads — good thing Medium is not pushing ads at me! My thanks. But there's still no easy way to pay a small amount.

I see how microtransactions are not economical. I wish Medium offered a "casual reader" plan, where I post, say, $10, and they go to pay per-article fees, not limited by time, that is, I'd not need to replenish it monthly if I haven't run into zero balance. This could be a gateway for more readers who just don't see the need to commit to a subscription. It could even lead to more conversions to subscribers.

[sunny--tech]

Yeah honestly if I wasn’t writing on Medium and was only a reader, I’m not sure I would pay for it either. I totally get the gripes from a casual reader stand point.

There are some unique approaches to this idea of casual viewing. I know Coil (https://coil.com/) is doing this with the whole idea of Web 3.0.

The idea, if I understand correctly, is you pay $5 a month for a membership, and any time you consume content from someone who has set up a coil wallet, part of your subscription goes to them. Like Medium subscriptions, but for the entire web.

The problem right now is no isn’t really an incentive to use it. It’s all volunteer based. So the payouts from it are pennies.

Websites would need to have Coil-only content that only members would get to see to incentivize adoption, similar to Patreon. But since it’s decentralized, it’s up to each site to implement it.