I Removed 25 Stories from the Medium Paywall. Here’s Why I Did.

When you’re writing as part of the Medium Partner Program, you can get paid for stories people read.

More precisely, you can get paid for stories that paying members of Medium read.

To learn more about how stories earn in the Medium Partner Program, go here.

When you publish a story, you can set it to be behind the Medium paywall, which makes it eligible to make you some money.

Although my stories were eligible to earn money, some of the 25 stories I took off the paywall were not earning anything at all.

When you look at the Partner Program Dashboard, you see just how little I was making for some of my earlier stories:

Why Make the Stories Free?

I write a lot of stories which are targeted to people who are already members of the Medium Partner Program, and want to earn from their writing.

But I also write stories that have a wider audience.

For instance, here are some stories that are not targeted towards Medium writers.

Now, as these stories are no longer behind the paywall, they can be read for free by people who are not Medium members.

And that may drive them to look at some of my paywalled stories, and perhaps even wish they were paying members.

So, having these free stories may lose me a tiny bit of money, but a long-term loyal follower is worth a lot more to me.

How to Remove a Story from the Paywall

When you remove a story from the paywall, it no longer will be eligible for earnings. However, as far as I can tell, any money earned prior to that point will still be paid.

To remove a story from the paywall, you edit the story, and then select “Manage paywall setting”.

And then uncheck the box that says Paywall your story and hit Save.

If you want to delete a story, or make it unlisted, rather than just take it off Paywall, here’s how to do it:

There are other reasons you might not have all your stories eligible to earn money.

• some stories are written to help people
• some stories are just written for fun
• you get to build your writing skills and explore different topics
• you may get followers from your free stories anyway

And you might have other reasons for writing, even if your Medium stories are not getting you to buy your next Lamborghini.

Some people just like to follow you and comment. Maybe you’re one of them.