Views reduced from 11K to 3K when I pay-walled my stories on Medium.

Is that good or bad?

I joined the Medium Partner Program on the 4th of Feb 2024 (Just a month ago).

Before that, all my articles are kept free for everyone to read. After the 7th of Feb, 2024 I paywall-ed most of my old articles.

Then this happened. A sudden dip in views.

During January I have around 300 views per day. Now after pay-walling my articles, the number moved down to 70 to 80 per day on average.

The below screenshot shows the Jan stats.

The next one shows the February’s stats.

The change in the frequency of publishing may have affected this graph a little.

But the main factor is, that I lost a major share of views from free-readers.

I wanted to share my writing with everyone. At the same time, I want to earn through it too.

To balance both, I planned to keep my most helpful articles for Medium writers FREE.

I haven’t thought about this before. Most of my followers are free users of Medium. Almost everyone from my home country is also a free user.

Right now I am in search of finding the perfect balance between reaching the larger audience base and earning a decent amount out of my writing.

Any suggestions?