Will The Referral Program Become The Downfall of Medium?

This could either go really good or absolutely awful for writers

There has been some interesting news recently about Medium. Last month, they emailed all writers who signed up for the Medium Partner Program that there would be more announcements coming in August about more ways of how they will pay their hard-working writers after the monthly bonuses ended.

And this is one of them,

The Medium Referral Program.

What are my thoughts? Will it be good for Medium writers in the future? Well first off let’s actually get into what this is because it kinda came out of nowhere.

I’ve seen good and bad reviews from other writers like Jim Woods and Daniella Mini about this referral program, but I’d have to say about 75% of the articles are about why the new Medium referral program is the worst thing to happen to mankind.

What is The Medium Referral Program?

About a week ago, Medium announced that they were creating referred memberships and changing the Partner Program eligibility.

Before, you were able to join Medium’s Partner Program where you would get paid for each article. Any writer could join since they didn’t give any limits on who could join or not but things are changing now.

Now, new writers who want to join the program have to have at least 100 followers and have 1 story published. Any current writer who’s in the partner program with less than 100 followers will be removed from it at the end of the year.

I like how they are taking a similar approach to YouTube where it’s now more competitive to earn money from the Partner Program. As long as you publish a story every day you’ll eventually get over 100 followers if you haven’t already yet, don’t stress you still have until the end of the year.

Here’s the big fish, the Referred memberships. To sum it up:

From ‘Evolving the Partner Program’:

Here’s how Referred Memberships work: For every reader who a Partner Program writer converts to a paying Medium member, the writer will receive half of that reader’s membership fee, net of standard payment processor fees. Referral earnings are recurring as long as the reader’s membership plan remains active, and will be in addition to Partner Program earnings based on member read time.

Personally, I love this as a writer. I think it’s a great alternate way of growing the platform and making commission rate money while doing so. I only promote promoting your referral link at the bottom of your stories or on a custom landing page because I know people will take this abuse of power and use the referred memberships to spam.

I’m not a fan of how anyone big on Twitter can tweet the link and have thousands of people sign up when neither the author of the tweet nor their audience knows anything about Medium or writing. Honestly, I’m a very optimistic person so that may be why I like this program so much despite its numerous flaws but we’ll see what happens in the future.

(If you want to see the actual announcement/email for the program)

Thoughts and Observations

Well, one thing’s for sure: anyone into affiliate marketing might have found a gem in disguise with this, and that’s not particularly a good thing. The amount of spam you’re going to see from people sharing their referral program is not going to be a pretty sight but that was bound to happen even if it was a different referral program. Anything involving getting money just through sharing a link will create spammers who are desperate on making an extra commission.

However, I think this program is the next big thing for getting Medium out there in the world. All writers should be happy about that because the more people join the platform, the better chance you have at one of your articles going viral. I have a gut feeling that Medium will soon become just as popular as social media apps like YouTube or Twitter and this referral program is going to be the start of that growth.

What are your thoughts on the Medium Referral Program?

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Check out another one of my stories on Illumination, if you liked this one I think you’ll enjoy another. Thanks for reading!