…. And I Bought the Medium Membership
After about 25 days of being active here
When I started giving Medium some serious consideration, sometime around the beginning of this month (December 2018), I was fascinated by the green ring around some profiles. I tried to click on the image to see if they have shared a story (the way it works on Instagram).
Then I realized that some of the best posts are accessible only to the people with a green circle around their DP (display picture) and we had to pay for it.
My first response was a negative one- I don’t remember the last time I came across a famous website that was asking me to pay to read the content.
Then I learned about how Medium is asking for just 5 USD per month to pay the authors and keep the platform ad-free. I had made up my mind to write — not just read here and was determined to pay for the membership from the amount I earn by writing here. But I am from India and the payment instrument Stripe used by Medium is not available here yet 😢.
I kept seeing more and more locked posts and the fascination for that green ring was still there. I started seeing the green ring as a symbol of commitment to the platform and investment in learning. I decided I will gift myself the membership on New Year.
The amount they are asking is not too much. I do end up spending more than that if I decide to order a meal online — not to mention going out and drinking with friends. And the reason I started hating Quora was those annoying ‘sponsored content’ — which are worse than ads because Adblocker in my browser can’t block them and the way they sneak into my feed made me sick 🤢.
It is Christmas Evening and I decided to be my own Santa and gift myself the membership six days before the schedule.
I am yet to explore all the benefits I get as part of the paid membership, but I absolutely loved the feature that enables us to listen to the articles.
