I hate paywalls
Don’t read this if you are paying Medium $5/month
I’ve put in a disclaimer right upfront. My article here is not worth the money.
Medium has a great content but a large portion of the authors on it are amateurs. Including me. But by being on the paid platform even a crappy writer like me, can potentially charge money or eat into a free article available for the month.
Moreover, for people who are shelling out the money, sub-par content is not what they are paying for. Don’t get me wrong, Medium is a great platform consuming content. But it is awesome for composing and I would not mind paying small fee for using the platform. But guess, that is not lucrative enough. Since writers are only 1% of the total users that the platform has. So there is no money to be found there.
But content creators need the money…
You are right. And traditionally advertising has paid for the content. It has continued to do so online as well. And it is really nice to see a platform like Medium remain ad-free for so long. Though my prediction is that some form of Native Ads will make its way into Medium eventually. I’m sure they are discussing this fiercely in their ivory towers as I type this article.
Also there are so many paywalls. I can’t pay for NYT and Medium and Guardian and all of the other great content I want access to. Wait, did I mention Guardian? Actually the do not have one, awesome guys!!
Also, I may be in the 1% in India, but seriously, I’m from a third world country. I don’t have that much money. Heck, I’m not sure most of America, apart from Silicon Valley and Wall Street has money for paying all the paywalls.
So the only way to get access to content is to accept the paywall OR accept ads, right?
No there is an alternative
I propose a single paywall for reading all articles and content online. Think of it as a ubiquitous oAuth (similar to Google or Facebook) that allows you to sign into any paywall content.
You make a single (small) subscription to the oAuth and then after that you do not need to make any more payments. The oAuth will make all the payment.
Both Google and Facebook are in a great position to implement this. And as person who appreciates access to great content more than being attached to a monetizable idea, I want to offer it for free.
Please do implement something like this. And psst… here, take my money.
By the way, how many of you really enjoy reaching this image below
