Are Shared Friend Link Reads Killing Our Payment Rates?

I don’t think the open door policy is benefitting writers

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

My latest article got the coveted boost -huzzah, there will be coffee this month, etc. What a treat.

But on my big number days, almost half of my reads have been from non- members. This is significantly higher than it used to be with well performing pieces, or even with previous boosts

Medium used to give non-members what, three free articles a month?

Now, with other members able to use their friend links on anyone’s article, it’s a veritable reader’s buffet here for non-members.

As usual, the writers are served last and paid nothing in this scenario. Unless you are a Friend of Medium, which I cannot attest to.

Supposedly those in the F.O.M. program see money for outside reads, or were promised such at the start of the program. I haven’t heard much feedback on the evidence of that though so please let me know if anyone can confirm this happens in the comments.

The weird part of this to me is I feel like my “outside”/non-member reads only really spike now when I have a boosted article. I guess it makes sense, when the average Google hit used to give a free read we had a lot more outside reads on random…