I recently wrote that I was unhappy with Medium. Yes I know I had very little following and I was inconsistent with posting etc.. I get all that but as a content creator, I did not receive a free membership I had to pay my $5 a month like everyone else. I was FINE with that and the pittance I got in royalties did not pay for it every month, but I did manage to cover it a few times. I was hoping to build a following and get more consistent…
I made a pittance — but Medium dutifully sent a 1099 to me at tax time — and yeah I get it costs money for them but I would think they could have been more sane about it — only bothering when an author made over some reasonable amount (Not even sure what the true reportable amount is but .. like a lot of services seem to floor at around $600 a year.
I made a pittance and it did not even cover my yearly membership. I would have worked to grow that but they made a change.
Medium changed the rules to require a certain number of followers before you could qualify, and to me, that “barrier to entry” just felt crappy.
I did a lot of research and in the end I think Substack offers the no-barriers option I want — I plan on publishing all my content free — no paywalling, but once I get to where I’m putting out enough content, I’ll switch on a totally optional minimal subscription.
Since it’s free, I’m not in any hurry — if I never get enough readers I will just never turn on the a paid tier… subscribing is free and optional… (there’s a link below the subscribe that says “let me in anyway”
So, if you’d like: I will be over at
