I hope you found it worth the persistence!

I’ve been with Medium since the beginning and have followed its journey towards monetisation although haven’t placed any of my writing behind the paywall.

From a financial point of view this may not have been sensible because there’s a good bunch of my articles that have thankfully been well received with a significant amount of traffic. For me anything over 10K readers makes me proud although it’s just nice that anybody takes the time to read my musings given that there is just so much to choose from so I’m not overly bothered if nobody shows up. Often the writing is as much for me structuring my thinking than building an audience. That said, all feedback is a gift and it’s great to know that what I’m sharing is useful in provoking discussion or thinking here or on social media.

Discovery is something I’m interested in however which is why I was interested in your earlier cryptic comment about needing persistence to find my article. I wondered how you knew the article was there to find or whether you found it by accident.

If I understand Medium correctly they optimised discovery of articles that are available to their paywall than the 5K people who follow me or subscribe to my publications. The 5K people used to be the only way a couple of years ago and I think that generated more traffic to new articles quickly. I didn’t use the paywall because I didn’t want to put cash in the way of people who wanted to read my work. I may play with the paywall settings to see what works.

Thanks again paul martin for your thoughts on this