This is rather controversial. A lot of people don’t like a paywall. As long as it’s a paywall it is bad. I don’t hold that strong of a feeling on paywall though. Getting paid as a writer is very well justified as long as you offer valuable content.
This is no less or more decent than any other business. Having a paywall may reduce your reach, but also gives you more focus on people that really values quality. As for reach, I did some experiments and found out that Medium’s 3 free paid stories actually will be enough most of the time.
I put one free article and one paywalled one on Medium and promote it through Facebook. I didn’t see much difference in Facebook’s views ratio between the two.
Also Medium only curates stories behind the paywall and curation is HUGE on increasing your reach. So I end up putting all my stories behind the paywall, and the results are not bad at all.
The payment from my article doesn’t seem much, but it at least paid my Medium membership so I can freely read all the great contents.
You can test it out yourself and if you prefer your content the maximum reach then, by all means, set it as free content.
Also, for Chrome users, I recommend installing an extension called ‘Medium Enhanced Stats’, offer better UI and more information on the stats page.
