The thing that made Medium special was that anyone could post about something that mattered to them and get noticed no matter their background.
WordPress, Blogger, and other free things cost energy in place of money because they're top-heavy with features and weak accessibility. That's as much a blocker as a recurring charge.
[1] "But it's $70 if you pay the full year!"
That's not much of a deal for someone who's already wary about trusting a company with a direct line to cause a cascade of overdraft feeds.
$72 a year is not a lot of money. If you got a $1.00 coffee every other day from McDonald's it would be twice that.
The main reason why the web is such a sight for sore eyes in 2019 is that people seem to think $72 a year is a lot for having a voice. People can find 10x that for a new iPhone or spend that much on beer in a month or on a cable subscription but having a blog sure can't be worth much to most people.
For one thing, how much do they think their time is worth? That is 10 hours of time spent writing at around minimum wage in the U.S.
I don't get it. On the other hand, I don't understand how grandmothers spend $5 on acrylic yarn when they could spend $10 to make a (better) wool scarf that they'll spend 20 hours knitting. (e.g. the wool scarf will protect you in a fire, the acrylic scarf will melt, burn you, and produce toxic fumes.)
Perhaps it’s related to the tangibility factor. We do pay a lot (grumble, too much) for a new iPhone. But I have a reasonable confidence, that I can get 2+ good years out of that device. It may even have some resale value. The bi-daily coffee is something I pay a little for, but I can bet I’ll still like coffee at the end of the year. And if I decide to kick the habit, I can just quit paying at any time since each coffee transaction stands on its own.
Sites like Medium though are a place where people go to experience networking effects. Thinking about it in the long term might be like buying into a year’s subscription of speed dating at the local bowling alley. It may be all the rage with all the types of people you want to be with this week, but what does next week bring? The hot speed dating activity might move somewhere else. Or the group of people you want to hang out with there might be replaced by a different group of people.
Years ago, Brad Cox (of Objective C fame) wrote a great essay on micropayments and the Internet. I can’t find it right now, but IIRC it talked about why micropayments might be the way to go to fund intenert related activities. Unfortunately, my observation of MBA business models is that they have never wrapped their heads around how to implement micropayment models that reach that happy point where consumers benefit as well as producers.
It's a fair amount of money compared to a hosted Wordpress.com site that costs $0/yr (foo.wordpress.com), $13/yr (custom domain) or $50/yr (custom domain, no ads), and has the safety valve of being able to export and move to any other WP host including self-hosting at any time.
WordPress started requiring a premium package to add a domain. I discovered this during the checkout process when I decided to give them another try. $48/year at a minimum.
