Thanks for the comment. There are very, very, very few income possibilities that have no costs whatsoever associated with doing business.

I started writing on Medium in 2016, but wasn't eligible for the Partner Program until early 2019.

So from the beginning until that time everything I wrote was basically unpaid work. Some of that was personal brand-building, but most of it was done primarily not because I wanted to make an extra $2, but because I had things I wanted to share.

Apparently that content (primarily technical) was valuable, because I started gaining followers and it didn't take long to pass the 100 follower mark.

My first month on the Partner Program (started just to see what would happen) generated just over $100. My worst month ever (when I started slacking off) made $35, while in several of my best months I was well within the top 6% mentioned in the article.

Further, Medium already imposes hoops that authors in the Partner Program need to jump through In the form of credit card and bank account requirements, payout amount limits, and so on. As such, I don't tend to view the $5/mo spent on membership as that onerous.

Especially since membership basically means I can read anything and everything people write on Medium, including my "competition" so I can follow trends and current behavior.

Further, as I've written (and as the article states), part of the reason this requirement exists is to impose a cost on the AI-generated content that threatens to overwhelm the platform. If you have a better suggestion as to how to combat this trend without any side effects then you should probably let the author of this piece know about them.

Sorry, it's late and my thoughts on this are scattered. Maybe I'll try to do better tomorrow.