How to Promote Medium Referral Links Without Putting Off Readers
Don’t worry, Medium automatically handles it for you
It’s been a while since Medium introduced the new referral program for its writers. If you missed the announcement, check out this page for all the details.
Call it Medium’s version of Patreon or affiliate marketing, I think it’s a really generous move to let readers support their favorite writer. A 50 percent split of the reader’s membership fee is a fair deal (actually, a great one if your story gets external traffic) provided the pie from member reading time doesn’t shrink much for the writers.
Though I must admit, I’m a little surprised seeing the sheer volume of member-only stories that are spammed with those membership links. More so, since they seem to be of little use. An existing Medium member cannot switch to your referred membership without canceling their membership (which I doubt very few people would do).
Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of CTAs. It ruins the whole ad-free experience I came on this platform for in the first place. But I’d let this thought slide for now and focus on the task at hand:
How do you promote your Referred Memberships links without making it obvious, least of all spamming readers who’ve signed up already?
Gladly, you needn’t ponder too much over this or do a thing.
Medium automatically takes care of your referral links with their new paywall modal UIs — a popup that displays the writer’s personalized membership page to the relevant users. And I’m actually amused they haven’t talked at all about this feature and instead put their weight behind the more active forms of referral link marketing.
Here’s how the new referred membership modal works:
Every time a non-member or guest user reads your paywall story, they’ll be greeted with a popup to sign up for your referred membership. Here’s an example:
The above popup is better than sharing explicit referral links for three reasons:
- It ensures the current lot of Medium members won’t get spammed with requests to become a member again.
- The modal popup shown to a free reader is a lot more pleasing to the eye than the intrusive CTA links — which honestly, reeks desperation.
- Finally, it makes sure a writer can still earn a recurring fee from Medium members without morphing into Medium’s salesperson.
Silent marketing is the best form of marketing.
That’s all for now.
