MEDIUM RARE

Why 100 Followers Is Arbitrary

Or… Delving into the thought process behind why they chose to close the partner program to those that have under 100 followers. And why this has unintended consequences, which may not be what Medium intended.

Image by Author :) — And yes, there are 99 stick people followers

TL;DR¹

The Medium made a decision around the partner program:
1. You need 100 Followers
2. You need to publish every 6 months
3. No payouts under $10

I hope that they have thought of the unintended consequences of the first two actions (the 3 item I agree with them).

Table Of Contents

1. My Journey Through Medium
↳ 1.1. What Medium Probably Didn’t Realise That They Were Saying To Me
2. Arbitrary
3. The Marketing Meeting
4. The Challenges With (And Hacks For) The New Model
↳ 4.1. The law of unintended consequences
↳ 4.2. 1. Hacking The 100 follower rule
↳ 4.3. 2. Hacking the publish every 6 months
↳ 4.4. The outcome
5. My Goal
6. Finally