Move to a Better Internet in 2026.

Let’s be honest. You’re probably reading this for free right now, and that’s the problem. “Free” trained us to scroll past everything that matters. The attention economy has taught you that, outside of streaming services, nothing is worth paying for.

## The Case for Paying Attention (and Paying for It)

Which means nothing is worth making well, which means we’re all drowning in an ocean of content nobody remembers ten minutes after consuming it.

I’ve been writing here, on **Medium** since 2015. A decade of watching this platform stumble through identity crises like a drunk person looking for their keys. Different logos. Different designs. That weird period where they tried to be a journalism powerhouse and nearly bankrupted themselves. [The subscriber count jumped from 400,000 in 2019 to over 700,000 by 2021](https://www.semrush.com/website/medium.com/overview/), but you’d never know it from the way people talk about this place.

There’s no authority here. No prestige. Just writers and the people who read them. Which is exactly why you should be here.

## Two Million Dollars a Month

[Medium pays writers more than $2 million monthly](https://medium.com/illumination/medium-pays-writers-over-2-million-per-month-a2fb77c65b3a). That number should matter to you even if you never plan to write a word. Because [when you pay $5 a month for a membership](https://medium.com/membership), **portions of that money go directly to every writer whose work you applaud, highlight, or spend time reading.** Not to shareholders, not to advertisers. Not to venture capitalists. To the person who woke up at 5 AM to finish an essay about grief or tax law or competitive Scrabble strategy.

The alternative? You could subscribe to individual Patreon accounts at $5–10 each. You could pay for separate Substack newsletters. It adds up fast, and quickly becomes unsustainable for most.

Or. you could do what most people do and pay nothing, consume everything, and wonder why everything is AI slop optimized for engagement.

[The platform has 100 million monthly visitors](https://www.semrush.com/website/medium.com/overview/) and the average person spends 2 minutes and 16 seconds here. Not hours. Not days. Minutes. Because Medium isn’t sticky. It doesn’t gamify your attention or algorithmically trap you in an infinite scroll. You come here, you read something, you leave. Revolutionary concept: a website that lets you leave.

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to tell you that [over 50% of Medium readers make more than $100,000 annually](https://blog.medium.com/medium-com-audience-demographics-2024-2ab66ce7f2e8). That [the largest demographic is 25–34 year-olds at 33%](https://blog.medium.com/medium-com-audience-demographics-2024-2ab66ce7f2e8). That this is an educated, affluent audien