Precisely, 12 days ago, I initiated a move towards purchasing a custom domain for my medium publication. I even went ahead to buy benjamindada.org. That day, I received this email from one of the User Happiness Personnel at Medium Support, let us call his name A, saying they (Medium) were introducing “some changes”.
Little did I know that I wouldn’t be able to afford the formerly FREE custom domain set-up (bites fingers, I should have acted sooner).
Only for me to check my inbox today and see a mail from another personnel in a slightly different team, let us call his name Y, telling me “…a $75 charge will apply…”.
Considering the forex rate in Nigeria, that would be about $75 * 490 = #36,750. It got me thinking (hot tears rolling down), is this really worth it? I mean, for a student? and someone who isn’t making any money from publishing on Medium?.
Why is Medium doing this? Why now?
Already, on February 2, 2017, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote about Medium’s plan to launch a consumer subscription model this quarter, somehow I managed to miss the part about “this quarter”.
It was evident that Medium needed a sustainable revenue generating business model to remain in business, considering they had to lay-off 50 staff (which was a third of Medium’s staff) and close down their office in New York, as reported by Constine.
My only problem is, no one told me it would be this soon (I mean Q1 is still very much in force till March ending) and I didn’t expect this “new” model to affect custom domain owners (but hey!, what was I thinking?).
Well, I would be happy to see where this leads Medium’s financials by the end of this Quarter. But in the meantime, I am holding off setting up any custom domain till I am sure I have a direction for my publication. Or perhaps till the exchange rate becomes more favourable. In the meantime, #prayForNigeria.