This Realization About Medium’s Referral Program Is Both Awesome and Worrisome

I just had an epiphany. It led me to a couple of thoughts about Medium’s referral program.

Here’s what happened:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing a steady increase in referral members that use my link to sign up for Medium. Hence I get money for each person.

This has now accumulated to an amount that is bigger than my earnings in my first two months on Medium were when I started a year ago.

Crazy, right?

Think about it. I earn more money for referrals than I did (and probably a majority of writers today on this platform do) earn for writing in a month.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. But should this be the case?

I’m not even a big name on this platform and yet this happened.

Think about the big names now. With ten thousands of followers, the writers that get thousands and thousands of reads on every single post.

If their referrals go up as mine have, they could be making hundreds, even thousands of dollars per month just through referrals.

Imagine a future where the biggest names don’t even have to write a story anymore, but still earn hundreds to thousands a month through referrals only. Well, I guess they have to write at least once every 6 months to not be kicked out of the partner program, but you get the idea.

Is this desirable? I’m not sure.