Prototypr + Medium Pilot Partnership

[Graeme]

Prototypr is an official Medium partner publication

Over the next 6 months, we’re piloting a partnership with Medium that will get you better reach when publishing on Prototypr’s Medium publication, and help you earn money from your writing, if you want to. Since we’ve been already been receiving submissions and publishing content that’s behind Medium’s paywall, it makes sense for us to experiment with this model.

We’ll be using this Prototypr Community forum as a place for you to get feedback on articles you'd like to publish in our Medium publication:

• Leave drafts and ideas in the relevant channel
• Use Chat to contact us for editing help. Here is much faster than email.
• Let us know your thoughts on the partnership programme

If you’d like to help edit the publication, please mention that too.

Publishing with us

Medium introduced their Partner Programme to enable writers to earn money from their work. Since its introduction almost a year ago, we’ve seen more and more writers choosing to publish their content behind Medium’s paywall.

It’s fine to publish outside of the Partner Programme - we’ll distribute it in Prototypr Weekly if it’s a good fit. However, your work won’t reach Medium’s homepage or be distributed to Medium topic subscribers. It’ll only be distributed to followers of your account:

Read more about the paywall and article distribution here.

The Paywall Dilemma

Content on design/code has generally been free for anyone to access in the past, as it is often supported by sponsors, or produced by a company selling a product or service. If not, the author can usually afford to share their work without profiting financially.

Not everyone is in this position though. There is evidence in the number of people taking advantage of Medium’s paywall opportunity. Whilst content has been free for readers, it has never been free to produce. The Partner Programme enables any Medium writer a chance to earn money from their work, without ads. This also results in content that hasn’t been influenced by sponsors, and the writer can get paid. We’re also happy to help edit your articles to tell your story better.

Read more about publishing on Medium here.

What’s your opinion?

If you would prefer to write outside of Medium’s paywall, at the moment, we cannot commission these articles. However we are happy to distribute your articles to subscribers of Prototypr Weekly, and publish them on our own platform outside of Medium. This will be improved in Prototypr 3.

This is a pilot partnership, so we welcome your feedback and opinions. If you’re a reader or writer that is being affected by this, please let us know and why.