I definitely think the referral program is a guaranteed money loser, or at least not something that will bring in much revenue for Medium. It's hard to understand the value of it for them, even from an investor cash infusion standpoint.

I mean, for each new sub they pay half to the referrer, half to other writers, and keep less than a dollar. Even if we managed to bring them 500,000 new subs this way (highly unlikely) thats less than half a mil in new revenue for them. It makes little sense.

Personally, I have managed to bring in 41 referred subs so far, of which, yes, 3 of them were phantom ones that happened before I ever sought anyone out. Not sure how that happened.

I suspect my 41 is pretty good compared to most people on here. But keep in mind, I post my Medium pieces (and occasional referral links) on FB and Twitter where I have 317k and 141k followers respecively. So if someone who has that many follwoers is still only bringing in 41 referrals -- meaning less than 40 bucks a month more for Medium -- um, I'm not sure how this makes any sense at all.

Anyone who had, for instance, a really solid email list already, would just move over to Substack and start a newsletter probably, where they could get $4 bucks a month minimum after Substack takes theirs, rather than settle for $2.22 and the icky feeling that comes from posting those referral links in the first place.

So I agree, I have no idea how any of this makes sense for writers or for Medium.