Remember Medium? If you've been around long enough, you might remember it as the platform that changed the writing experience with its write-in-place editor, replacing the more traditional write-then-preview experience every WordPress blog had.
If you don't go back that long, you might know Medium as a place with some blog posts with a paywall.
I don't go on Medium much these days but every time I do I'm presented with a paywall and I wanted to see if that's generating more revenue than frustration.
Our App Intelligence answered my question very quickly, and the answer is pretty simple - yes, it's working.
It's working so well that since 2017, Medium's mobile revenue rose a whopping 6,968%.
In more absolute terms, we estimate that Medium's net revenue rose 14% year over year to $9.4M in 2023. And that's what Medium gets to keep after Apple's and Google's fees.
2023 wasn't Medium's fastest year of revenue growth, but it was the year with the most revenue. Medium's biggest year was 2018, where 1,061% growth led to its first million dollars from mobile, followed by 173% in 2019.
The US is Medium's biggest supporter by far, contributing more than 57% of the total. The UK, India, Canada, and Australia round out the top 5, each with a single-digit piece of the pie.
At a time when more publications are reversing course away from subscriptions, it's interesting to see a crowdsource publication able to monetize.
The same seven apps held the same seven download spots. Revenue told a different story, and a short-drama app from Singapore crashed the top 10.
MLB app downloads jumped 43% this February while revenue climbed to $3.5M, signaling a stronger season ahead for baseball on mobile.