The Trick To Read Medium For Free
You don’t like sharing email, spam and would like to read Medium for free? I’m revealing tricks to not get spam, not reveal email, get articles you want and read Medium for free!
Usually I write about programming, technologies and open source. But today I’d like to address the problem some people have with reading articles on Medium.
As you know, not all articles on Medium are freely available. Sometimes you have to create an account, and sometimes you have to pay $5 per month to be able to access all articles here.
Also some people worry about sharing their email with Medium because they worry about spam.
In this article I’ll tell you:
- how to not reveal your email address
- how to disable emails from Medium
- how to get emails with new articles only from the authors you choose
- how to read articles on Medium for free
All in all how to have the full Medium experience for free and not get spam while controlling who you read.
1. How To Not Share Your Email With Medium
Dummy Email For Subscriptions
I know some of you don’t like to share your email with anyone because you worry about getting spam. I also don’t like spam.
Fortunately there are ways to fight it. I’ll go over available solutions.
First of all you can create a dummy email account just for websites you don’t want to share your main adress with. It can be Gmail, or any other free email account. You don’t have to check that email at all.
You only need to have credentials for that email in case you need to confirm your email.
Also check how often you have to login to that account so it won’t be deleted. Usually once per half of year is enought.
That method is great because you don’t reveal your original email. You won’t have to worry about spam, because you won’t read messages from it anyways.
Also in case of any account management tasks you’ll be able to access the email account and do stuff you want. So you’ll preserve the control over your Medium account.
The downside is that you won’t get emails about new articles from your favorite authors. To tackle that you can however create custom rules to forward emails with messages you want to read to your original email address that will be hidden from Medium.
Temporary Email
There are actually websites that offer disposable email addresses like Disposablemail.com. In a matter of seconds you’ll get an email address to register at Medium and confirm your email.
After that the email account is usually deleted.
That way you can have access to Medium fast and you don’t reveal your basic email address. Such services are usually for free.
The downside is that if you forget your password, or you’ll have to confirm your actions later, you won’t be able to regain the access. You’ll also won’t be able to get any emails from Medium with stuff you choose.
So that’s great if you want just try Medium before you’ll decide if you want to go further.
Email Alias
Some email providers offer aliases. Also if you have your own email server you can create a special account or alias for each service or one for all.
For example the free Gmail account lets you create an alias with the plus sign.
If your email is xyz@gmail.com, you can use xyz+medium@gmail.com to register on Medium.
That way you’ll see in your Gmail account if the email is from Medium or other service. It makes it easier to recognize who sends you spam and also makes it easier to manage emails.
The downside is you reveal your main email address. Some email providers allow creating anonymous aliases.
A Third Party Dummy Account
If you like to log in with a general service rather than providing your email each time, you can create a separate account. Medium currently supports Google and Facebook logins aside from email. So, you can create a dummy Facebook account or use the previously created Google account with dummy Gmail to access Medium.
Downside in case of Google is the same as before. In case of Facebook it’s risky to have a dummy account. Because Facebook may block it. But if you don’t care about it, it’s a solution.
Before you try any of these methods check out the next section because maybe you don’t need to do anything of this.
2. How To Disable Emails From Medium
The Internet and Medium as well includes some spam. For me it is very important to not receive any unwanted emails. Because I’m devoted to the GTD method and specifically zero inbox rule.
It means that I don’t receive newsletters, reminders about stuff that doesn’t matter etc. My inbox is empty 99.9% of the time.
Since that said, I was also caucious to not get any unwanted emails from Medium.
So went to settings and to notifications. The notification section contains settings for what emails you’d like yo receive. I’ve disabled everything and only kept on the setting to get emails about new articles from people I’ve subscribed to.
That way I only get emails from the people I choose to subscribe to and nothing more.
For the last several years I didn’t get any spam email from Medium, so it really works. If it didn’t I’d be the first to point it out.
So I can quite confidently tell you that if you don’t like unwanted emails you don’t have to worry about getting them from Medium.
Just after creating the account go to settings and disable everything and keep emails from subscriptions on. It will help with the thing we will do later.
3. How To Get Emails With New Articles Only From The Authors You Choose
Let’s say you don’t want to read all articles on Medium. You’re here only for one author you really love to read.
Medium lets you use it like you’d subscribe to that person’s newsletter. All you have to do to get emails with articles from that person is tap the author of an article you like, next click the email icon:
That way you’ll get emails about new articles from that one author and nothing more.
You can also unsubscribe from that author from the emails you’ll receive.
Just FYI you can use notifications similarly to emails too. You just need to install the Medium app. I don’t know if Medium also supports browser notifications. I don’t use notifications so you’d have to check it out on yourself.
You can try by subscribing to my articles if you’re interested in programming, open source and technologies.
To sum it up it’s really easy to control your inbox and notifications with Medium. It’s what I like about it. Not all platforms are so straight forward, here I feel like I own the control over what I get.
So far you’ve learned how to access Medium anonymously without revealing your real email, how to disable emails from Medium. Also you’ve learned how to get emails only from authors you want to be in touch with.
Let’s move to the most important part!
4. How To Read Medium Articles For Free
I know the economy is difficult right now and every penny counts.
In case of Medium to access some articles you have to become a member.
The membership costs $5 monthly or something like that. So it’s money.
But there’s a trick to read Medium actually for free. And I will share that trick for you. I used it, and not only I’m not paying Medium, but also Medium pays me!
So here’s a trick. You have to enroll in Medium Partner program. That way Medium will pay you for articles you write.
You can write literally about anything. As long as it’s useful, informative so that people will want to read it. For example a problem you had in your work and how you solve it. If your article will be good, you’ll easily earn at least $5.
So all you really need to do is write one good article per month and your access to Medium becomes free. You may even earn some extra money.
Of course you’d have to spend some time, like an hour or two to write an article. But it’s not a big deal. I like to write my articles at 11 pm. One article takes me on average 3–4 hours. But that’s only because I write usually about technical stuff and do a lot of research. You don’t have to go so far.
Before I’ve started to write regularly, I’ve been writing articles from time to time and for several years the amount for the access to Medium was covered by the income from articles.
You can also send people links to your articles in two ways — paywalled or friendly links.
You don’t earn money from visits to friendly links and people don’t have to be members to read them.
So if you like freely available articles you can write them too and share your expertise for free with people.
Also. you can directly invite people to subscribe to your stories. The link looks like this and is customisable in the settings.
That trick is great because you don’t have to pay to access Medium articles. It requires only a little bit of time each month. You can also earn some money. Or, you can just write articles and give free access as well.
To sum it up you’ve learned so far:
- how to not reveal email to Medium
- how to choose what emails you want to get from Medium
- how to get emails only from authors you choose to subscribe
- how to read Medium for free
Hope you enjoy it. In case you decided to use these tips let me know in the comment section!
I’ll make that article freely available so everyone can learn about these tricks.
As always, clap, follow and subscribe if you’re interested in programming and technology, my main topics. Cheers!
