April 2021 was my 12th month on Medium. I earned $4300. I have now been writing here for 29 months. At the beginning of this month, I decided not to write here anymore (I'm focused on something else). Then in my third week, I needed to write about things. So I wrote about 6 articles. I hit $500 in a few days.

It has nothing to do with followers. It has to do with the number of people who subscribe to you, who actually want to read every article you write.

The people who tend to earn here are the one's who tend to appeal to human appetite - sex, money, or the pursuit of happiness. They also got lucky becausee of the time they got in. (Unless they wrote about something completely outrageous.)

In addition to what I earn on Medium, I have people contributing to me through Patreon and Ko-fk. I earn because I write well (or so I've been told for the past 60 years), and because I write things that an extremely small percentage of people are interested in. They do, however, read me consistently because so few people write about those things.