Carol, If people are reading you. you will earn. The fact that you're not earning is because people are not reading you.

I didn't write for 2 weeks at the beginning of this month. I dropped to $2.50 per day. Then I wrote an article. It hit $167 in two days. I wrote a few more, and that figure went up. Quite a bit.

The point is that when people read you, you will get paid. The fact that you are not earning is not because people are being paid a referral fee, it's because not enough people are reading your stuff.