Carol, I've been writing on Medium since March 2020, I think. More than that, I've been writing for a living on the web since 1999. On every single site, only about 5% hit payout or make a living. I suspect, it's some sort of business model.

Also, the income of writers is adjusted all the time, as the business owners always get greedy. At hubpages, the income has dropped substantially. If you go to the shareholders report, you will see that the3 CEO said that profits were up because they'adjusted the writer's income.'

The reality is that it's pointless moaning about this. One adjusts, replans, moves on. I've moved virtually everything from hubpages. I've set up on Substack, and I will move other stuff to Vocal for various reasons.

Of course, not all my pieces work to the same degree. This, also, is the norm. I don't expect every single piece to do well. Writring involves a lot of luck.

A while back one of my pieces hit the big time. It had more than 40K views and about 28K reads. Why? It was picked up by newspapers internationally, and that sent traffic to my piece. It was just luck - that what I wrote about was timely. The right piece at the right time.

People who were writing on Medium in 2018/19 made a lot of money - 5 figures. Why? Because Medium paid by the number of claps writers received. The system was immediately gamed. There was a tacit agreement that if someone clapped 50 times for your piece, you clapped 50 times for theirs. No reading required.

Of course, Medium lost money, and adjusted the payment method. Now people actually have to read. This is done by the software noting people scanning through.

Many people will comment on a piece or clap without reading. Or maybe they'll scan through quickly. One might be paid a few pennies for that.

In order to earn a decent income on Medium, people need to read for 30 to 60 hours per day. If you post in your own publications, Medium will track how much time people are actually reading your stuff. This is one of the many reasons that I only write in my own publications. I can see how much time people are actually reading.

Here's another thing. You, like many others, write on Medium as if this is Social Media - as if people are your friends, and they're interested in what you have to say. With respect, that doesn't earn. Sure, it works for one or two people, but they take up most of the readership in that genre. There simply aren't enough readers on Medium for everybody to benefit from that kind of thing.

The people who earn regularly here are the people who write as if Medium is Time Magazine, Cosmopolitan, a newspaper, etc.

With respect, I do not want to mention what I earn. Jessica Wildfire doesn't. Umair Haque doesn't. and I'm not going to.

I also don't boast. You have people here writing about how they are 'top writers.' I've had that stupid label added to me so many times, I've long forgotten. I won all four $500 shots last year. I've made 5 figures a good few times. And, yet, I don't have that many followers. Tehre's more than one way to earn here. You just have to understand the medium and adjust.