It was a struggle, but I was in the first lot that wn $500, and May I made $3800 plus $500. If you look at the people I follow, I follow 177 people and have about 1700 following me.
However, until last month, I had 682 people following me.
I do not focus on building relationships. I focus on writing articles that people want to read, and I do it well. As a writer, my first work was published in 1962/3 and I've written and being published since then (on and off). I started writing on the web in about 1999. I was actually on the web in 1994. There were 3004 sites on the web at that point.
I have struggled my butt off on Medium because although I get a lot of traffic from Google, Medium was only distributing things I wasn't interested in - business, self-help, IT, and learning how to write.
I then wrote an article on how I muted all the writing publications, as well as all the writers who were writing about writing, how to improve yourself on this and that, and how to make money. That, to me, isn't writing. That's marketing, and in my youth that was called copy writing, and was related to selling things - marketing, public relations, propaganda, advertising.
Writers write to entertain, inform (news, politics, science), and to make people think.
It was my first article that did really well, and there was a large number of people who said they were in total agreement. A lot of people are really sick and tired of all the 'how to be successful' type articles. Anyway, that was April. It was the first month I went over $100, and then I won the $500 (the first time it was paid).
In the years I was a B2B representative, I broke all records for every company I ever worked for. I also had very little to do with other staff members. It seemed however, that other staff members deeply resented me, and I eventally always left.
The company lost a highly productive member of staff, but, of course, the bitches and bastards remained there working, content to do low-level work. It's way past time that task orientated people started ruling the world of work again. Since this relationship business has started, 50% of Americans are on antidepressants and 75% to 95^ of people hate their work. They don't hate the actual work - they hate the environment.
It was so much better in the days of my youth. Nobody was expected to 'build up relationships.' We were taught product knowledge, were excellent in our work, and that's how things got done.
Part of the reaosn that I fail at relationships is that I have Asperger's.