This morning I woke up to a comment from someone who had been moaning that she used to make nearly $200 a month last year, and now she is not even reaching $100. She has twice the number of followers I have.

I tried to help her. Instead of listening to what I said, she came back with a sarcastic comment that people only read me on Medium. Then she proceeded to tell me that some of my stuff doesn't do well, and that her stuff does just as well as my stuff does.

I've blocked her.

No doubt she will think that it's because she hurt my pride or something. No, it's because without telling her what I earned, I don't have a leg to stand on. The truth is that during the last 8 months, my take from Medium, through various portals, has been closer to six figures than five figures. I also, during the past 17 months, have never made less than $500, and when I count the other streams of income that result from Medium, it's normally four figures. That includes this month when I only wrote for one week, and I'm already there.

I don't want to have to continue reading about how fabulous this one is, about what one should do to be a success on Medium, have writer's prompts for people who have no reason to consider or a writing career if they cannot think what to write about.

When I joined Medium in 2011, there were some incredible writers here like Yonatan Zunger. However, the New York Times, the Economist, and the Atlantic also published here. There were a mass of incredible publications that one could read here. One by one they left Medium, and, in October, The Atlantic closed up shop here.

People moaned about Medium publications closing. Ev Williams closed them because, he said, they weren't profitable. Their readership didn't equate to the same level that individual writers did. So he focused on giving individuals on Medium the ability to get more reads.

Well, as you can see, now the shit flows to the top, and people like me, who are primarily readers, simply don't want to be here anymore.

The bottom line is that the editors of Medium magazines weren't really readers, and if one is not a reader, then one seldom recognises good writing. It's all very well asking an outside expert to submit an article on some point or other, but if s/he can't write well, all the expertise in the world won't make a reader read it.

I have made the difficult decision not to read here anymore. It just upsets me too much.