I found out about this article because I subscribe to your Substack feed, but as is my usual practice jumped over here to Medium to read it.
As you know I don't share your negative assessment of Medium, so to me it was a no brainer to sign up for the friend of Medium thing. Because of that, you will get 4x the pennies you would normally get as a result of my engagement.
You're welcome.
You mentioned being on Medium since 2018. I go back to 2015, that is my articles do, which means I probably started reading it in 2014 and fell in love with the non-professional people sharing their experiences and pouring out their souls. The pros on the platform weren't bad either.
The partner program ushered in a flood of helpless self-help writers, 25-year old life coaches, and entrepreneurial advisors whose only enterprise, as far as anyone could tell, consisted of cliché-ridden articles on Medium.
Still, after a time I was able to make my 5 buck a month membership pay for itself, and found that by studiously ignoring the aforementioned horrors I could drive them from my feed. Now that I regularly top $15 anyway and could do much better if I got off my lazy ass and wrote more, my reaction to the Friend of Medium program was, "Where do I sign up?"
I'm still here and will be here until the lights go out, either my own or Medium’s. I've spent more time with Substack recently so maybe I'll get off my ass and run stuff there. But there is still music to be prepared and performed, yard and house work to do (until we come to our senses and ditch this monstrous house for something more manageable) and other distractions from writing such as reading the authors I've come to love, such as you, even when you waste your considerable talent complaining.