I mange to make Medium pay for itself every month, usually with enough left over for a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or something, provided I get off my duff and produce a few stories each month. So I’m good, as they say nowadays.

The change in compensation rules that apparently dinged so many Medium writers didn’t affect me much because my non-fiction generally runs 3-4 minutes and my fiction runs 5-8 minutes. When it first happened I dropped down to like $1.25 but then noticed that was for four days, or one week, or something. They’d pinched off the last few days of the month, I guess because the rule change didn’t line up with the month. I wondered if the writers who were in such a snit at the time just hadn’t noticed that, but from what you are saying for many people the change from claps to reader engagement really did result in a long-term drop in Medium income. Thanks for clearing that up!