Larry, I follow you because I appreciate your humor as well as your insights. And, personally, this article speaks volumes to me. I've been publishing articles on Medium for just over 3 years now, and I still have no idea how the platform works. Not a clue!

I began writing here to express my extreme dissatisfaction over the fact that a nincompoop like Donald Trump could become the president of my beloved USA. And the reason I felt compelled to write about it was that not a single one of the columnists I'd read daily were getting it right.

Oh, they'd get some of his more obvious shortcoming right, but they kept missing so much that was right there in front of them. So, I began publishing on Medium in an in vain attempt to enlighten at least some interested readers..

The problem is, very few people have read my articles. My second piece dealing with Trump's emotional maturity, garnered one really nice comment-- from the only person who read it! Or even looked at it! (By the way, that article is available here: https://medium.com/@uclabob/trumps-operational-levels-part-2-52885c87ffd5)

And I have 138 followers, yet not one of my articles has ever had more than 30-some views. So how some writers have thousands of followers is a complete mystery to me. And I've tried to find distribution tips from Medium, and, you know, crickets.

As for the pay for Medium's writers, fortunately, I don't have to count on earnings from this platform for a living. But the grand total paid me for 26 published articles, all representing a lot of work and research, is somewhere in the vicinity of five dollars. I can't be sure, because the total is too insignificant to keep track of.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your take on the situation. And I'm sure you can appreciate mine.