As I wrote in my criticism of Medium over a year ago in https://medium.com/illumination/is-medium-a-malignant-narcissist-1f3d55793bf6 "The threshold question any writer who comes here in the hopes of making or supplementing their living from the MPP should be asking is what % of the subscription fees is the formula designed to payout? I figure Medium takes in between $5M and $7M a month in fees. For sake of argument, if the 6% average $500 a month, that’s $900,000. If the other 28,500 writers average $10 a month, that’s a shade over $1.2M a month paid out. I’m sure there are a lot of techsperts in here who can estimate Medium’s fixed-costs for engineers and server farm space and then we might have some idea where the money is goingI do need money, but I do not expect to make money here as I see through the curtain — I came here to grow as a writer, which I have, and as a place to share my ideas as a stepping stone to a career change that may be primarily as a writer or may be primarily as thinker, and in the process I have also gained more spirituality in the last 30 days than I would have doing decades of 12-step program work, so, while on a macro level I am bothered by what I see through the curtain I am personally thrilled with my Medium experience."

My biggest issue with Medium and payouts is how it effectively steals a significant portion of MPP by deeming what should be internal reads as external reads. https://medium.com/illumination/is-medium-a-malignant-narcissist-1f3d55793bf6