Sherry, I feel your pain--very intensely. I took a hiatus from Medium for a little over two months and when I came back things are far, far, far worse than they were before. Your monthly earnings for January were far, far, far higher than mine. My monthly earnings used to always be in triple digits but now for the same amount of writing I am very lucky to earn more than twenty bucks a month. The Medium system is totally fucked up! Earnings have fallen close to 90%.

Before last February (one year ago) I was curated between one and three times a week. Then I wrote an article that was critical of Medium's curating system. In the following year since I wrote that article I have not been curated on single time!!! That is how Medium works.

I was deep diving into stats the other day. I found an article I wrote almost two years that had 87 views, 24 reads, and 25 people clapping. I earned over $8. Then I found an article written recently that also had 87 views, but only 20 reads and 21 people clapping. I earned a whopping 92 cents! (For an article I spent over six hours writing.)

That is the difference between the old Medium and the current Medium. Is it only going to get worse or will it mysteriously get better? How long do we have to stick around to find the answer to that?

It seems like Medium is trying to discourage as many writers as they can who do not have hundreds of thousands of followers and hits. With Medium it is always about quantity over quality. ALWAYS!

As for curating I don't think Medium even has any curators anymore. Instead of paying curators they just gave that chore to top editors at the very, very top publications who are willing to do it for free. Not surprisingly, the only stories that get curated are those published in the very, very top publications.

Duh!

Welcome to the new Medium. They have fully embraced standard bottom-up predatory capitalism.

As for The Top Shelf, I simply have to say that I really, really miss P. G.!