It was a great story. I am on this platform for over a year and one thing i have noted that “The only thing that really matters is the Internal Medium member views” I have over 160,000+ traffic in the last 30 days but the amount of money I am making is just making me the top 8% of the earners.
Lesson learned: Not every view is going to make you a good amount of money. I find Medium new system very interesting and accurate.
You said, No one predicated one much Medium pay per 1-hour medium member read time? I will agreeably disagree with that.
I have analyzed the top 10 stories of mine and the average I find is that Medium is paying me $0.03 to $0.04 per minute member read the time. I have written a story about it on my Medium handle which if you want to read then you can read it here.
There were a lot of flaws in the old system of the Medium Partner program while the new system is more accurate and a needed system, you getting paid for delivering quality.
I hope this will helps.