Just started writing on Medium and, like you, I am kinda baffled by this curation business. I used to write for the now defunct Allvoices.com who paid strictly according to the total number of views a piece received. But, of course, they had advertisers.

As for Medium, is there a way to know which “members” are following, supporting your work? Your 20K views with very few members reading a particular story is not encouraging. It also is not fair.