Absolutely spot on, Susie.

Here, we have a ready-made website on which we can publish whatever we want (within some rvery reasonable guidelines) without having to worry about any techical behind-the-scenes website stuff. Medium comes with its own build-in audience, and it ranks well in Google searches. And it's even okay to post affiliate links, as long as you're not blatantly spammy about it.

For $5 per month, it would be a good deal even if we DIDN'T get paid for our reads.

Write because you enjoy writing and have things you want to share with the world. Any money you earn from your stories is a nice bonus.