Following 47k people?! That's ridiculous! There's no way he's ever going to read even a tiny fraction of what they write. And he could be breaking Medium's rules by excessively following people.

And the thing is, if you copied exactly what he does and succeeded, you might not end up with $1k. You might then both end up with $500. There's not enough money coming into Medium to pay everyone a high amount. There's not even enough to pay all the good writers. If you end up earning a lot, that means other writers are earning less.

And it's not like Medium gives clear guidance. Tony's not saying: if you write about topics ABC, keep your articles to X number of words, structure them in this particular way, and submit to these publications, you're sure to succeed. It's more like: write whatever you want, within the rules, and see what happens.

I question whether the whole thing is even a sound business model. Getting people to pay a monthly fee to read written content. The web is bursting at the seams with content, much of it free. Medium is not offering people a product or service that they cannot live without.

Apparently, Medium has about 200,000 to 400,000 paying members. Netflix has about 230 MILLION. YouTube Premium has about 50 million. So, if people are going to pay a monthly fee for content, they prefer to watch films and TV shows than read articles.