I felt exactly like this when I joined. I make £hundreds per piece, writing articles commissioned by magazines. I thought the sums earnt for reads on Medium were really shit. The publications thing sounded like a con, so I wrote about it: I Thought Medium Publications Were a Con!

Then I wised up to the merits of greater visibility when you don't have any followers. They're not making money from publishing my article, to the best of my knowledge. But I know what you mean! New writers can't earn. That's not very nice.

As my commissions have fallen (due to pandemic woes), I'm trying to figure out how to make better money on Medium. It seems to me that writing about Medium and controversial topics is the way to go. But I don't like flack from controversial topics. And it's still a low rate per piece, even when you do that. Perhaps I just need 50k followers, then I'll be sorted. :-)