Some interesting stats there. Thank you for directing me to this piece. :)

I’ve given it some thought and I think you have too many red herrings to draw many useful conclusions.

You are focusing heavily on follower numbers, but the reason new people with few followers get a higher return per follower than established writers with lots of followers is that people leave the platform. So followers become inactive regularly. Number of followers does not affect the payout. Reads do.

The second red herring is your focus on views. Writers are not paid for views. They are paid for reads. Views are irrelevant, except for the fact that views that don’t turn into reads can lower your read ratio, and a low read ratio *does* adversely affect payment.

However, the concept that people are making 2 or 3 cents per read is consistent with my findings too. It still makes an interesting read.