They must know something in advance, because stories start to earn right away. If they didn’t estimate the split, they wouldn’t be able to pay us until everyone’s month is up, and you’d see money dribbling in for 30 days, even on stories that flopped on day 2.

But if a story flops on day 2, the funds stop on day 2 as well.

There does also seem to be a trend, which another writer noticed, for rate per minute to increase with viral stories. Maybe there’s a sound reason for this like people who don’t read much making that their only story, or maybe Medium skews it to reward those who write stories lots of people want to read.

I don’t know. Probably overthinking it, but I just wondered why my first example hadn’t done better, because normally, with that level of interest and number of comments, I’d expect to earn more.