It's very frustrating indeed - I can (and occasionally do) bang out advice articles in less than half an hour, but never the 'do this to earn X' articles which I hate. What I really enjoy writing are the well researched history articles or political pieces... they take ages to write, and they sink almost immediately with very little in the way of recompense for the time spent. It's a shame but I have started looking for other outlets for the quality work I do. Medium is overdue a pivot - and the next one needs to be back to depth of writing and quality of insight.... otherwise there will be a brain drain on this site. Reading the latest slew of 'top writers' to emerge already feels like we've had a brain drain.