Oh, no. I was speaking solely from the “artist's” perspective. What Medium set apart was unobtrusive interface design (no ads, great formatting, etc.), one of the best reply systems (replies were basically articles and were present chronologically in timeline), you could also see all user's replies, likes, and quotes in their profile (I did find a lot of great writing that way), recommendations were relevant, and much, much more. And last but not least, the features present actually worked. Imagine a sophisticated minimalist long-form Twitter without ads.

Hence Medium in the beginning attracted people who were predominantly interested in sharing ideas, not in selling them. There was also an enormous number of poets here. Though, as I said, even back then people used Medium for self-promotion.

When it comes to payments (yes they started in 2017 together with green halo paid membership), and it's just for illustration, I could not use Medium to earn money even if I wanted to because the last time I checked Medium supported only Stripe and Stripe is not available where I'm from. So that's that.