I think slow growth may be better and more authentic than sudden growth. It feels like the following gained is more genuine to me.

My growth has been fairly slow too. I began here back in 2016, but didn't join MPP until March 2022. When I joined, my following was only around 980+. My first month, I earned $13-something. My earnings grew modestly and slowly in line with my growing following to over $100 in a good month.

Before signing up for FOM, I'd reached around 5k followers by the end of last year. It took from the spring of 2022 until the autumn of 2023 to go from 980 to 5k.

Joining FOM gave me a marked speed up in acquiring more following to over 9k now in just a few months. It's true that with the increased following, my earnings grew to now averaging $200±. I just don't feel most of that following is authentic.

To me, it seems the vast majority of those followers have not been active on my posts, seldom even reciprocating if I engage on their posts. And, I get hundreds of non-paying accounts every week, often without any posts of their own, following me and cluttering up my notifications — they also seem to unfollow as quickly as they appear in my notifications. I know they've vanished from my followers because Medium tracks actual following increases and that figure is nowhere near the number of follow-notifications.