As someone who has written hundreds of articles, and interviewed many of Medium’s top earning writers — this is not only false but quite misleading.

Yes, for most writers there may be a higher chance that they end up making $1,000 from one article than $10 for 100 articles, but this ignores the true reason— most writers on Medium never make it to 100 articles. Heck, plenty never make it to 10.

I would also point out that while of course $1,000 is enticing, and yes, all other things being equal that may be very appealing, but earning that much on a single article often relies upon curation/being featured by Medium or certain publications.

Both Medium and publication editors are always looking for new writers, and they will happily replace you once the next talented writer comes along.

So that strategy may work for a few months in the short run, but it will not likely work for more than a couple of months.

The real benefit of a $1,000 article is the traffic, followers, and opportunities that this article opens.

All of these opportunities are predicated on future writing/continuing to write many more articles. The highest earning authors typically have a massive back catalogue of articles.

So while the sentiment that you should write higher quality articles is correct, Medium is far too unpredictable to rely solely upon this.

You need quality and quantity, unless you are bringing in a huge audience from another platform.