Hey Mel, congratulations on your first month on Medium. It was great to read your comparison of Medium and HubPages, and you are fairly spot on.
I know it can be frustrating at the start trying to become integrated into the community, but it will happen. The ability to comment here is what drew me, and also the encouragement of others who had ventured over from HubPages.

You may like to check out various publications here and consider joining, that tends to give your work exposure to more readers. The one started by a few of us from HubPages is called The Hub Publication: https://thehubpublication.com/

You are quite welcome to apply to join that and maybe kick start your readership. Just read the guidelines and leave a comment saying you wish to join etc.

What I like about here, as you noted, is the freedom of not having to cow down to too many rules and regulations and have your articles risk constantly being edited and tampered with. The only thing about writing for a publication is that you have to submit your article as a draft and an editor has to read and approve it so it takes a little bit longer to get your article published. Sometimes they suggest certain edits, but not usually anything major.

You still have the freedom to just publish on your own as well, so if you write anything a bit controversial or does’t suit publication guidelines you can publish it under your own name and not through the publication.

Thank you for the shoutout by the way. I am still writing at HubPages as well, but probably publishing three articles here to every one there. Oh and another good thing is you can republish anything from HubPages here as well, just not the other way around.

Good luck my friend. I will keep reading what you write, and eventually others will follow.