I've never experienced the kind of growth from publishing in pubs that you describe, but perhaps this time will be different...

However, my god, that story about the editor of the pub you tried to publish it reworking your entire article? Jesus that must have been so infuriating. And that's probably why I haven't joined that many publications yet either, because I prefer something that's a little bit more free-form. Feedback is good, but reworking the piece is... I mean this is Medium, not a ghost writing platform.