I love your take on this story. Perhaps gathering more data from other users could give you a better $/clap or comment ration, here are my stats.
My best earning story has $49.17, 1.1K claps, and 12 comments, 4 cents per clap and $4 per comment.
A story with $4.65 in earnings has 158 claps and 4 comments, is 3 cents per clap and $1.16 per comment.
I Iove your ending with asking what is success on medium. Perhaps success is something we create for our self like having a publishing goal that we meet monthly and not worrying about the money, but heck, we live in a capitalist society and tend to be motivated a bit too much by money. Whatever keeps us going. :)