I'm shocked you had a $10,000+ article. That's easily the highest I've seen. Did it get upvoted significantly right after publishing or was it a slow burn? Congratulations!
From my understanding the creator doesn't receive the money from upvotes that occur more than seven days after posting... which seems like creators might not benefit 100% from evergreen content, especially if it takes a week or so before it "goes viral".
I'll have to read that $10k article now.