No. Earning comes from reads of stories. How much you get varies based on how much the reader spends on Medium overall. Your hard-core fans actually generate less $/read than your occasional readers. Also, reads on older stories (months or years old) tend to make more $$$ per minute read than brand new stories.

The reason why Medium recommends clapping and commenting is because of reader psychology. Seeing a story with many claps and comments is more intriguing than one without, so has a higher potential for generating more reads.