Yeah, those transaction fees, we get them when we mine a block. There's noone on the web collecting them. And noone is earning them in between blocks. When we create a block we put transactions in the block. We earn the new coins created in the block, plus the transaction fees for the transactions we put in the block.
I guess I misunderstood too... So you're saying we aren't accumulating transaction fees since December. The only transaction fees that are paid out are those that are part of the block that is found by us. Is that right?
Is there some explanation other than a long run of bad luck for why this is taking so long? Has difficulty jumped that much higher? Other variables?
Only variables that affects block finding is luck. Hashrate of the pool and difficulty play a big part in expected luck but not actual luck. In reality of course the ratio between hashrate and difficulty is the main driver of a pools efficacy.
Bottom line difficulty is going through the roof. It's doubled since the beginning of December. A pool needs to have doubled it's hashrate to keep up even with average (100%) luck. It also needs to be large enough to get its expected number of blocks within each difficulty change.
Bad luck will affect smaller pools over short time periods, but all pools no matter what size suffer from it. If a pool can maintain its Hash to difficulty ratio then over the long term given average luck, then Fees will play a part in how much is earned.