3k Views and $69.17…
What helped me go semi-viral
Back in January, I wrote this article. It was a spontaneous post that barely took me an hour to write and it is till date my best performing article.
It feels like I’ve reached full circle because the first post was me pouring my heart out about not being able to reap the rewards of my labour on Medium. And now I’m writing about not one, but two of my articles going viral if you can call it that.
Alright, they didn’t exactly go viral so I’d like to refer to them as semi-viral posts.
The other post that went semi-viral is this:
I can now proudly say that I’ve gone semi-viral twice. And contrary to what most will think, this was not just luck. Though not guaranteed, these tips have helped me go semi-viral twice and has garnered me over 600 views over multiple articles. I want you to steal them.
Everybody deserves to get paid for their craft.
But before we get further, I’m giving you the opportunity of a lifetime to join the cool kids club by subscribing to Medium using my referral. With this, you will have unrestricted access to not just my contents, but to every writer’s work on Medium.
Build a Loyal Readership
Imagine waking up to Eminem releasing a pop song. Would you, a hardcore Eminem fan, who’s been following him since 2009, like it?
No, right?
That’s because you probably are a big fan of hip-hop in general if you’re a fan of Eminem. Not to mention, Eminem probably isn’t a good pop singer, either.
The same way, readers follow you to read more about the things you and the reader have in common. If one day you’re writing about crypto, and the next day you’re writing about divorce, your readers will not know what to expect from you.
You might be able to attract people to your article with your catchy headlines, and perfect grammar but you will not be able to convert them from a reader to a follower until you assure them you’ll deliver more of the same topic.
What I’m trying to say is — finding a niche is key. Sure, you can try your hand at various niches at the same time, but try to make sure those niches somehow are related to each other.
As for me, I write about writing, making money with your writing, and books. When I had just begun, I was writing about productivity, college, writing, books, life experiences, humour, etc. You can be assured it didn’t work out well for me.
To build a loyal readership, you need to pick a niche so that you can attract like-minded people who will read almost all your new articles.
Note: I’d love to say that picking whatever you love as your niche is the way to go on Medium and that dogs can speak English but that’s not how the world works.
Some niches do better than the others.
Productivity will always do better than poetry — we’re literally on a platform where 75% of the people get off to productivity content.
Make Beautiful Posts
I only click on YouTube videos with attractive thumbnails. Does that make me shallow? Probably.
But guess what, many other people do it too. That’s exactly why YouTube creators put in so much effort to make thumbnails.
The same way, as a creator, it is your duty to create beautiful and attractive posts. The reason I went with a picture of my stats instead of something else is because the white-on-white looks clean to me.
You might find it attractive or you might not. But I try to create posts that are beautiful to my eyes at least.
Another way to make beautiful posts is by cleaning up the prose. You don’t have to write long-ass paragraphs, this is not your English class. Edit out sentences to make them shorter and to the point. Break long paragraphs into multiple shorter paragraphs so it is easily digestible to the reader.
You’d notice that most writers on here barely write more than 3 sentences per paragraphs. There’s a reason for that, duh.
Write Consistently
I’ve recently gotten drunk on Medium success. But before this success, I was writing posts after posts for around $4 a month for the last 1.5 years.
And if you want me to be honest, I wouldn’t have reached this point if hadn’t been writing consistently for so long.
See, when you’ve been writing consistently for quite some time, something strikes and that changes everything for you. Over time you learn what works for you and what does not. You find your style and voice and what drives you to write.
In this span of time you master your craft, build an audience, learn editing and revising but most importantly, fall in love with the process. This relationship with writing makes you realise that there’s no shortcut to writing your first viral article and that you’d rather have it the hard way.
And then one day, you, without having the slightest idea, write your first viral article. And that’s when everything changes for you. For the better.
But Wait…There’s More
I WANT YOU TO MAKE MONEY. But for that, you’ll need unrestricted access to all my content.
You can do that by subscribing to Medium using my referral.