Avoid the mistake I make every time my story goes viral
I’m now three months into my return to Medium, and my perspective on what constitutes a “viral” story has certainly shifted in that time.
In the first two months, I was overjoyed to have a story hit 1,000 views. Of course, I was early into this journey, so that was my only frame of reference for a pinnacle of success.
Enter November.
Somehow, somewhere on the interwebs, some person or algorithm found this post at my main account James Julian (I quit alcohol for one month and my side hustle income exploded) and it went nuts.
By this point, a couple of my earlier stories had touched 2,000 views, but it had taken months to get there.
All of a sudden, the story I linked to above racked up more than 16,000 views over the course of about six days.
I should be overjoyed, right?
Well, not so fast.
Viral stories are not created equal
There are a couple reasons for that.
The first, and most obvious, is that a massive majority of the views on the side hustle story came from outside of Medium. More than 5,000 came from Google, and more than 10,000 came from “Android device” — whatever that means.
If you’re familiar with Medium, you know the difference between blue and green on your stats sheets. Allow me to demonstrate:
So the most-viewed story I’ve ever written on here, one that generated more than 16,000 views, earned me a paltry seven dollars.
Constrast that to my second-most read story. That piece, which you can find at James Julian, is called “The one priceless book that kicked off my quit alcohol journey”.
It’s also my highest-earning story because nearly every view came from behind the Medium paywall.
(Side note: If you’re interested, I talked more about that story and my Medium journey YouTube video below.
Long story short: Blue means sad, green means money.
My biggest mistake
Each viral story generates value in its own way.
Green stat stories generate actual dollars, which, frankly, I’d prefer, but viral stories do put a lot more eyeballs on your work, generating potential followers, referred members, YouTube views, affiliate link clicks, or whatever else you may have embedded in there.
Whatever form they take, viral stories are a gift that have the potential to keep on giving.
And that’s where I always screw up.
For some reason, my brain processes viral stories as a reason to work less hard, not harder than ever.
This is a huge mistake.
By giving up the opportunity to pump out more great content while more people are reading your stuff than ever before, you are simply watching momentum speed by you on the highway instead of hopping on board and going for a ride.
The power of compounding
Massive success requires small actions and wins every day.
This was the subject of an article I wrote recently called “This hidden gem is the only self-help book you actually need.”
The book I’m referring to is called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (affiliate link), and in it, the author goes to great lengths explaining how to generate momentum and cash in when it hits.
As I wrote in the linked piece:
“As (Hardy) aptly puts it: success is not doing 5,000 things. It’s doing half a dozen things really well, 5,000 times.
“He explains how success is slow, arduous and sometimes boring. It takes discipline and commitment.
I regret to inform you there is no shortcut.”
As I also wrote in that piece, my favourite chapter is about building momentum, or as Hardy calls it, Big Mo.
Hardy uses the example of riding a merry-go-round as a kid. Getting moving from inertia takes a ton of effort, but once you get going, momentum takes over and it takes much less pushing to get the same result.
Another example he describes is using a hand pump to get water. You may need to pump a lot at the start to just get a few trickles of water, but once the vaccuum gets going, you get a flood with less effort.
If you stop pumping completely for a long period of time, however, it will once again take a ton of effort at the start to get going again.
Big Mo and the viral stories
Big Mo visited me when my stories went viral and I just said “hi” and let him go on his merry way.
My output in:
- September: 50+ posts
- October: Just under 30 posts
- November: Just under 20 posts
Unfortunately, this is my first article this month on this account!
Instead of keeping the momentum going after I expended so much effort pushing, I’ve let the merry-go-round come to an almost complete stop.
I did this despite knowing that the reason those stories went viral was because of all the hard work I did in the previous months!
I’ll never know how much more my account could have grown or how much more money I could have made, and that sucks.
So take it from me, when your story hits, give that merry-go-round a few more kicks to ensure you don’t lose steam.
You’ll regret it if you don’t.
Medium friends, thanks so much for reading this piece! If you enjoyed it or found it useful, please take a moment to give it some claps so others can find it!
My most-read posts:
- I made hundreds on Medium in my first month
- You’re depressed over low views on Medium — here’s how to fix it
- I tripled my hourly wage on Medium in my second month — you can too
- How I became a Top 6% writer on Medium in 23 days
- Writers need to steal this Taylor Swift creativity trick
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