How my Article Earned $500 in a Month

A beginner’s analysis of a viral article

Actually, I have a confession to make. My article has yet to hit $500 but based on its performance and trajectory thus far, it’s only a matter of days.

The article I refer to is “A New Style of Leadership Is Emerging”. This piece was published on January 24th, 2020. Also, it was curated and distributed the same day.

In the space of just over 3 weeks, earnings are closing in on $500 (see below). So I’m confident that I’ll reach a milestone and become a member of the $500+ club in a matter of days.

So for other newbies, this article is as much for you as it is for me to understand how and why this happened.

My inspiration derived from a great article written by Sinem Günel, one that I’d highly recommend reading. With that in mind, my intention is simply to add value, another perspective to complement Sinem Günel’s piece.

Below I’ll share screenshots of my data, thoughts, and commentary with insights in an effort to help my fellow writers.

So let’s dive in, shall we?

High-Level Stats

To begin, I think it’s worth looking at the overall stats for all my articles to get a feel for the timeline and identify the exact tipping point to connect events.

As you can see from the screengrab below, prior to January 29th, my views were hovering somewhere between 100–300 a day.

Compared to the more seasoned writer, I know these metrics are tiny, but this article is primarily aimed at new writers, for perspective, a benchmark.

Obviously something happened on January 29th, as illustrated in both screengrabs above and below. In my estimation, it seems that my post was distributed across channels on the day— email, App and desktop.

From a data perspective some dates worth noting (for views) are:

• 29 Jan 2020 — Over 1,000 views for all articles
• 9 Feb 2020 — Over 2,000 views for all articles

So within 10 days, having never exceeded 400 daily views beforehand, they more than quadrupled.

For transparency, my $500 article was responsible for 70–90% of this spike in views, depending on the day (down to 50% now), but that’s okay — traffic brings new eyes to other articles too — with new followers.

In contrast, the previous 30 days were starkly different.

• Views: 24,262 / 6,061 = 399% Growth
• Reads: 4,882 / 2,742= 178% Growth
• Claps: 577/ 318= 181% Growth

These numbers reveal insights about the non-linear correlation between views and reads. Whereas reads and claps seem to have a linear relationship. Also, the month before that (60 days ago), looked like this:

In the last 2 months, my views, reads, and claps have increased significantly. Here’s what happened in the last 60 days:

• Views: 24,262 / 3,631 = 668% Growth
• Reads: 4,882 / 1,748= 279% Growth
• Claps: 577/ 318= 341% Growth

For some reason (see below) when my $500 article was published and distributed it flatlined for a few days, 4 days to be exact.

This was the case until January 29th, the day it took off.

By February 15th, my earnings for this article stood at $422.43 (now $483.27 since I started writing this piece):

For reference, my next best article is a distant second, but still earning:

Whereas all my other articles range from a few dollars to double-digit earnings, certainly less than $100 in terms of lifetime earnings.

Choice of Topic

Topics are important for two reasons:

1. You bring a level of knowledge on a subject, therefore offer a unique viewpoint to share with others, which will increase your followers in time.
2. Also, topical knowledge is more likely to produce a higher quality article, therefore more likely to be selected for distribution.

As you can see below (bottom right of the image), my $500 article now tops the “Popular in Leadership” list. However, I’m unclear about the impact of this feature (on views and reads, etc.), as stats do not include traffic attribution.

At the time of the screengrab above I also had 5 other articles listed (distributed) under the same topic — Leadership:

1. What You Should Know About Effective Leadership Behaviours — 13 Feb
2. How to Implement Leadership Development in the Workplace — 11 Feb
3. How to Improve Cross-Cultural Leadership at Work — 11 Feb
4. What Is Ethical Leadership and Can It Survive? — 8 Feb
5. How to Create a Culture of Innovation in a Startup — 3 Feb

Whether these other articles had any relevance to my $500 piece published the previous month, 7–20 days earlier, is unclear.

My views and reads (stats) indicate otherwise. Although I’m certain it doesn't have a negative impact, so unlikely that there’s a correlation.

It’s fair to say that every article is evaluated on its own merit.

Total Performance

Overall, my $500 article represents a sizeable chunk of total views and reads.

As shown below you can see that my total number of articles published sits at 48, excluding this one. My best performing $500 piece accounts for more than half (60%) of my total views and just under half (40%) of total reads.

I have mixed views on this — I’m happy to see one article performing so well, with a tiny hint of disappointment that my other pieces are way behind.

However, as a newbie, I’m still learning so the contrast is beneficial to advance my learning and improve going forward.

Top Writer

What’s interesting is that I was awarded Top Writer status in four Topics around the time that my $500 article went viral.

I don’t think this is a coincidence.

As you can see below my first email notification was on January 25th (Entrepreneurship) and my second notification email was just 4 days later, on the 29th (Leadership) of January.

So on January 29th, the day I was notified about my Top Writer status in Leadership, my $500 article on Leadership, took off. So there seems to be a direct correlation here.

For context, my top 6 articles performed (filtered by reads) as follows:

I must point out that five of my top six articles were curated and distributed.

Note: What They Don’t Teach You At The Gym was also curated and distributed, but not illustrated in the chart above.

My weakness is clearly read ratio. I discovered that my curated and distributed topics perform worse than random articles:

That said, non-curated articles have much lower traffic so they’re inadequate to compare with high traffic, curated pieces.

This is something that I need to improve on.

Take my $500 article for example, if my read rate doubled, from 13% to 26%, the financial impact is significant. A €500 article is suddenly $1,000 at 26% or $2,000 at 52% read ratio, in the same 30 days.

So read ratio (retention) is a skill that I have yet to master.

Final Thoughts

Over the last three months, I’ve learned so much from other writers. My goal is to employ these lessons in my work— Tactics.

The tactics shared by so many experienced writers have definitely improved my clickability and appeal to potential readers and existing followers.

Top 10

Below is my Top 10 list of tactics.

The initial three features are by far the most important to invest your time in, as they are the first thing that potential readers see before they even click on your article.

I call these ‘Click-Fluencers’:

1. Headline — This determines whether people click on your article or not. I use Coschedule to gauge the appeal, aiming for a 70%-plus score.
2. Subtitle — The subtitle is one of a trifecta for initial impact and can influence reader decisions, so I make use of this feature.
3. Main Image — Again, this feature influences whether people will click on your article. I didn't give this much thought to start, but lately, I pay more attention. I feel the image I chose for my $500 article is relevant but recently learned that images featuring women have higher appeal (hence my selection for this article). Also, I tend to use Unsplash for high-quality images, with some personal images thrown in, depending on the story.

The following seven elements are the next most important once you test and master the ability to capture and draw-in readers:

1. Content — Reads are the only metric that monetizes your efforts, so it’s crucial to keep your readers engaged to consume the entire article — read the entire piece — otherwise its worth $0. I’m still working on this.
2. Secondary images —High-quality images peppered throughout your article enhance its visual appeal and reader retention. Consider using white space and punchy sentences to picture-frame these images.
3. Quotes — I love quotes and use them as often as possible, where relevant of course. They break up blocks of text nicely while underpinning your point of view to entertain readers.
4. References — I find this to be quite powerful. In the last month, five of my six articles on leadership were Distributed, and all six were curated. Each one was highly referenced including a reference list at the end. High-quality sites like HBR, Entrepreneur, Silicon Republic, Economist, Inc, and Forbes are some high-authority sources worth researching.
5. Curation — I can't stress this enough. Being curated gives your work an instant boost to a relevant audience. I can testify to the benefits of this from my limited experience. Over 50% of my articles have been curated, and only one non-curated piece was distributed. So curation enhances the likelihood of your article being distributed, further expanding your audience reach and potential earnings as a result.
6. Top Writer — For me, this had the single biggest impact on my $500 article i.e. Top Writer status was clearly advantageous on January 29th.
7. Marketing — Post-publication promotion (PPP). Don't forget to share your work beyond Medium. Personally, I use Mix, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to reach a wider readership.

Mentor

The last piece of advice that I’d like to share with my fellow writers, regardless of your level of expertise, is Mentorship.

When I started out 3 months ago, I decided to choose some writing Mentors (privately). People whose work I admired and resonated with me. Those I identified as being great writers to follow … experts I can learn from.

Here’s a list of my virtual mentors:

• Initial — Brian Pennie, George J. Ziogas, Jun Wu, Shaunta Grimes, and Dean Rocheleau.
• Recent — Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Joe Procopio, Marta Brzosko, August Birch, and Ayodeji Awosika, to name just a few.

In my opinion, I think it’s important to choose the type of Mentors that engage with you. By that, I mean people who read, like and comment on your work because their experience and feedback is an invaluable motivator.

That’s all folks — Go forth and write!