VIRAL | READING | WRITING | PROGRESS | REFERRAL
I Finally Went Viral
Or “What to Write When You Suffer From Writer’s Block”
In my previous meta article that I wrote six days ago I suggested that I would not write another such article for quite a while. I planned my next one to be on Dec 1st, to post my November progress.
However I have been suffering from writer’s block today. I started writing a dark and moody poem and got stuck, perhaps because I do not currently feel dark or moody. I tried continuing a naughty short story… nothing either. The Muse of Erotica (Erato?) kept her mouth stubbornly shut.
I then tried finishing a recipe for a Greek staple I have in my drafts for a while, and I got lost somewhere between the frying pan, the sink and the oven. It’s a delicacy I have not made in quite a while and cannot recall all the steps.
So I chose the easy way out: write about my very first viral article. The very first to surpass 1000 views (edit: now 1100+ views). And I do not mean external views from mostly free/non members. It has 96% internal views and collected 25+ hours of member read time and counting. In fact it broke all my records except read ratio and number of fans.
I mean, of course, my story with Thomas Bergensen and this lovely German lady. The one I mentioned in my previous article too, but back then it was barely semi-viral:
I think due to a combination of various factors -the Redemption Magazine pub it was published, the fact that I regained the Short Story Top Writer status a few days before the story started gaining steam, perhaps its popular Oktoberfest theme and perhaps Medium’s tweaking of their algorithm- Fortuna smiled on me, at least for this article.
During its 4–5 peak days I kept seeing it on top of the ‘More from Medium’ list of roughly 8 out of 10 writers I read. So for some reason it was aggressively promoted by the algorithm. Then I started seeing traffic in its Stats from some other pubs. I think some writers recommended it, but I have not yet discovered who they are.
All in all this was a month of records: Record of views & reads in this article, record in individual article read time, record in total read time, record (the last 30 days) in both views and reads, record in earnings from a single article, record in total daily earnings, record in earnings the first week of a month, and finally today I got my very first referral!
I have no idea who you are, since Medium does not disclose it, but thank you kindly for breaking that particular ‘virginity’ :)
That would be all ladies, gents and binaries. I think this is adequate daily feed for the voracious algorithm.
A meta-record article my Nikolaos Skordilis. This is his previous account which provides a bit more context:
Are you feeling generous? Do your friends keep buying you coffee and you feel grumpy because they do not let you buy them? Does that make you feel anxious?
Rest assured. I have the perfect solution for you. Go here and buy me a coffee instead. But I might save it to buy a drawing tablet to start illustrating my comics scripts. No hard feelings if I publish my comics on Webtoon and not here though :)