I Paid $70 for a Viral Article — Here’s How Much It Earned Me

I found someone on Fiverr to help me with a viral article idea.

If you’ve been following my work on Medium, you know I’m invested in writing and succeeding in this craft. The financial benefit is substantial, but my number one goal is to figure out how the writing game works, gain valuable skills and become a better writer. So far, I’m barely a writer at all — more like a blogger, I suppose.

Many of us try to come up with new ways to increase viewership. You can find countless articles talking about getting more attention, views and money — both on Medium and outside of it. Truth be told, some of that advice is jibber-jabber; however, I’ve heard a few valuable suggestions. Being the curious person that I am, I decided to explore some of them. And I started with investing in my articles. Here’s what I did and how much I got back from the investment.

The Investment of $70

People always say:

“Invest in yourself. It will pay off.”

“Investing in yourself and your work is the best thing you can do!”

You can find a lot of advice like that, and you may have heard it from your friends and family too. When it comes to writing, though, everyone has polarized opinions:

“You don’t have to pay for anything! If your writing is good, people will read it.”

“Don’t be cheap; invest money into tools and services to improve your work — it will pay off.”

The truth is, both of the statements above are correct. You can, in fact, earn money without spending anything, but at the same time, investing in your works is an excellent idea too.

As I’m typing this article, Grammarly is checking my work and correcting the typos. Grammarly isn’t free: I pay $160–170 CAD for it every year, depending on the Canadian vs American dollar exchange rate. The article images come from premium access to Freepik, which I paid around $50 USD for, or from Canva, which costs me $9 per month. Considering how much I write and utilize premium pictures, it probably costs me $1 per article for Grammarly, $0.50 per image on Freepik and $0.10 per Canva picture. And both of those services pay off because no one would continue reading a story with millions of typos, not to mention they may not even click on it in the first place if I use a boring image.

But Grammarly and Freepik — or other websites like Adobe Images — are actively utilized by many writers and bloggers. How about taking it to the next level and actually paying for an article or its components? So I decided to take the plunge. I opened Fiverr and searched for a freelancer to draw 5 cartoon pictures. I had a creative idea, and I wanted to give the “invest in your work” principle a chance. It was an investment of $70 CAD (around $55 USD).

SlackJaw Hates Me

Okay, I need to confess something: I didn’t just invest $70 to publish an article that may go viral. I did so because I have been trying to get into a Medium publication that has rejected me several times: Slackjaw.

If you like reading humorous articles on this platform, you certainly know this pub. I’m a funny person — or at least I think so! Sadly, Slackjaw’s editors don’t think that at all. Either I’m not funny, or I don’t get their writing style or sense of humour. Or maybe my writing isn’t just good enough. I’m a pretty self-aware person; I’m not embarrassed to admit my shortcomings.

Despite submitting drafts to Slackjaw 4 or 5 times, they get rejected. The stories I sent them before were okay but not great. This is why I came up with a new and genius — in my opinion — plan. I was going to invest in a new article: not just energy, effort and creativity, but money as well. Not because I have nothing to spend my dough on — I simply wanted to write something better, not average.

I knew Slackjaw has many comics for articles, and I noticed they’ve been doing really well. Here are a few examples:

Let’s be honest: you don’t need to know how to draw that well to produce comics. Some of the comics aren’t even full drawings. However, I wanted to do something better. Not good, but excellent! Not excellent, but marvellous! Not marvellous, but genius! Well, you get the idea.

My Genius Article Idea and Execution

I’ve had an idea about yoga and pets for a while. So, what did I do? I hired a caricaturist on Fiverr, reiterated my comics ideas, paid her $70 CAD for 5 pictures and waited till they arrived. By the end of the transaction, it cost me $10 per picture, plus a $5 tip. I don’t think it’s a lot of money by any means considering how beautiful the images were — check them out yourself:

I cannot even draw a stick figure, so those cartoons seem like something out of this world for me. Additionally, they related my life to the reader: my lovely cat just turned one last month, and she’s been intervening in my exercise efforts since the very first day she entered my life.

I love this article like no other one. It’s special. Also, it’s about my cat and me. I poured my soul into this idea and the descriptions of each image. Was I exceptionally funny? Probably not. But I tried my best to make sure the article is a little bit humorous.

I had no doubt it would go viral. It had to! Some of Slackjaw’s comics had 26,000 claps. I’m not sure what the views looked like, but if the articles required 2–3 minutes of reading time and had such high numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had over 100k views — possibly even more! The read time must have been through the roof. And it might be hard to estimate earnings based on a limited amount of information, but I had no doubt my “cat yoga” article will bring me decent earnings.

The Outcome

I wish I had great news about what I ended up getting out of the article. Unfortunately, all it earned me was $1.80 USD:

Yes, you got it right: I spent $55 USD ($70 CAD) for custom-made exclusive comic images, and I made less than $2 after 1.5 weeks.

It was a complete fail, right? Well, not exactly — at least not in my book.

The day I joined Medium and started writing, I promised myself I would never abandon the feeling of creativity, fulfilment and my love for art. And writing is an art indeed.

Even though my investment didn’t yield a return, the article represents me: a simple girl who loves her cat, does yoga to feel good and ends up interrupted by her furry baby all the time. The article I wrote represents Joanna the way she is: a regular girl who loves animals, has a sense of humour, enjoys simple things in life; and doesn’t mind spending $70 CAD of her salary on an article that will make her happy and proud, even if she doesn’t get her money back.

I’m okay with not earning anything for that article. It was an authentic, emotional and beautiful piece of art, in my opinion. And it’s an article I’m proud of the most since the moment I started writing.

I showed it to my mom and watched her read it. She smiled and laughed — that laughter is priceless. I would have spent $70 many times to hear it again. I know my family is proud of me for my second secret writing career almost no one knows about.

Conclusion

I don’t think you need to spend $70 on your articles. You may write them completely for free and not utilize any tools — some people do that. In fact, many writers and bloggers operate this way.

But there are examples of people who invest in their articles. My experience isn’t particularly successful — but I’ll try again. And I’m hoping to have better results. And in the meantime, have you ever considered doing yoga with a cat? You should!