My Medium Story Went Viral
Well, viral for me.
In less than a month since posting, my story amassed nearly 100,000 views! Thank you Medium readers!
Your burning questions…
- What’s the story?
- How did it go viral?
- How much money did you make from it?
Keep reading to get these questions answered and learn how you can potentially make your stories go viral as well.
How to write a viral story on Medium
To be frank, this was the first Medium story that I had go viral and really, I’d consider it mini viral. It’s not at a million views or anything but I hope it gets there.
I’m no expert but here’s my advice to help your Medium stories go viral.
First, the title or headline does a lot.
I like to use facts and figures in my titles.
Numbers tend to do well, too.
I think about the stories I click on and what kind of headlines lure me in and they usually have a really interesting title and/or a number like…
- Last Month I Made $5,000 from Freelancing
- 45% of the U.S. population is obese
- How I grew my Clubhouse following to 100K fans
You see the trend here, right?
So, the title does a lot.
The subtitle can be equally as important. It should compliment the title nicely and in all, I like a crisp, clean short title and subtitle. It doesn’t work out that way always but I like to aim for that.
Next, the content has to be good.
No short form stories here. You want to educate, inspire, and/or entertain in your stories. Make it at least 500 words.
With Medium, I’ve noticed that the longer the story is not always the better.
People go to Medium for a quick read.
When I personally read stories here, if it’s too long, I’ll stop reading part of the way through and begin scanning instead.
You can eliminate this and get your reader to stay on your story longer and actually read it if you make it the perfect length, which I think is around 500 to 1,000 words.
And then, I tend to use a lot of the practices on Medium that I use in my own blog writing on Millennial Nextdoor:
- Short paragraphs
- Pictures
- Media (tweets, YouTube videos, Tik Tok videos, etc.)
It’s nice to give your eyes a break when you’re reading and all of these things contribute to that.
What is the viral story?
This is it…
I like to write about my experiences and this story showcases a case study of a faceless YouTube channel that I started.
It grew quite quickly to over 300,000 subscribers in the first year and I had many viral videos, one of which hit nearly 70 million views!
I’ve seen a lot of stories about how much YouTube or other networks paid for a 1 million viewed video or 100,000 viewed video. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a story detail earnings from an 8-figure viewed video so I thought it’d be nice to share the results with Medium’s audience.
The title uses a number, it doesn’t give away the answer (how much YouTube actually paid me) in the title so it sparks curiosity for readers to click into the story to read it.
And, the subtitle compliments the title well.
It shares that the reader will be reading a case study about a faceless YouTube channel and faceless channels on YouTube have been a buzz online for the past year or so. That could’ve helped with the story clickthrough rate as well.
How much money did I make?
In less than a month, the story has made me this much…
So, it’s a $1,000-story!
Nice.
Before this, my highest earning story made me a few hundred dollars.
I daydream about if I could produce two or more of these stories a month, how amazing it would be but, it can be difficult to replicate a viral story. I won’t hold my breath.
This video helped me earn more than 300% more than my Medium pay last month.
I’ll be putting out a story on how much Medium paid me once October is over so you can see all the details.
Have you had a story go viral?
What did you learn?
I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you’d like to support me as a writer, consider signing up to become a Medium member. It’s just $5 a month and you get unlimited access to Medium.