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The 7-Day Cycle That Tells Me If My Story Will Fly or Not
On the 7th day, it rests.
No one can say exactly how a story goes viral. We can only look at the data and learn from it.
But if you are asking, can a story on Medium go viral? Yes, it can.
Medium writers can check the Stat page to help you analyze your stories, some would say, never look at the numbers, but I do it often.
I saw a trend in my stories, this is my opinion and not necessarily true to what is happening with your stories.
The ones that make money will usually have a good number of views in the first seven days after the story has been published.
It happened to my most viral article on weight loss.
Let us analyze this together.
The article was published on July 12, 2021.
Date — Total Views — Earnings
July 12–14 — $0.50
July 13–30 — $1.26
July 14–4 — $0.06
July 15–1 — $0.07
July 16–11 — $0.33
July 17–304 — $8.42
July 18–439 — $15.33
As you can see it was on the 6th day when the article started to get views, and it stayed that way until the 14th day after it was published.
The article had a longer shelf life than usual, it was only after a month when it stopped getting views, but I think it was also because I edited it.
If there is a tip I can give you is that never edit a trending story.
This month, I have a story that I published here in ILLUMINATION that is my top earner. It also peaked on the 7th day and still getting decent views.
When I looked at the published stories this month, the same thing is happening, the stories that didn’t get enough views after 7 days, would completely stop getting views.
The ones that peak within 7 days will continue to get views the following week.
What is interesting is the data from a story that has been chosen for further distribution.
While the story was curated, it didn't get the views in its first seven days, but what happened next is something I need to look at in my other stories. It had a 7-day ‘rest’ before it started to get some views.
And looking at the chart, within the seven days when it started to get some views again, it hasn't peaked so it is safe to assume that the story will go back to hibernation.
Winter is coming!
Until it gets back from its hibernation, I don’t expect it to get views. But not all stories are the same, especially if your story has an evergreen content.
What is Evergreen Content?
Evergreen Content is content designed to be relevant and beneficial over the long term. This is in contrast to most news articles and blog posts that both tend to have a short shelf life. — Backlinko
Evergreen content doesn’t expire compared to trending topics, especially news that disappears after something new happens.
On Medium, a lot of us write about our opinions and personal stories unless they are optimized for SEO, it only stays on Medium.
But because Medium has a high domain authority rank, any SEO optimized content can rank on Google.
Again it all depends on what your content is all about.
Conclusion
There was a movie entitled, The Seven Year Itch, with Marilyn Monroe. The titular phrase, which refers to a waning interest in monogamous relationships after seven years of marriage, has been used by psychologists.
The phrase is still used today, the seven-year itch will determine if a marriage will continue or not. The same can be said about content creation if and when the ‘waning interest,’ happens, that will be the end of our story, literally and figuratively.
We live in a world where everyone competes for attention. With so many stories to read, videos to watch, and social media posts to comment on, a story doesn’t have seven years before the interest of readers wanes, now we are lucky to have seven days.
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