Humor and Satire

Use the Old Bait and Switch to Trick People Into Reading Your Poetry and Earn Big Bucks

Use this method to get people to read the poetry you write which would otherwise be ignored

Let’s face it, few poets have a name and reputation big enough to get people to search for and read their poetry. And for poets on Medium, with earnings dependent on reading time, no poet is going to earn more than pennies if they depend on their poetry alone. We needed to discover a way to increase the read time. After reading How to Overcome Medium’s New Profile Format In Order to Increase Read Time For Poems and Short Reads by Greg Prince, I realized there was a Sure-fire system for doing just that.

Greg’s article was about how to prevent people from being able to read your entire poem now that so much of the beginning of each story appears in the preview on your profile. He recommended adding 300 to 400 words before your poem so that this won’t occur. And — Yahtzee! The idea for the perfect system for poets who want fame and fortune was born.

System for Getting Your Poetry Read and Increasing Earnings

There are a few easy, non-labor intensive steps that will reliably ensure that your poetry is read and that read times are long enough so that you consistently earn big bucks.

Use a Clickbait Title

The first obstacle is getting readers past all of the other content out there. Start with a clickbait title.

The idea here is simple. You just need to get them to click. Here are some examples:

Do THIS to Become a Famous Writer Overnight!

THIS Secret Strategy Will Have You Earning $40,000 a month on Medium!

Anything that suggests that the article is guaranteed to make them a successful, famous writer without any work or that you are going to tell them a secret that no one else knows will do the trick. Don’t forget the all caps and exclamation point to make it sound like they should get excited enough to believe the title and click on it.

Keep Readers Reading With a RFBAWPNN (Reverse Funnel and Back Again While Providing Nothing New) Structure

You’ve probably heard of the funnel technique starts with generalities about your topic and slowly narrows the reader's focus growing more specific until it culminates in the takeaway. The reverse funnel starts with a brief statement that introduces the takeaways that the reader will receive in the article and you provide the most valuable information upfront then move to supporting material. This recognizes the fact that with the endless amount of digital content available, readers aren’t going to stick around long if they feel they are getting anything of use right away.

With the RFBAWPNN technique, you start with some useful information, then write a bunch of fluff with a bit of useful but “no brainer stuff” thrown in along the way. You’ll never have to provide what your title promised since a one size fit all guaranteed strategy to make a writer successful and rich overnight doesn’t exist. But don’t worry. Anyone who actually thought it did, deserves to be duped.

Here’s a visual representing what your funnel will look like:

You’ll start at the narrow part of an upside-down funnel by providing a real piece of useful advice that will genuinely help a writer improve in some way. This is the hardest part to write because it actually has to be legitimate.

You need to provide your readers with something that makes them think that you’ll fulfill the promise made in your title. Discuss this part thoroughly and at length, including all the benefits spelled out in detail.

Next, provide some useful information, but don’t worry about it being new or up to date. You still want it to be real advice but it can be things that have been presented over and over again.

If you can’t come up with anything you can always fall back on, “Write every day,” “Don’t keep checking your stats,” or “Write what you love.” Include a thorough discussion of each. This is where your funnel starts widening out.

From this point on you’ll provide similar done-to-death albeit useful advice you know by heart but the amount of fluff between each will keep increasing. This is where the funnel continues to widen.

At this point, you’ll start suggesting how you are going to tell the reader the secret to successful writing, how this secret has helped numerous writers become successful, famous and wealthy overnight, and how the technique requires practically no work on their part. This time the amount of fluff between each of these claims will shrink which will keep them reading. However, your funnel will never taper back down to the narrow neck like the way it started since you won’t actually ever provide them with the information.

Don’t worry about including too much text once you pass the halfway point. By that time, they will have invested enough time they will keep reading no matter what. This takes advantage of the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance. If they admit that they put that much time into reading a worthless article by clicking off, they’ll also have to admit what an idiot they are.

Supplemental Fluff

Include a lot of pictures, graphs, figures, infographics, and tables to keep the person reading as long as possible. You don’t need to put a lot of work into these since you can just use information you’ve already presented or will present further down. The pictures don’t necessarily have to be closely related to the alleged subject of the article; they just have to be captivating. The point again is to increase the time a reader spends on the page as much as possible not to actually impart any useful information.

Show a photo of some amazing adventure vacation with a caption suggesting that following the advice in the article will let them take such vacations every month. Show a picture of gorgeous people with smokin’ bodies and add a caption suggesting that following the advice in the article will result in those kinds of looks.

Affiliate Links

To further increase your earnings, include affiliate links — lots of them. Simply disguise them as links to what appears to be “must know” information about how to succeed as a writer in general or on Medium specifically.

Add Your Poem

Now that you’ve gotten the reader to take the bait, with no warning, sneak in your poem. They’ll read it because by this point, they’ve invested so much time that they aren’t going to admit just how stupid they were to believe the title or kept reading even when it became clear they wouldn’t gain anything by clicking away. If you can get them to this point, you’ve got another guaranteed reader of your poem.

Closing

End with a statement about how you hope they’ve enjoyed your poem and that they’ll come back to read more of your work in the future. Don’t worry if they intend to or not. If they fell for this ploy once, they won’t remember it when you try it all over again in a few days.

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