What Many Writers Have Missed in the $19,000 Story.

He deserved it!

But! A few people have paid attention to some important points, which I will tell you now.

In my opinion, these aspects are some of the sweetest in this story, because they have helped me (and you) to understand the power of the Medium, and to get very close to understanding the algorithm of the platform! That’s what I want to share with you today.

Be sure to read the whole story carefully, so you don’t miss the most important point, which strongly determines the “super-success” or “super-virality” on Medium!

Pay attention to the data in this screenshot!

screenshot by author. Original on https://medium.com/illumination/this-one-story-earned-me-19000-so-far-ede47c140df8

As you can see the main part of the traffic comes from

7️⃣ place — Twitter — 1.2k

6️⃣ — facebook (😏sorry Twitter) -7k

5️⃣ non-medium app (can anyone tell me what kind of mystical app it is?)-10k

4️⃣ google (haha! I’m still alive!) -15k

3️⃣ getpocket. — 36k

2️⃣ LinkedIn -37k

1️⃣ email -65k — boom!

No doubt, traffic from social networks played some role, especially the number of visitors from Linkedin was a pleasant surprise (such stories go viral very well there, so this platform deserves special attention!

But do we remember what kind of traffic the Medium pays for?

That’s right! For internal traffic of Medium! And only for paying Medium membrers!

And here we come to the most interesting part!

Let’s first find out what is the average click-through rate for email notifications (newsletters)

According to MailChimp, the average email click-through rate across industries is 2.91%. Let’s say 3 percent.

Now let’s do the math

If 65,000 is 3 percent, then someone sent 2,145,000 e-mails with this story!😳

Okay, okay! I believe that the ctr of this story, thanks to the cool title, was at least 5 percent and no less. But it’s still more than 1 million emails!

And if these emails were sent out by Medium, that means that all these visitors via email are registered readers of the platform.

This large mass of registered members can also have a positive impact on the recommendation algorithm for the rest of the internal platform members.

how do I know that?

Well! Let me start by saying that even external traffic at least partially affects the Medium algorithm.

At least in the part that makes a story trending. And a trending story has a better chance of going viral, and even super-viral, than a non-trending one.

I had a trending experience yesterday and studied it extensively. I’ll write more about it in a future article, so don’t forget to sign up for email notifications!

It begs the question. Who is that person that sends more than 1 million emails?

I have only two options.

1. Linkedin.

2. Medium — I lean more towards that option.

How to write dozens of short “stories” a day. Anyone can do it!

This tactic and strategy are especially valuable for new writers!

medium.com

What exactly is a trigger for sending such a large number of emails I do not really know, but I think that two factors play a role here

1. the success of the story on the platform itself

2. or maybe the high level of clicks on the link in the e-mail? (depends very much on the right title technique and successful topic)

3. or the curators should really like this story?

Don't know!

But the email newsletter is only a part of the super promotion!

A very important aspect of the virality of this case is that the subject of the story may be interesting to a very wide range of people, which increases the click-through rate.

Yes, Medium probably initially sends our stories to email subscribers who may be interested in the topic, which increases the number of clicks.

At the same time, for a story to go super-viral like this one (hundreds of thousands or even millions of views), it must be able to interest a wide audience.

The topic “job” can be both niche and broad.

If the topic is very narrow and specific, it has very little chance of going super-viral.

For this, before choosing a niche, first, make a study of the demand for this topic!

High views are associated not only with a broad topic but also thanks to the subtitle “Here is what you can learn from it”. It even more heated interest and intrigue.

There is another critical factor that very probably can affect the virality of an article on Medium itself, which provides the internal views for which the platform pays money. I will reveal this critical factor to you in one of my next articles.

If you want not to miss the story about this critical factor, as well as other similar stories be sure to subscribe with one click to my email notifications and follow my page. Thanks for reading!

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