4 Lessons I Learned From Writing An Article That Made Me More Than $1,000
I can’t promise you can do the same, but it’s worth a try
And maybe you can do the same
Let me explain the subtitle first. This is not one of those feel-good posts where I PROMISE new writers that the success can be replicated; I personally hate those because they ignore the survivorship bias and the luck factor in success and suffer from the “fair world” fallacy. But before you lose hope and click away, while the tips here CANNOT guarantee views and income on your article, they DO increase your CHANCE of being successful on the platform.
So, I have been writing on Medium since the beginning of 2021. My very first article was born out of the frustration that there was no good tutorial online about how to make an API call to get data, even though I have personally run into this problem multiple times as a data scientist. So I decided to take the issue into my own hands and wrote an article documenting my learnings, and the rest is history. My best performing article to this day is my article about the data science lessons McKinsey has taught me during my time working there. It made me over $1000 since I published it in May last year. In fact, it generated over $1000 in the first 2 months after it was published.
So what have I learned from writing in the past year with several “viral” articles?
I. Write consistently
I know this one is a cliché, but I still want to repeat it because it’s definitely true. The internet is a weird place, you can never know for certain which article will be popular as an author. I have had articles that I was very excited about sink like a stone with absolutely no ripple; and vice versa, some articles that I thought would only speak to a small audience found broad success. So the best way to write a viral article is to write a lot of good articles and see which one will get the attention it deserves. It’s almost impossible for your very first article to go viral; it usually takes a bit of work to accumulate readership so your article gets the baseline level of views as a start and has a fair chance at getting more attention from there. Looking at stats of the articles right before the viral article, there’s undeniably a build up and it takes time and consistency.
But talk is cheap; the harder problem is HOW to actually write consistently.
With English as my second language, I have always found writing hard. There’s a mental hurdle for me when it comes to writing because we are naturally scared of things we are not good at or familiar with. What I have found helpful is to open my laptop everyday to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING to get over that mental hurdle. If you have great ideas that day, write a paragraph or two, or even a whole article; if your writer’s juice is not flowing that day, write once sentence or two, or even just outline some ideas. ANYTHING counts.
Just remember, you don’t need to finish each article in a single setting, so write down any piecemeal inspiration you have WHEN you have them. Getting started is the hardest part; building the habit of writing into your daily routine is the key to having successful article(s).
II. Get your article the initial exposure
I publish with several different publications and occasionally self-publish as well. Depending on which editor/publication picks up the article, it might get very different treatment in the publishing process and trust me, it makes a noticeable difference.
I have noticed that if the article gets an initial boost from the editor’s applause or immediate posting across social media, it gets more attention faster than if the social media post only follows after a week of the article’s posting date, or if there’s no social media promotion at all. It makes sense, that snow ball effect is real. Having built several machine learning models myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if Medium’s decision algorithm for whether to promote an article places a high weight on the article’s initial traction (views and reactions like applause or comment). The more exposure your article gets at the beginning (getting posted on not only Medium, but also other platforms like LinkedIn), the more traffic it will receive, and the more signal it will send to Medium’s algorithm: “Hey, push me to more people on the platform because I’m a good article and people will read me”.
Now you understand the why, let’s talk about the how. If you publish with publications, try to work with the editors who help you publish and remind them to promote your article through their social media platforms if there are any. Also try to promote the article yourself on different platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.
III. Find your niche and your publication(s)
By finding your niche, I don’t just mean finding the general area you want to write about; of course, that’s the first step. I mean within that general area, find the gap that nobody has written a lot about that fits your expertise and/or interest.
In my case, I knew data science is the general area I want to write about because of my interest and background. There is a fair amount of authors writing about ML, AI and the technical side of data science, but I realized that career development and interview guides in data science are lesser touched areas. Since I have been through several rounds of recruiting in data science myself that happens to be the area where I have a good amount of experience to share and help my readers. As you write more articles in the niche you find, you will continue attracting readers who are interested in the topic and gain followers that way. Which means your future articles in the same area will get a certain baseline level of reads from your followers.
Equally importantly, finding one or more publications that you frequently work with will help you leverage their existing reader bases (usually a lot bigger than your own). I published most of my articles through Towards Data Science since it fits my focus area, and was able to get good traction on my initial articles despite having virtually no followers at the time. Going back to the point mentioned above, having publication(s) you are familiar with will also help you establish and maintain a relationship with editors that can help you promote your articles.
IV. Name dropping still works, for better or for worse
Why do you think so many YouTubers and Medium writers use prestigious companies’ names in their titles (Google, Amazon, Uber, McKinsey, you name it)? Because it gets views. Not only does the name dropping get people’s attention right away, it helps the articles get picked up by search engines and other curations mechanisms. Believe or not, Google will even curate and push it to potentially interested parties if the articles gets enough attention. I know this because one McKinsey alumni I have no connection with read the article in question from his Google Chrome recommendation section and reached out to me (it’s probably because he indicated his interest in McKinsey related topics somehow).
So far, I have written 3 McKinsey-related articles and on average, they outperformed my other articles. So if you have any ideas in the pipeline that are related to your experience with big companies, don’t be shy to use the name in the title. With that being said, don’t be one of those annoying people who use big names as click baits when the content has nothing to do with those companies. You don’t want to throw away your integrity and credibility just to get a couple more clicks.
I hope these tips are helpful to new writers out there and don’t be shy to reach out and connect or
If you are interested reading the articles that performed well for me, here are some:
5 Lessons McKinsey Taught Me That Will Make You a Better Data Scientist
towardsdatascience.com
The Ultimate Interview Prep Guide for Data Scientists and Data Analysts
What helped me interview successfully with FANG as well as unicornstowardsdatascience.com
Why I Left McKinsey as a Data Scientist
Things you should consider before starting as a data science consultanttowardsdatascience.com