Confessions of a reformed viral content creator

A reader said she’s started writing online. Her main challenge is seeing what content works without getting caught up in the numbers.

At first glance, the numbers show creating shallow clickbait content is the way to go.

On LinkedIn, round-ups of Harvard Business courses go viral every other week.

On Insta, my feed is stuffed with jacked guys and gals running in the snow while wearing headphones and listening to dramatic music.

On X, it’s threads starting with lines like, “You won’t believe what happened next…”, profiles of your fav celeb or entrepreneur, trolling political content.

You can earn money creating viral content if the platform offers a partner or creator program. X, Medium, Insta, Facebook and YouTube offer variations of these programs.

Going viral is fun, but earning a stable recurring income from shallow content is hard. You’ll need to start a content farm that churns out this content. Sure, AI can help, but the platforms regularly change the algos and the rules.

I published a series of memes about AI on Facebook last year. They popped off and got millions of views.

Now, if I paid attention to Facebook analytics, I’d create more of this type of content. But I didn’t earn anything from them as Facebook doesn’t pay creators based in Ireland. So, creating that content was a waste of time.

Even if Facebook paid creators in Ireland, I don’t care much for going viral with shallow memes. I know a few creators in the Facebook bonus program who did well for a few months. Think $5–10k per month. That’s a nice income, but it’s not a stable business. After a few months, Facebook killed page reach for some of these creators and deactivated some of their pages.

Don’t get me wrong.

Going viral and getting paid for it is nice, but I prefer creating a library of educational, ever-green content that builds my business. Think long-form YouTube videos, newsletters, articles, and even books.

This type of content takes longer to create and doesn’t pop up instantly. More thoughtful content attracts higher-quality followers and subscribers. And it has a much longer shelf-life than cheap viral content. You can also use it as a business asset to attract clients.

Don’t confuse all short-form content with shallow content, though. Substack notes are a great example of trendy short-form content. I’m experimenting more with this format, and I like the results. Good notes are insightful and can help a creator grow their newsletter organically. That’s valuable. You can follow me on Substack here.

If you’re serious about writing online, track a few key numbers each week to understand what’s working. Use numbers like impressions and shares to iterate your content. But balance that type of analysis with intuition about what your business needs.

If you need help with that, check this out.