Flipboard, Mastodon, & Medium: A Winning Strategy for a Labor of Love
A Second Chance Has Finally Arrived
A Second Chance Has Finally Arrived
Labor of Love
When I was a young man in my 20s, I used to play music at open mic nights in bars with my band’s vocalist and lead guitarist, Vic. He wasn’t pleasant, but he sang well and wrote decent songs.
While there, I heard amazing singers, musicians, and poets who deserved to have their voices heard in arenas or have their signatures handed out at book signings. Instead, we all performed for five people if we were lucky. Sometimes it was just the bartender, bouncer, and the lonely old man drinking alone. But for us, it was a labor of love.
We kept coming back because we hoped that someone would connect emotionally or spiritually with our art. I could see it in an audience member’s eye when it happened. It might have been the alcohol, but I thought it was the art.
When we were on stage we had a voice, and everyone in that room could hear us. We could say anything we wanted. Our dreams, our passions, and our stories.
That’s how I feel right now with 14 people who have written, edited or become members of my Medium publication, The Taoist Online. Everyone has put in countless hours in their writing, editing, and helping in our Discord. We were getting paid pennies if anything at all, but sharing our knowledge and our passions drive us every day to write more.
It was never about how many people would read, or the couple of dollars we might earn. It was about that one person that might read our stories and find the help they need to make their day better. One day can change a life, and you never know which day it could be.
The right words at the right time can change everything!
I promised myself back then that if I ever found another group of talented, yet unheard, artists, I would do everything I could to make sure their voices were heard.
The Plan
In 2012, I worked for Apple Inc. The original iPad had launched and one of the star applications created specifically for the iPad was Flipboard. Flipboard is a social network that allows users to “flip” URLs into a user controlled and curated “magazine.” Those magazines can be seen and flipped into different magazines or collections from other users. If successful, a single flip can snowball across the app and drive thousands of clicks to a particular article per day.
I had joined the app in 2013 and thought it was a great news reader and quickly forgot about it until recently when I began to flip TTO’s articles into it in an attempt to drive traffic.
Over the weekend, TTO’s views and minutes-read suddenly and dramatically increased by over 400%.
Here is how we did it…
Can Flipboard Come Out & Play?
About a month ago, I applied for Flipboard’s Creator Program. To qualify, you need 1,000 members on any social network. I qualified because of my Mastodon account.
Once I received my acceptance letter last week, I gained access to special features such as Storyboards. I also created an additional Mastodon account on Flipboard’s official server, flipboard.social. Here, I began to interact with the community and publish links to TTO’s Medium articles that I flipped. It’s important to note that the link pointed to Flipboard and NOT directly to Medium. The point was to build a second community which could then drive traffic to the articles.
Somehow, this all worked perfectly and resulted in a monster traffic spike.
By the Numbers
One of TTO’s most popular articles has 98% of ALL VIEWS from Flipboard. This result was replicated on all articles published after Thursday March 30th. Sunday was TTOs largest day when we reached 2,136 views and 2,690 minutes read. You can find the data behind the growth below.
On Friday March 31, I noticed it was a record setting day. By Saturday, I knew something dramatic was happening and thought that was as good as it was ever going to get. On Sunday, April 2, I lost the ability to comprehend what was truly happening.
Hurray!
I am beyond excited to see TTO growing so quickly and at such scale. For these kinds of numbers, I would expect to have dozens, or maybe hundreds, of writers. Yet we don’t. We only have 14 (not including me) and you can find them below:
Hiren Bhatt, nathanlovestrees, Simon Kupfer, Dr Roger E Prentice, Hope Bill Helps, Cold Start, Nanie Hurley ✍🏻, Morgan Smith, Emmanuel Wambugu, Lucy Weir, Andrew Pretzel, Eunike Ve, Emily Porter
I also need to thank Janette Speyer for being a friend and an ally on Flipboard. Her help and adding TTO to her community group has also had a direct impact on our numbers.
Show Me the Money
While I can’t speak on the earnings of other TTO writers, I will state that my personal earnings over the last few days have outpaced what I should have made as a brand new Medium member. I’ve only been writing for six weeks and nearly all TTO members have Medium accounts of similar ages.
It’s important to note that Medium’s algorithm TAKES EXTERNAL TRAFFIC INTO CONSIDERATION when deciding how hard to push certain publications or articles.
I’ll wait to see what the surge in traffic will do for my financial gains at the end of the month and if the numbers were a fluke or the new normal.
Strategy Going Forward
I will continue to invest heavily in Flipboard and Derek Johnson’s Mastodon to drive traffic to TTO. It would be stupid not to at this point, right?
If you aren’t on Mastodon or Flipboard, I hope this article proves how valuable these two social networks are.
You’re results will vary wildly of course, and I obviously can’t guarantee success, no one can, but this is a valid strategy that you can easily take advantage of.
After all these years of wishing I could perform those open mic nights again, I finally have a second chance to help a group of extremely talented individuals.
And they deserve every damn penny!
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