Back in 2011, I published a Halloween article on Yahoo that was titled Clinton Road, New Jersey: the most terrifying road in the United States. Yahoo paid me somewhere between $12-$20 upfront for the article plus I was given a bonus of $1.50 for every thousand views the article got. The article got well over 1 million views.
The article was published the first week of October in 2011 and did not get that many views for the first few days. But then it started to get popular and started climbing rapidly in the Yahoo article queue which is based upon popularity.
I had no idea this was happening until a couple of friends texted me and told me my Halloween article was the #1 article on the entire Yahoo site. I was out shopping when I got the those texts and by the time I got home my article had slipped to #6 but it bounced around the top 20 articles on Yahoo for the next few days and got me well over 1 million unique daily views.
I never imagined an article of mine could get over 1 million unique daily views (I've since had dozens of articles get over 1 million unique daily views with my top article getting well over 2 million unique daily views). For those who do not know, a unique daily view means that you can only get one view from each IP address per 24 hours. Someone can view an article 12 times in 24 hours but you only get one unique daily view from that IP address.
Is my Halloween article really all that great? I can't really answer that. Here is the link to the article which is now published on my own blog as Yahoo did away with the site I originally published it on in 2014. Why it became so popular might be of interest to many people on the Internet and here's a few ideas on why it did go viral.
What I can say about the article is that it was very timely. It was a Halloween ghost story filled with many true elements that was published leading up to Halloween when everyone is in the mood for a good ghost story with many true elements in it.
The article generated tens of thousands of comments on Yahoo, likes on Facebook and retweets on Twitter. Some of the comments on Yahoo were not particularly nice "Get this Hocus Pocus malarkey out of here", but the majority of people loved the article and many, many people said they were going to visit the place mentioned in the article.
What I can also say about the article is that it touched a lot of nerves on Yahoo. It elicited reaction from people and in many cases action from those who decided to visit the place mentioned.
I can also say it was mainly a true article and I wrote it from memory in about 20 minutes after Yahoo said it was seeking such articles for pay. Other than that, who can say why some things go viral on the Internet and others do not?
© Joe Dorish
© Joe Dorish
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