I wrote an article with 179K views. Here’s how much I made.

And what I got out of it (besides money, duh)

Photo by Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash

Ok, for those of you who clicked purely to find out how much I made out of it, here it is — $3,379. For those who want more detailed breakdown of the numbers, I’ll add more screenshots at the end of this article.

Screenshot of article stats as evidence (Image by Author)

Note: Before you read this article, do bear in mind that back in the end of 2019, Medium’s payment structure was purely based on total member reading time.

The Backstory

On the 26th of December 2019, I posted the following article titled “I had no idea how to write code two years ago. Now I’m an AI engineer.” The post went mini-viral and raked in ~130k views alongside 890 hours of member read time in the first two months.

I had no idea how to write code two years ago. Now I’m an AI engineer.

The Definition of “Virality”