I saw the story when it first came out. Interesting, but far from earth-shattering. We can claim the boost-education-sex angle was responsible, but there was something else.

Last December, I had an article that did exceptionally well: $36.00! My usual average is $1.50.

If the criteria is Medium interest, then why this article got so much more than "equivalent articles" is a mystery to me.

But I also noticed that my feeds were frozen for four days: I was getting the same articles everyday. If my article was showing up on other people's feeds, it was getting more than its fair share of exposure. With little else to click to, this article gained traction it would have normally not have had. When the feeds were fixed, the article had the numbers to continue to show up feeds for another week.

In other, it was a software glitch, which is probably repaired.

Good for Michelle, but her article was more about luck than good writing.