As a writer, with writer friends, I know that you don’t become a writer because you want money. Writing is in your soul, in your blood, and in your genes. It’s in the air you breathe and it nags at you until you get it down on paper.

But most of us would love to be the next big thing. To have that best-selling novel, to get the star byline, to sell their words to the world. But it almost never happens. That’s why I was fascinated by Amy Morin’s story.

In 2013 Amy wrote a story titled ’13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do’, and published it on LifeHack. She wasn’t a writer, in fact, she was a psychotherapist writing to get extra income after her husband passed away. But that article was viewed by millions of people, and when Forbes shared it, it got another 10 million views.

After that, most major news outlets shared her article and it was viewed over 30 million times. That’s when she knew she was going viral. And she panicked. She wasn’t a writer, remember. She had no professional website or blog, no social media presence, she had not planned for this.

1. She worked her ass off 

According to her article, every time she refreshed, her article had 10,000 more reads and she knew she couldn’t just sit down and do nothing. She invested in professional headshots, got a proper website and started going through those emails from interested and excited readers.

2. She expanded what she’d mentioned in the article 

Knowing how popular her article was, it was only smart that she capitalized on that and turned it into a book. If she hadn’t acted on it, she wouldn’t have been able to prolong the income. She also started giving talks, created courses and connected with the influencers that had shared her article in order to build her ‘brand’.

3. She knew when to say no 

When something goes viral and explodes like that, it’s easy to want to say yes to everything but Amy had to know when to say no when it didn’t align with her goals. She also knew that you can’t predict what’s going to go viral, so she had to act on it to sustain her success.

Read the full article here to find out what else Amy did to sustain that success.

 What would you do if something you created went viral?

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