In early December 2020, I finally got around to setting up an Ashley Madison account again to relive and record those exciting first few minutes on AM every woman on the platform experiences. I keep a list of story ideas beside my desk, and this one had been sitting there for a while, so I thought, what the hell?
What did I call it? —
Can All the Gentlemen of Ashley Madison Be This Stupid?
This won’t help you understand how it made $2025.07 either, but it’s a typical Medium story — it took me 90 minutes to write while interacting with men, reading their profiles, and writing my pithy little comments. And like a dozen stories I’ve read about money-makers, it didn’t start earning for six weeks.
I wasn’t even sure what I was going to write about that night, but ripping men apart for shits and giggles seemed like the lowest hanging fruit, and most of you assholes never read the stuff I pour my heart into, so I thought, why not?
Of course, I was accused of catfishing by angry white men and not being a good feminist (also by a man), and all I can say in my defense is — guilty, your honor. But what else, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, does a girl have to keep herself entertained on a cold December night?
It had been a couple of years since I’d been on AM, so I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, at what some of their brutally honest profiles said. Well, not really, but it made good fodder for the little catty bitch in me that comes out so easily.
I had a lot of fun writing that article, sent it to Sexy and Satire that night, and BOOM! It made $40, then died. Most of my articles die after making a little splash, so it was expected.
Then, in mid-January, the story started getting reads again and quickly became my first story to reach $100. I was over the moon! It’s earned a few hundred a month ever since.
What also happened were men started bitching me out in the comments. Fair enough, I thought, but what struck me as funny was they took me seriously. So, I had fun with them too. Many women get shitty comments, and lady sex writers get the worst, but I don’t mind. I love playing with stupid assholes and their pathetic emotions. It’s a guilty pleasure.
Mommy knows darling — not all men.
I honed my antagonistic skills to perfection as a middle child of a misanthropic mother and simpering father. Exposure to the daily knife-edge of my mother’s tongue taught me what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. Consequently, trolling comes naturally.
So why did that POS go viral — 20K people have seen it so far, and 7,180 have read it? Was it my pith? I’m always pithy. Was it my bitchiness? I do that sometimes, so probably not. Was it because I savaged men? Could be — incidentally, women loved it as much as men hated it — but I’ve done that and got zip.
So dear fellow writers now reading this and wondering what my secret was, let this be a word of caution to you. Anyone who writes about what they did to make their story hit the jackpot is full of shit. Seriously. I’ve written 20 articles just like this one, and they’ve done ok (which is $20–30 by my standard), but nothing near this.
What’s that mean? I could tell you what I did, you could copy me, as I have copied myself, and nothing could happen. In fact, I’m pretty sure nothing will happen. Go ahead, try it yourself, but trust me, friend, this cow’s dry.
How will it happen again? No idea, but one sure way it will is to keep writing. Be funny, be smart, be bitchy, be kind, be edgy, be whatever, but most importantly, be there.
Like the Great One, Wayne Gretzky said — you miss all the shots you don’t take.
And that’s advice you can take to the bank sports fans.
If you get the feeling this is part humble brag and part satire, you’re right. I’m tickled pink that something I wrote made $2K, but at the same time, I am humble enough to admit I have no idea why it was this one out of 219 often much better articles I’ve written. As such, I have no wisdom to impart on you, except this — anyone who writes an article trying to explain why they think this happens is wasting your time.
I can’t tell you how to write a $2000 story, but I can let you read one. Maybe you can tell me what it was —
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© Teresa J. Conway, 2021