What does it take to write a popular article on Publish0x?
If you are a curious author, you have probably wondered what makes some articles more popular than other articles on this platform. I have always wondered, too. So I did a little research and data analysis to get the answer. I analyzed 33 of the most popular articles of all time. The main objective was to determine the characteristics of these articles, and maybe find out what it takes to make an article popular.
I have tried to present the results in a very friendly manner. At the end of the article, I have mentioned some of the limitations I faced and how the results could be improved.
Number of words per article
Close to three quarters of the articles had less than 1000 words. For an average reader, this translates to about 3 minutes of reading. It was surprising to note that some of the highest tipped articles had close to 4000 words, which would be regarded as long for an average reader. Therefore, it would need further investigation to determine the optimal number of words in an article.
The average number of words was 1122. There was no statistically significant correlation between the number of words in an article and the amount of total tips on the article. This means that readers do not care about the length of the article when giving tips.
Number of months author has been on Publish0x
The authors of the articles had been on PUBLISH0X for at least 6 months. This could be attributed to the fact that older authors had managed to accumulate a significant number of followers, and probably have had enough time to discover a strategy that garnered a positive response on their articles. Older authors were more likely to have more followers as there was a statistically significant correlation between the number of followers and number of months an author had been on the platform. Therefore, newer authors need to work harder to attract attention to their articles. However, there was no correlation between the amount of tips and number of months on the platform. This means that even newer authors can expect to get tipped just as much as older authors provided their article was popular.
Total tips on the article
The total amount of tips on the articles ranged from a few cents to almost $145 (at the time of writing this article). The average tips per article was about $46. The following graph is skewed to the right, an indication that an article was more likely to have lower amounts of total tips than higher amounts.
Number of followers
The average number of followers per author was 4368. The minimum was 465, while the maximum was 6151. This could be an indication that one needs a significant number of followers in order to have a popular article. However, it was not possible to test this hypothesis with the available data. It could not be determined whether the number of followers influenced the popularity of an author’s article.
Images and video
The articles had an average of 6 images each. The minimum number was 1 image per article, while the maximum was 15 images. The majority of the articles did not have a video. Only a handful of articles had a video, specifically a YouTube video.
Popular categories
While the majority of the articles were crypto-related, there were some articles that were non-crypto related. In fact, the article with the highest amount of tips was not crypto-related. However, the majority of the content in the popular articles was crypto-related.
The most popular category was around the subject of rewards, competitions and airdrops. The second most popular subject was around offering an in-depth insight into a particular subject. For example, topics like “what is a 51% attack?” or “Top things you should know about Ethereum” fell into this category. This could suggest that readers on Publish0x are eager to grow their knowledge about particular subjects. The third most popular topic involved tutorials such as how to use a wallet or how to send funds.
Readers were equally interested in crypto news or being introduced to new platforms, browsers or new projects in general. The least popular category involved price predictions.
Day of the week
The trend was that popular articles were posted towards the end of the week (Thursday – Sunday). Articles posted mid-week were comparatively fewer. However, there was no statistically significant correlation between the day of the week and total amount of tips received on the article.
Limitations of this study
- I want to believe that the 33 articles used in my analysis was a small sample. However, 33 is enough to give the statistical power needed for hypothesis testing. So even though it would be desirable to have a larger sample size, I believe the results will not be significantly different.
- The best way to compare the articles would have been to get a “snapshot”. However, it is almost impossible, considering that the variables on the articles are constantly changing. For example, the number of followers and amount of tips on the articles are constantly changing.
- The type of analysis I used was purely quantitative. There was no metric used to do a qualitative test such as to compare the quality of the articles. It would be helpful if the results involved an analysis of the quality of the articles.
Recommendations for further research
- To randomly select a sample of articles that are not popular and then do a statistical comparison between the sample of popular articles and that of non-popular articles in order to determine which of the variables are statistically significant in determining whether an article is popular or not.
As a conclusion, I leave you with a summary of the statistics from my analysis.
