The answer is absolutely YES! Here are my stats …

A few months ago I was looking at my list of articles in my Medium Partner Program stats. There were a pile of articles at the bottom of the list with big $0.00 earnings.

I clicked onto the regular stats information for some of these articles. Many of them were getting NO views, NO new claps, NO new comments … in other words a big ZERO across the board.

I had seen some people mention that you can re-post articles, so I decided to give a try.

I chose an article that I thought “should” do better. I copied it into a new article box, posted it and deleted the original article.

A month later I looked at the article to see if it was now doing better.

AKKKKK doing better than WHAT? I couldn’t remember any of the stats the original article had, so how could I possibly know if the article was dong better! I was in total “guess” mode and thought, that maybe the article WAS doing better, but that was probably wishful thinking.

So I decided to smarten up … and track my results.

The three things I wanted to know were:

1. If I did nothing, other than re-publish the article .. what would happen? Would the fact that I now had a larger audience automatically mean the article would get more views, claps, comments etc?

2. What if I JUST changed the title. Maybe the article was languishing because of a lack luster title? I was guessing it would make a difference, but how much?

3. What if I changed the title and re-worked or re-structured the article? Could I get the reading ratio UP? Could I encourage more comments?

So … I started by re-posting several articles and compulsively watching the stats. Spoiler — there were NO miracles happening so I stopped being so compulsive about the stats. I just did my normal promotions and let them sit.

Here are my results and my thoughts on why it worked or didn’t.

1. The first test article I re-posted was an article I originally published in September of 2018. Personally I think it is a great article and is a BIG lesson to aspiring freelance writers. I attributed the poor results to the fact that in Sept 2018 I had just started posting behind the paywall.

I thought that with a bigger audience I would get MORE of everything.

I re-posted the article with ZERO changes.

ORIGINAL STATS:

I re-posted this article on Feb 22 and it got accepted into The Startup

As you can see ….

I’m actually quite disappointed in the results because as I said, I think this is a great article. So I’ll try again in another eight months and the next time, I WILL change the title! (If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!)

2 Here’s a re-post where the only thing I did was change the title

I re-posted on April 22 and here are the stats as of July 17, 2019

YIKES … this did NOT work at all. BUT the fact was at the point of re-posting I was not getting any action … so another $3 is, another $3.

Should I fiddle with this and go back to the original name? Got to go and contemplate my navel about that!

3. Here’s a re-post where I changed the title AND added more content.

I originally posted this in August 2018, which was the first month I was on Medium. I published it as open content and then months later put it behind the paywall. It was obviously way too late for the paywall because the article was getting NO views.

Re-posting resulted in more views and comments, but unfortunately not as I thought. But since I made more than before, I am grateful. Thank goodness this articles does really well on my website.

My most successful re-post to-date is my BRA article

I had a lot of fun writing this article, and when I first posted it, it gained some traction and got some amazing comments and then rapidly died away. If I am recalling correctly, I most likely stopped promoting it. The fact is, it doesn’t fit either one of my blogs, so it really wasn’t on my promotions radar.

I republished this article with NO changes to the title, or to the content.

Blow me away when the re-posted article was curated under STYLE. Not a big category, but getting curated definitely elicited a gobsmacked giggle from me. Has curation made a difference? I have NO idea! The stats are not revealing any secrets.

I re-posted LATE in the day on July 9, 2019 and in less than 4 days (on the pay calendar) it has reached …

WOW … more claps, views, comments and $money in FOUR days than in the previous TEN months.

I guess I can safely say that THIS re-post worked!

I am curious to see if I can keep it going with some Facebook mentions, posting on Pinterest and creating an evergreen twitter campaign. I’m also going to post it as my FEATURE for the next seven days to see if that creates any kind of an impact!

The bottom line is that re-posting works!

If you are re-posting an article that has completely died, even $3.00 is better than nothing.

Only YOU can decide if you should post:

1. With zero changes.

2. With changes only to the title and sub-title.

3. With changes to the titles AND the article itself.

Need Detailed Instructions On HOW To Re-post?

1. Go to your original post, and enter the EDIT mode. I’ve tried this from the “live” article, but find it harder to do than in edit. The edit button? Click on the little GEAR icon in the upper right corner — in the drop down box, click on edit.

2. Copy (Ctrl + C) your entire article. You have to be VERY CAREFUL, not to erase your entire article. 99% of my articles on on my blog, so I always have a backup. If you want to play it really safe do your copy/paste from the live article and then just add missing elements, fix some of the formatting, and get rid of extras that seem to tag along.

3. Open a NEW article. If you are using a new title, add it first. Then add your new subtitle. Paste the rest of the document into the next section.

4. You will most likely have to re-load your TOP display image.

5. Now edit away, adding new stuff, rearranging content, maybe adding another image, and removing anything that doesn’t work.

6. Check your formatting . In my experience the credit information under the images occasionally disappears.

7. Read the whole article over again, looking for opportunities to improve your articles, and paying attention to your grammar — looking for typos.

8. Choose your tags. Unless your existing tags are perfect, try a few different ones.

9. Will you submit this article to a Publication? Choose and submit. Schedule if you want the article to go out at some point in the future. Or, just hit the PUBLISH button for instant gratification.

10. And finally … go BACK to your original article and delete it. According to Mediums rules, you can’t have the same article up at the same time, so don’t forget this final step. Where is the delete button? Click on the little GEAR icon in the upper right corner — in the drop down box, scroll down until you find delete.

11. The first time you re-post? Go ahead and watch your stats like a crazy person. Promise yourself that next time you will just ignore the stats until you see wonderful things happening on pay days!

12. Promote your article as if it is a new article. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other social media accounts that make sense. Keep on promoting for the first few weeks, or if you have the tools, set up a continual drip feed.

That’s MY experience so far …