In 2012 and again in 2013, I hit the blogger’s dream — one of my posts went viral. As of today, it has over a million views and has been shared on Facebook 450,000 times:

During the two separate instances when it went viral, I learned a bunch of lessons on both blogging and hosting a website. The goal of the talk is to share these lessons and help bloggers be prepared should they go viral, too:

My hosting plan left my site woefully unprepared for spikes in traffic. What were some things I could have done to prepare?
My ad network shut down my account for alleged fraud, and I lost potentially thousands of dollars worth of ad revenue. Was there anything I could have done differently?
Tons of sites started republishing the post without permission. I even had to deal with a blatant case of plagiarism, when someone not only republished my post in its entirety, but changed the title and author. What was the best way to handle this?
I was also contacted by a few reputable sites (USA Today, HuffPost) to republish the post in its entirety. Was it worth it to grant permission?
Of course, the virility of the post drew the requisite trolls. What were some of the productive — and unproductive — ways to deal with them?