Are less people reading?

This conversation has been around for years.

As someone who releases a bunch of stories for years, I can tell you that my views ebbs & flows. Sometimes I'll do a lot, sometimes less.

I think it mainly has to do with story title and what readers want to read. I could post a lesbian love story today, and that could get 300 votes in a month maybe. But if I wrote a lesbian, teacher/student, breastmilk story, that could potentially get 700-800 votes in a month. Then next month I could write another lesbian story with two adults and it could only get 200 votes in a months time.

Also, the readers are there, but they may not all be reading the new stories. If you look at the comments feed for each Hub, a lot of the comments are for old stories from years ago. People read what they want to read.

If you aren't getting the amount of reads you think you should, it could be a number of things. Poor grammar, spelling will kill a story quickly. A catchy title is always a good idea. Also, what type of story are you writing about? Incest stories will always attract more readers than run of the mill sex stories. I don't see my stories taking a hit as far as the amount of readership goes. Take a closer look at what you are putting out. Adjust your stories accordingly.

All sorts of things influence the number of readers you will get for a story, including:

1. The category in which it's published.
2. The catchiness of the title.
3. The catchiness and appeal of the tagline.
4. The accuracy and appeal of the tags used.
5. How well it's written -- if the score is high enough to get the story on top lists it will get more views.
6. Whether it's a standalone story or a chapter in a series. Standalone stories, generally speaking, get more views. Chapters (after the first one) get higher ratings.
7. Whether it meets the basic expectations of the readers for its category or defies or pushes them too much.
8. Whether you publish subsequent stories that prompt people to read your earlier stories.
9. How many followers you have.

All of my stories have been published in the last year and there's more than a tenfold difference between my most read story and my least read story. I don't see any long-term trends so far.

My most viewed stories are in the Incest category.

The titles are:

Virgin's Sister

and

Virgin's Sister Again

I think the category and the words in the titles are more significant than the actual stories.

I'm revisiting the OP's question, because I've been following the 30 day and 12 month toplists since last spring, and I've noticed that the top-ranked stories have fewer views than they did in the spring. That could just be random chance, but maybe not. The top story on the 30 day top list right now has about 111,000 views. Last spring, I recall several stories on the toplist at the same time having over 130,000 views, with a few having up to around 160,000; I had one such story in late May, early June. Now there are no such stories.

The numbers for stories at the top of the 12 month list seem to be lower as well. Again, it could just be random chance rather than being reflective of story views overall, but it is noticeable.

SimonDoom said:

I'm revisiting the OP's question, because I've been following the 30 day and 12 month toplists since last spring, and I've noticed that the top-ranked stories have fewer views than they did in the spring. That could just be random chance, but maybe not. The top story on the 30 day top list right now has about 111,000 views. Last spring, I recall several stories on the toplist at the same time having over 130,000 views, with a few having up to around 160,000; I had one such story in late May, early June. Now there are no such stories.

The numbers for stories at the top of the 12 month list seem to be lower as well. Again, it could just be random chance rather than being reflective of story views overall, but it is noticeable.

Click to expand...

It could also be seasonal. Perhaps there are more readers in the Spring/Summer than in the Fall/Winter?

I'm not really worried.

I get a few hardcore fans, they're
what matter.

Couldn't give a shit if the masses
don't like my stuff.


It's only a hobby, I wouldn't get too far up
my ass about it.

What I actually think happened is that a new Bot filter was installed, and is now being updated. There has always been a filter on views removing known bots and spiders, ( Laurel confirmed this in a post in the far flung past ) but I suspect it hadn't kept up with the times until recently.

The reason I've come to this conclusion is that I don't see any significant difference in the number of votes stories are getting, as compared to say a year or two ago. The reports people are making about vote to view ratios on the forum are all also consistently higher than the traditional norm.

The traffic numbers are also solid, as they have been for years and years and years. Without a drop in traffic to the website, a drop in readership just doesn't make sense.

So, what I think we're seeing isn't a drop in readership, but rather a drop in noise caused by bots and spiders. More of what you see in the views number is human beings opening your story.

SimonDoom said:

I'm revisiting the OP's question, because I've been following the 30 day and 12 month toplists since last spring, and I've noticed that the top-ranked stories have fewer views than they did in the spring. That could just be random chance, but maybe not. The top story on the 30 day top list right now has about 111,000 views. Last spring, I recall several stories on the toplist at the same time having over 130,000 views, with a few having up to around 160,000; I had one such story in late May, early June. Now there are no such stories.

The numbers for stories at the top of the 12 month list seem to be lower as well. Again, it could just be random chance rather than being reflective of story views overall, but it is noticeable.

Click to expand...

RejectReality said:

What I actually think happened is that a new Bot filter was installed, and is now being updated. There has always been a filter on views removing known bots and spiders, ( Laurel confirmed this in a post in the far flung past ) but I suspect it hadn't kept up with the times until recently.

The reason I've come to this conclusion is that I don't see any significant difference in the number of votes stories are getting, as compared to say a year or two ago. The reports people are making about vote to view ratios on the forum are all also consistently higher than the traditional norm.

The traffic numbers are also solid, as they have been for years and years and years. Without a drop in traffic to the website, a drop in readership just doesn't make sense.

So, what I think we're seeing isn't a drop in readership, but rather a drop in noise caused by bots and spiders. More of what you see in the views number is human beings opening your story.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that. I would agree that if site traffic hasn't fallen it seems unlikely that real story views would have fallen.

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/literotica.com

It did just come out of a dip back in March, but it's always sat somewhere in the low 2000s for global. The U.S. rank is always right around 1000 or below.

That dip could very well have come from the infrastructure changes, causing Google's spiders to crawl the wrong pages, thus dipping the rating there and Alexa's. The sudden, precipitous rise in rank after the dip would also seem to indicate something other than a traffic dip as well.

oggbashan said:

My most viewed stories are in the Incest category.

The titles are:
Virgin's Sister

and

Virgin's Sister Again

I think the category and the words in the titles are more significant than the actual stories.

Click to expand...

You might be right about that. My latest story is called "The Pond" and that doesn't give the slightest indication of what the story might be about. The description ("Skinny-dipping leads to a sexual reawakening and healing") is what grabs the prospective reader, probably because of the reference to nude swimming, which a lot of people fantasize about. The story's doing all right in the ratings, which I take to mean that there are a few people who are actually curious enough to read it.

Athalia said:

You might be right about that. My latest story is called "The Pond" and that doesn't give the slightest indication of what the story might be about. The description ("Skinny-dipping leads to a sexual reawakening and healing") is what grabs the prospective reader, probably because of the reference to nude swimming, which a lot of people fantasize about. The story's doing all right in the ratings, which I take to mean that there are a few people who are actually curious enough to read it.

Click to expand...

Most of my titles are unique on Literotica. I know that no other author has used 'Getting Nude with Chairman Mao'.

Titles are very important in attracting views. That doesn't necessarily carry over to votes and a high rating. The content has to do that, but if the title has significant words such as 'virgin', 'sister', 'breast' in it, that story should get more attention.

I don't know that I agree that Titles are more important. I think they are as equally important as the short summary description but not moreso. Yes, a jazzy title can catch the eye faster than a dull one, but without the description, no one really knows if they should read it or not. Stick a good description after a dull title and you should still get a lot of views. Content is what keeps them reading.

The description is available in most places, but not all.

The title is available everywhere. It's the one thing you can absolutely guarantee people are going to see every time they see a listing of your story.

HisArpy said:

I don't know that I agree that Titles are more important. I think they are as equally important as the short summary description but not moreso. Yes, a jazzy title can catch the eye faster than a dull one, but without the description, no one really knows if they should read it or not. Stick a good description after a dull title and you should still get a lot of views. Content is what keeps them reading.

Click to expand...

SimonDoom said:

I'm revisiting the OP's question, because I've been following the 30 day and 12 month toplists since last spring, and I've noticed that the top-ranked stories have fewer views than they did in the spring. That could just be random chance, but maybe not. The top story on the 30 day top list right now has about 111,000 views. Last spring, I recall several stories on the toplist at the same time having over 130,000 views, with a few having up to around 160,000; I had one such story in late May, early June. Now there are no such stories.

The numbers for stories at the top of the 12 month list seem to be lower as well. Again, it could just be random chance rather than being reflective of story views overall, but it is noticeable.

Click to expand...

I follow the top list often.

Just a month ago i had a story with 150k views in a month. In the past year, sometimes ive gone much higher, sometimes much lower (incest) the number of votes stays within the same ratio as views.

People read what they want. Viewrship is fine.

Before I started posting stories on Literotica I had been writing for some Yahoo Adult Groups. With a couple of exceptions my stories had no response at all. I didn't know how often they had been viewed or if anyone had read them.

The change when I started posting on Literotica was amazing. Public comments didn't exist then but the number of views reached what to me seemed fantastic numbers, and people voted on them too.

Some of my stories are elsewhere (all are on Lit!) but there is nothing like the response I get from Literotica.

The system may have flaws but at least I know some people like some of the stories I post. I can see which of my stories are received better than others.

PS - The most popular are Virgin's Sister and Virgin's Sister Again - both incest and over 600,000 views between them.