Something seems very wrong here...

lovecraft68

Bad Doggie
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Posts
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Haven't posted in awhile and don't really plan on being 'back' but felt this was important enough to mention. Something seems to have drastically changed on lit and its not for the better.

There is a huge drop off in views and votes on not just my last two stories, but some other authors I have spoken to and just by looking around I can see it.

On Wednesday I posted a new mother/son story. Incest is my best category and the sites best category. Mother/son is the top draw there. My view total three days later? 36k...on a mother/son story that is a damn joke.

13 comments, 400 votes 51 favs. those numbers are very low considering my body of work here. IN fact a first time author with an incest story can(or at least before this week) could get that or better

Then I thought okay, Wednesday not the best day, I used 'mother' not mom in the title...description maybe not the hottest and as someone suggested to me its a chapter one. That, and hey, I could have just laid an egg, shit happens.

But yesterday I had two other authors who had stories post this week say their numbers, especially views, were way the hell down.

Today my contest entry posted. In mature. Mature is my second biggest draw, they do for me....how well? Every one this year has over 1k votes and 50-over 100k views.

Today's story so far as I type this....is barely over 7k views three comments(2 from dedicated trolls).and 97 votes(the last forty of which have come in the last two hours)

Before I go further understand that every day on the most popular author lists in the category hubs I am consistently #1-3 on the daily/7 day/ 30 day lists for both incest and mature.

This is today #1 on both for today

https://www.literotica.com/c/taboo-sex-stories

https://www.literotica.com/c/mature-sex

I only say this to make the point that those two categories are my wheel house and I have large fan bases in each. In other words the numbers I gave are beyond a joke and that's not butthurt ego, that's a fact easily proven by prior submissions

Last Mature story Milf Tails She's so shy 7/8/15 1085 votes 58905 views

Last incest story Mom likes porn too 7/24 1878 votes 132,961 views

now yes they are a few weeks old, but as everyone knows at least 70% of those numbers come in the first handful of days and even that number is well beyond what I saw this week.

Thinking maybe my story might not be visible for some reason I looked for it and I am the first story listed in the mature hub and was the third story listed on the new story list-I have since moved down as some new ones were added, but I am not buried

But fact is as of 1pm I had as close to optimal placement as I could be.

Yet all the numbers are horrible, these last two stories are lower than the first stories I ever posted in those categories and by far. score is okay, but the views are the number that sticks out.

I looked at Mature...DG hear is very popular here. Now i cannot see his views and his vote total of a little over 200 isn't bad, but I still think low for him. But he has only 6 comments and 8 favs....far below what he would normally get

The next mature story is also a contest entry Patientlee has only about 30 votes and 2 comments. Granted she doesn't have the following DG hear or I do, but she's been writing here long enough to have more than two comments and a fav in fact she has a contest winner in mature.

Check for yourselves look at the vote totals...well below norm and scores seem low as well

https://www.literotica.com/c/taboo-sex-stories (only Biscuit hammer seems to be doing very well)

https://www.literotica.com/c/mature-sex DG hear only author over 200 votes the next closest is 193 and that story is 2 days old.

Look at first time

https://www.literotica.com/c/first-time-sex-stories not just votes, look at scores, this is normally not an abusive category.

Even loving wives....seems the sharks have lost their way...only two sauthors Richard gerald and Laptopwriter(and this is his forte) have good numbers, especially note the low number of comments on all but those two stories....this is loving wives:eek:

https://www.literotica.com/c/loving-wives

Not looking any further I think those four prove my point.


MY first thought was maybe lit just installed an 'upgrade' that was more of a down grade, that they had done something internally, but as I pointed out my placement could not have been better today which leads me to think that Lack of comments, lack of votes and again-and most telling- views means perhaps lit itself is not being 'seen' as much, either its down to a portion of the population or the gateway/pathway may not be working...but whatever it is, there seems to be a fraction of the traffic, today especially.
 
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August. Family vacations.

Or maybe the Ashley Madison release is having a halo effect on sex sites in general.

Or maybe thousands of people simultaneously decided incest is repulsive.

But I'll go with August.
 
Cable subscriptions fell 500K during April-June.

Ashley Madison may kill plenty.
 
Jared Fogle had his computer confiscated. There goes half your viewership!
 
Cable subscriptions fell 500K during April-June.

Ashley Madison may kill plenty.

But lit offers what AM does not, anonymous. I would imagine if the AM scandal was going to affect lit, it would be on the boards where if anyone is ousted there is an entire posting history to worry about.
 
To the people mentioning August, it has some merit, I know the pay market has slowed this month.

But on the other end I've been here for five years and have never seen anything this slow. I still haven't hit ten K views, favs are minimal and so are comments and as I showed, its not just me.

The only thing I know for sure is if something was wrong....we would never be told about it anyway.

Also as for the contest, there is still no link to it on the home page, nude day is still there
 
You think? Is there a commonality between AM users and Lit?
(I'd never heard of it before this came up.)

They both vaguely have to do with sex, and since 80% of any population online is just people vaguely curious about something, it doesn't take much to scare flocks of people away for a time.

If it's a knock on effect from AM, it'll be back to normal in a couple months.

And seriously, you hadn't heard of Ashley Madison? They weren't exactly discreet in their advertising - research a vibrator online and bang, an AM ad would start humping your leg all across the internet. (Adblockers do help.) I personally hope they go under for that reason alone.
 
And seriously, you hadn't heard of Ashley Madison? They weren't exactly discreet in their advertising - research a vibrator online and bang, an AM ad would start humping your leg all across the internet. (Adblockers do help.) I personally hope they go under for that reason alone.

Nope. I have ad blockers on the browsers I use for research, and any others are busy trying to sell me cycling stuff or rugby stuff.

I don't get out much either.
 
Someone made a similar thread a few days ago:

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1219143

My take; there are always highs & lows. No one hits home runs all the time.

If I wrote 5 mother/son stories....the first day views could be ....45k, 50k, 80k, 30k, 45k. (just random numbers I'm using).

And that's usually how it goes. If a story is a big hit, the next story may not be. Some stories catch on, others don't.

It's as simple as that.

I look at several different hubris daily, and hit stories are still there. There are still big vote/comment getters. So I think the site works fine.
 
I would agree wit August. Back to school in a couple of weeks and the families are down at the sea shore soaking up some sun and gargling seawater. Or they all went to the Dells in Wisconsin.
 
I would agree wit August. Back to school in a couple of weeks and the families are down at the sea shore soaking up some sun and gargling seawater. Or they all went to the Dells in Wisconsin.

Our county in Florida already started school on Monday. Most all counties in the state had started by Wednesday. Add that to the "last hurrah" summer jaunts and the frantic "back to school" shopping, and it wouldn't be surprising that Lit hits are down this week.

Even GM is down it looks like. The story series I've been doing editing for dropped almost 40% between chapters four and five...and it had been holding very strong constant numbers after chapter two posted. I told the author to stay calm and just keep writing.

I guess the overall answer to the OP is: <shrug> :confused:
 
It could also be competition from other sites. I just visited wattpad. The website graphics make LIT look antiquated, and the stories on the front page all have very professional-looking book jackets. That doesn't mean the writing's any good, and I couldn't find the top lists (navigation was obtuse) but sometimes, appearance is more important than content. I used to see the same phenomenon in the live music scene years ago. One place is on top for a while, and then, suddenly, a new place opens up and the old place dies, even though nothing at the old place has changed.
 
They both vaguely have to do with sex, and since 80% of any population online is just people vaguely curious about something, it doesn't take much to scare flocks of people away for a time.

If it's a knock on effect from AM, it'll be back to normal in a couple months.

And seriously, you hadn't heard of Ashley Madison? They weren't exactly discreet in their advertising - research a vibrator online and bang, an AM ad would start humping your leg all across the internet. (Adblockers do help.) I personally hope they go under for that reason alone.

I'd never heard of AM before the thread here at AH. Don't watch TV. And it's been a couple of years since my vibe shopping - they all still work fine. ;)

To LC, I bet it's all of the above - universities in U.S. don't start until next week or so if they're on semesters, later if on quarter system. People are getting in their last minute yah-yah's out with families, probably. And I wouldn't be surprised if the next new thing is contributing.

And by the way, format your e-books so they're phone friendly.
WSJ article. Not exactly news but a trend.
 
I'd never heard of AM before the thread here at AH. Don't watch TV. And it's been a couple of years since my vibe shopping - they all still work fine. ;)

To LC, I bet it's all of the above - universities in U.S. don't start until next week or so if they're on semesters, later if on quarter system. People are getting in their last minute yah-yah's out with families, probably. And I wouldn't be surprised if the next new thing is contributing.

And by the way, format your e-books so they're phone friendly.
WSJ article. Not exactly news but a trend.

When you publish at Amazon or Smashwords you have no control over that. You submit a word document and they take it from there. Although Smashwords will let you submit a epub format submission.

It's usually the reader that would format the epub to fit on the phone. Not the author.
 
The numbers do look a little off on the hubs and toplists, but that's just on a cursory glance. My most recent stories ( last month ) performed as expected, and sync up as expected with my numbers on the other sites where they're posted.

It's possible that Wattpad could be having an effect because they started allowing adults-only content a while back, and created an app to highlight them early this year. They're ranked in the 1k range compared to Lit's 2k range on Alexa.

At the moment, I don't see anything screaming that something's wrong, but I also don't have anything new out right now, so I'm not paying a huge amount of attention to any really recent trends.
 
Yeah, "adults only" on Wattpad has nothing to do with erotica. A few things with Harlequin Romance level language seem to survive, but there's not much.

They're not competing with Lit in any way, shape, or form.
 
On "August being a bad month" I wanted to add this last night, but we had company.

in summer lovin 2012 my entry had well over 2k votes at the finish

in this contest in 2013 I placed third in group and even after the final sweep had over 1k votes.

I spent some time looking at every stoty I have posted in August in my five years here in addition to the contest stories I have

My Mother's a Horny Drunk Russ's mom teaches him the true meaning of bottom's up.
4.63 2549 391165 Incest/Taboo (English) 08/15/14

compared to this one this week

Mother Son Confessions Ch. 01 Mother Son Couples are invited to spend a weekend together.
4.59 419 40558 Incest/Taboo (English) 08/19/15

I am sure chapter one cuts into the numbers with a couple of other small variables, but this is not even close to what that did its first few days.

Satisfying My Mother Lesbian mother looks to her son to satisfy her craving.
4.67 4176 489307 Incest/Taboo (English) 08/17/12

again this is three years old so the numbers continue to grow, but if even 25% of this was its first week it blows away the submission this month

anyway point is I have never been aware of much-if any-of a summer slow down and if that was the case July would be just as bad. I am not number obsessed, but know them well enough to know this week has been nothing short of 'are you kidding'

why? No clue, but its there.

Maybe its a combination of things mentioned above. The Ashley Madison thing might have people nervous-although again I would think that would hurt the boards more than story side. But maybe people are afraid lit will get hacked...

Wattpad....could very much be a cause. I am all too familiar with wattpad as I found out-I'll spare the details of how-my younger daughter is writing on it. She is penning extreme hardcore femdom....apparently this somehow could be genetic. All I know is this could explain why her boyfriend seems so quiet:eek:

The fact wattpad looks as if it were created this year and not in the year 2000 will make a difference, especially with a younger crowd.

Oh, one more quick point before I drift back off into limbo...

My story and all other contest stories might just see a little more traffic if...

24 hours+ into it the summer loving link was actually on the home page:rolleyes:
 
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My reads are up, as are my scores, but that's cause I submit my stuff from alt accounts to fuck the numnutz cunt faggots here.
 
My reads are up, as are my scores, but that's cause I submit my stuff from alt accounts to fuck the numnutz cunt faggots here.

The irony of all of your "this is what I'm writing today; give me attention" posts is that you're probably the only one who gives a shit what you're writing today. :D
 
It's August. In the Northern Hemisphere it's too hot to think about sex.
 
Thanks for the comments on story views.

After reading this thread, I checked Lit stats through the 21st and everything looks normal. Lit traffic is steady for the last few months, and up considerably over the same month last year. There are quite a few reasons why specific stories could be getting less views, but it doesn't appear to be a site-wide problem.

If you are seeing less views and the same number of comments/votes, then it could be a problem with our story views counter - so please let me know if that looks like the case.

We can't really control which stories get more views than others, but we're happy to look into specific stories if you think something might be wrong.

As far as the comments on the design - big changes are coming to Lit, but we're not quite ready to open anything up to testers yet. We'll release more info on that in the future.

Thank you all again for letting us know when you have concerns about the site. We need your help to be sure everything here is working as it should.
 
As far as the comments on the design - big changes are coming to Lit, but we're not quite ready to open anything up to testers yet. We'll release more info on that in the future.

Thank you all again for letting us know when you have concerns about the site. We need your help to be sure everything here is working as it should.

Hi Manu,

Thanks for stopping by.

I think it was either you or Laurel who said that the site may be divided up into a few different sections (ie straight, lesbian). Meaning, if you go to Lesbian, it'll have its own bdsm, incest, noncon, ect...

Is that still the case?

If so, what happens to existing stories?

thanks
 
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