Low Site Traffic?

[wastelandwriter]

So is it just me, or just my category, or has traffic on Literotica fallen off recently?

The last couple of times I've put up stories, I haven't seen as many comments, votes, faves, etc. as I used to for new releases. I thought it might just be me losing readership or something, but in glancing at Sci-Fi/Fantasy, at least, it seems like there are fewer comments and favorites in general.

Am I imagining this? Limited to a category? What gives?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

LIT encourages same-o same-o

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[HeyAll]

Really hard to say.

Every once and a while a story or two will come along and disprove that theory.

And i know from my experience posting over a 140 stories that the view/votes goes up and down. You could write 3 popular stories in a row, then the next two could dip. Then the next one is strong.

The Top List also shows that the top 10 stories has remained consist, where the 10th ranked story has roughly 100,000 views. But then again, the incest catagory always remains strong.

Basically, there are many factors.

 

[RejectReality]

I'm not really seeing it. Despite coming out on Sunday, my first three in over a year did pretty well.

( Sci-Fi ) 4.74 - 4.7k views 125 votes 3 PCs 9 Favs
( Mature ) 4.73 - 48.1k views 899 votes 16 PCs 71 Favs
( Fetish ) 4.72 - 5.7k views 143 votes 7 PCs 11 Favs

The Sci-Fi story is pretty much in line with what I would expect for a 1-shot, "day-in-the-life" type story. There's no fighting. No enemy. Just sex and some family drama.

The views on the mature story are somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of what I would normally expect, but everything else is in line.

Again, this is despite coming out on a Sunday, which has been nothing but garbage for me.

The fetish story is the most recent, and I honestly had no expectations for it. My only experience in the category was with a vastly different story that keyed in on some pseudo-incest that I called out in the description line, so that likely made it blow up bigger than it would have otherwise. Had no idea what to expect from this one.

Just looked up a post I made 5 days after the Mature story came out, and here's where it sat then:

4.70 - 34.9k views 734 votes 11 PCs 56 Favs

A couple of years back, it wouldn't have much more than that now, more than a month out. I'm up 13k views, 155 votes, 5 PCs, and 15 Favs.

It's a phenomenon I've been watching. While Day-1 is still the most important day, accounting for the lions share of your reads, and the first week gets most of the rest, the "tail" seems to be a lot longer and fatter now than it used to be.

Where I used to consider a story to be completely off the radar after week 1, it seems to be about week 3 now.

I would give stuff time to simmer for a couple of weeks before you decide how it has done.

 

[RetroFan]

Sometimes stories just don't seem to rate.

My two most recent Erotic Couplings stories featured women in their mid 20s with younger men aged 19, and these types of stories (older girl-younger guy) seem to be pretty popular on this site. One story, 'Leanne the Lusty Lifeguard' rated very well; the other story 'Sexy Savannah From Number 9' was a total bomb.

 

[RejectReality]

Mid 20s and 19 isn't really enough of a gap to scratch the itch of the May/December readers. 10 years is about the minimum, and 15-20 is the sweet spot. If you're looking for that demographic, EC is the wrong category, you want to be in Mature.

Erotic Couplings is a tough category to get any kind of gauge on. The content is so widely varied and the readership so transient that coming up with a mean is almost impossible.

 

[tomlitilia]

Traffic seems pretty normal to me. It's been a few months since I last posted a story, and I get a handful of favs and follows per day, which is sort of standars in y experience. If anything, there's been more comments than usual on old stories lately, but those seems to come in bursts for som reason.

 

[RejectReality]

According to Alexa, Lit has been on a step climb of visitors since March.

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

 

[lovecraft68]

I've been talking about this for well over a year and others have seen it to. Numbers are down. As hey all said you can still see a story really pop, but they all popped a couple years ago.

Traffic may well be the same or even up a bit, but that doesn't mean the traffic is reading. More people may be coming to chat seeing its actually running and no longer a myth and there are also countless posters who come here for just the boards and never read.

We have more spam here than ever and I'm not sure if they register as traffic, but we have enough web crawling bots here to spare.

If you've been here for awhile and had a general idea of what good numbers for a category was and you look up and down the hubs you'll see most have lower votes, views and scores than they used to.

Yes there are exceptions, but the average story is down. The fact the scores are down is the saddest part because it means the readers no longer here were the good ones and the trolls remain.

A hundred people could come up with a hundred theories for this and all would be just as valid/invalid as the next. Even the site itself I'm sure wouldn't know as it doesn't seem to be a technical thing.

My personal opinion is anonymous trolls. The LW venom spewing crowd has spilled out and show up in any category they can find a story where there is a woman to hate. They show up in incest if 'mom' is having sex with the son behind dad's back.

They show up in mature when the author has the nerve to have a forty year old women taking the lead in sex with a twenty year old guy. All the young men are wimps and faggots and cucks

They are all over anything involving BBC because they're racist. They hate women to the point Femdom can no longer be placed in BDSM because it gets bashed.

Lit gives you the power to delete this crap and some do. Some just leave it and don't care, but I've found in talking to authors and readers that more and more people have reached the "I don't need this shit' point and moved on to sites that have serious moderation and won't allow this.

Ditch anonymous and site traffic may dip, but its quality over quality because you will have a much better crowd here. Happier authors and happier readers as anony also blasts and abuses readers in comments as well.

But all one need do is look at another forum here to know what lit is really all about and what it thinks is fun. Well a lot of people are growing weary of it and wandering off. Saddest part is at this point I don't think the site would care if story side went down to nothing, Its not important anymore.

All of the above is my opinion only, but I've had quite a few people cite it as a reason to no longer be here. Take it for what its worth.

 

[tomlitilia]

I've been talking about this for well over a year and others have seen it to. Numbers are down. As hey all said you can still see a story really pop, but they all popped a couple years ago.

Isn't this merely a result of more authors/stories? A few years ago, the number of new stories pages (i.e. stories posted in the past week) rarely surpassed five. Now it's eight. So there is more competition these days.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Naaaah

All at LIT make the same burgers and fries.

LIT fare is boring.

 

[RetroFan]

Mid 20s and 19 isn't really enough of a gap to scratch the itch of the May/December readers. 10 years is about the minimum, and 15-20 is the sweet spot. If you're looking for that demographic, EC is the wrong category, you want to be in Mature.

Erotic Couplings is a tough category to get any kind of gauge on. The content is so widely varied and the readership so transient that coming up with a mean is almost impossible.

I have posted cougar stories on Erotic Couplings such as 'Simon & the Senator's Wife' and more recently 'Mandy Makes a Man of Mark', the latter story being my most successful ever written. I have also written a lesbian cougar story in the Lesbian section - 'The PTA Queen Bee & the Teen Rebel' - which drew plenty of views and positive comments but strangely low scores. This story was so different - it was as much a satirical comedy as erotica - from most others on the site that maybe some readers who voted did not know how to take it.

Most of the time though I find readers do respond positively to stories where the girl is a couple of years older than the guy. My very first story - 'Shy Steve Meets Sexy Stacy' - was about an 18-year-old guy getting seduced by a 20-year-old college girl and it was very successful.

 

[LeandraNyx]

Deleted

 

[RejectReality]

I used to put my age-difference stories in EC. Then Laurel changed the category of one to Mature. I thought it would be a death knell. I had no idea how wrong I was.

Here's the final one that went into EC

4.76 224 Votes 31821 Views 09/08/09 5 PCs 9 Favs

And the first one that went into Mature.

4.51 892 Votes 225319 Views 04/13/10 16 PCs 30 Favs

If you have a gap of at least 10 years between your main characters and post in EC, you're giving up a huge amount of readership.

Less than 10 years and you're probably better off in EC ( or another appropriate category ) because you're not scratching the itch the readership in Mature is looking for.

 

[Kantarii]

I've noticed the day of the week has an effect on how well and how much a new story is received. If one posts the story late Tuesday afternoon, it's visible to read at the top of the headlines by Friday for weekend reader traffic. If one posts a story on Friday afternoon, it's visible around Monday and gets little or no traffic and is buried by the time the weekend arrives ..... food for thoughtKant

 

[lovecraft68]

Isn't this merely a result of more authors/stories? A few years ago, the number of new stories pages (i.e. stories posted in the past week) rarely surpassed five. Now it's eight. So there is more competition these days.

That's as valid as anything. It affects sales in the e-market, books just keep getting added, nothing gets taken away.

 

[lovecraft68]

Do cougar stories do better in Erotic Couplings than in Mature?

I'd go mature.

EC works best for things that aren't cut and dried or maybe feature multiple things. Cougar is exactly what the mature category is for.

I've seen things that border on taboo work well there as well. Like mother or father in law type stuff.

I have two May/December romances there that I debated romance or mature. I went with mature and they are both top twenty all time so that category does have a good audience.

 

[TamLin01]

Alexa says site traffic is up from last year:

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

Google Trends has searches for the words "Literotica" down a bit year over year, but only from 94 to 87 per week--statistically significant, but not anything you'd be likely to notice on your individual stories.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 12-m&q=literotica

 

[lovecraft68]

Alexa says site traffic is up from last year:

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

Google Trends has searches for the words "Literotica" down a bit year over year, but only from 94 to 87 per week--statistically significant, but not anything you'd be likely to notice on your individual stories.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 12-m&q=literotica

Like I said previously I don't dispute traffic may be up, but it does not mean that traffic is reading. Lit has other features. There are countless members of forums who have never clicked a story here.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Like I said previously I don't dispute traffic may be up, but it does not mean that traffic is reading. Lit has other features. There are countless members of forums who have never clicked a story here.

Recommend some good ones, I cant seem to put my finger on any.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There are countless members of forums who have never clicked a story here.

Just curious, how does anyone know this?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Just curious, how does anyone know this?

I believe it.

In 12 years I found ONE great story and it vanished. LIT is McDonalds.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I believe it.

Belief isn't knowledge.

 

[SimonDoom]

According to Wikipedia, Lit's Alexa rank in 2013 was 1749, while now it's 2321. That doesn't mean traffic is down in absolute numbers, but that it's slipped relative to other websites. I certainly can believe that, because the site hasn't upgraded itself to keep pace with the web in general. If you check the Wayback machine, the home page 17 years ago looked remarkably like the home page now.

Despite the slow pace of improvements on the site it still seems to me to have an edge over the other erotic story sites I've seen, in quantity of stories available, in the ease of finding what one's looking for, and in the features available for an author. I almost never visit other sites anymore.

I wouldn't think traffic would have fallen off too much, if at all, if for no other reason that there's no obvious new competition in the market (that I can see), and I can't imagine the market for erotic stories is less than what it was in the past.