Followers as a “success” metric?

[FifthEstate]

I know this topic has been discussed before, but where do you rank your number of followers as a gauge to your success as an author on Literotica?

I ask, because today I discovered the most unlikely statistic regarding my number of followers. I haven’t published a new story or chapter in over a year, so my new follower rate has slowed some. But I noticed I still get about 1 per day. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the last 90 days and discovered I had around that same number of new followers during that time frame. So it got me thinking, I wonder how that number compares to the number of days vs. followers since I published my first story on Lit. This is the amazing part—after doing some quick math, I determined it has been around 1625 days since I published my first story in early 2018. How many followers do I have today??? 1626!!! Weird huh???

Whether that’s good or not, I’m proud of that number and since I don’t publish in the most popular category of incest/taboo and haven’t yet in Loving Wives, it probably makes it even more so.

To this point, I’ve published only long, multi-chaptered stories. Anyone have an opinion as to whether that approach or writing single chaptered ones builds followers more quickly? I suppose the answer has more to do with category & quality than length, but curious about your thoughts?

 

[KeithD]

I rely on personal satisfaction with what I've written as success criteria. Everything else is subject to too many variables and too much fretting.

 

[FifthEstate]

That’s probably healthy, but I can’t help but crave some amount of exterior positive reinforcement…

 

[shakna]

When I published my first piece, I had someone tell me I was terrible and would never amount to anything unless I got their help. They've continued to pop-up now and then to tell me that they still follow me and 1-vote everything I publish.

They've taken down their stories now, because apparently they couldn't handle other people commenting on their tales, but when they first said this to me, they had 753 followers. So my followers metric for success, is how many more I have than the jerk did. I'm close, but not quite, to doubling that score, so that'll be a fun moment when it happens.

 

[FifthEstate]

Good for you!

 

[KeithD]

That’s probably healthy, but I can’t help but crave some amount of exterior positive reinforcement…

Views would be as good an indicator as anything else then. There are all sorts of reasons to see that stat as squishy as any, but you can choose what positive reinforcement amounts to for you.

 

[MrPixel]

"Followers" as an absolute metric, in my view of the world, is dubious. Depends very much on which LitE category you publish in. I publish in ghost towns, most in "Group Sex" with two 500-word contributions in "Mature". I've garnered 41 followers in a little over a year, with the most recent works scoring 4.5 and above. I call that success.

LW and I/T are "never go there" categories for me, and that's clearly where most of the readership here lives. So it's all relative.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

When I published my first piece, I had someone tell me I was terrible and would never amount to anything unless I got their help. They've continued to pop-up now and then to tell me that they still follow me and 1-vote everything I publish.

Oh my gosh thats terrible. Happy to hear you had a good outcome, but damn that bums me out when I hear about authors putting down other authors that way :/
Seriously sociopathic. Glad justice was served.

 

[lovecraft68]

"Followers" as an absolute metric, in my view of the world, is dubious. Depends very much on which LitE category you publish in. I publish in ghost towns, most in "Group Sex" with two 500-word contributions in "Mature". I've garnered 41 followers in a little over a year, with the most recent works scoring 4.5 and above. I call that success.

LW and I/T are "never go there" categories for me, and that's clearly where most of the readership here lives. So it's all relative.

I'm surprised you're not seeing much in mature, its generally a pretty good category. Despite being know for taboo stories, some of my most successful stories are in mature.

Edited to add I took a peek at your page. Your two matures stories are 750 word entries. stories that short tend not to get that much attention. Try a fuller length piece and it will help.

 

[SimonDoom]

My attitude is, take satisfaction in whatever measure of success you have. Number one is enjoying the writing and publishing of stories, by itself, regardless of the numbers that follow.

I like having people follow me and favorite my stories. That's more important to me than high scores, although I like scores, too. I just won a contest for the first time, which was fun, but the score for that story has plummeted since my win! I take it in stride and don't get too fixated on numbers.

If you have 1626 followers after having published 36 stories since 2018 and none of them are incest or loving wives stories, then your numbers are very good, relatively speaking.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I just won a contest for the first time, which was fun, but the score for that story has plummeted since my win! I take it in stride and don't get too fixated on numbers.

Some people are just assholes. That teddy bear story deserves to run higher, not lower. It's far better than your stocking filler bums on seats stuff. It's original, for a start .

 

[HopelessDreams]

Another important factor influencing your number of followers is whether you have any series that seem to be incomplete, or stories that end on a cliffhanger. Then readers will be more inclined to follow you to find out what happens next.

 

[thomas1965]

That’s probably healthy, but I can’t help but crave some amount of exterior positive reinforcement…

You could learn about the Dichotomy of Control.
https://thestoicsage.com/dichotomy-of-control/

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If my numbers of followers started going down, I'd worry. I know I write niche stuff and often consider leaving out bits which some readers of a certain category won't like - but usually I decide to keep them in. Each story or chapter seems to get me a couple more followers, so there we are.

I have got a draft Incest story, which may help if I ever finish it, but I'm pretty sure I'd never do that category again so most of them would only be disappointed.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Another important factor influencing your number of followers is whether you have any series that seem to be incomplete, or stories that end on a cliffhanger. Then readers will be more inclined to follow you to find out what happens next.

I agree. I believe this is a predominant influencing factor in why an author gets "followed". It allows readers to get notified of new submissions to a series they are invested in. Of course, it could also work the same way to keep them updated on any stories by an author that they are invested in.

Personally, I would place a higher metric value on how often a story is selected as a "favorite" than I would on "followers". That speaks to a desire by a reader to keep a story easily accessible.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Another huge factor is the category where you post. My first two stories were in niche categories. When I posted my third in Mature, the numbers looked wild in comparison.

I’m fairly new, but so far, I’m looking at everything against total views. I’ve read about what people have observed are the “averages” for votes/faves/comments/follows against total views, and I’m ahead of the curve across the board. I feel like getting people to interact on any level beyond the observed norm is a win.

 

[davion2308]

I think people who click that follow button may be doing so just to click on it, or they never come back and check anything else I've done, or they hit it by accident.

I look at the red "H" icons and comments for success. Even the negative comments is success to me because it meant I did something well (or bad) enough that someone took an extra few minutes out of their day to comment on it. Even if you hated what I wrote and you felt compelled to tell me what a pile of crap my writing is, you spent that time and it belongs to me now! Ha!

 

[SimonDoom]

Another huge factor is the category where you post. My first two stories were in niche categories. When I posted my third in Mature, the numbers looked wild in comparison.

Category makes a huge difference, which is why when people look at their numbers they should always put them in perspective. You cannot compare numbers across categories. If you hit the jackpot in Incest the numbers are insane compared to other categories. It's been a long time since this happened, but I had one Incest story get 70,000 views in the first 24 hours. The reason, I'm sure, was the title. It's a popular mom-son trope and it drew a lot of attention. At the time I was publishing another incest series and I think that drew attention as well.

Views correlate positively with everything else except high scores. The more views you get, the more votes, the more favorites, the more followers. The numbers don't mean much in an objective sense, because we don't really know how many "views" translate to "reads" and we don't know how many "favorites" are just people bookmarking the story perhaps to read it later. But we can say confidently that the more views you get, the more readers you get, and the more favorites you get, the more real favorites you have. I like the idea of connecting with as many appreciative readers as possible. It matters more to me than an astronomical score.

The other thing for people to know who aren't averse to the idea of publishing in categories like incest is if you acquire favorites and followers from publishing in popular categories you get more attention for your less-trafficked category stories. My Exhibitionist stories get less attention than my Incest stories, but they get more than they would otherwise because I publish in Incest.

Publishing in Incest isn't necessary, though. There are plenty of examples of very "successful" authors who never publish incest stories.

 

[KeithD]

Another important factor influencing your number of followers is whether you have any series that seem to be incomplete, or stories that end on a cliffhanger. Then readers will be more inclined to follow you to find out what happens next.

Oh, I don't know. I think it would be a natural inclination not to start reading an author's series if it was seen that the author had abandoned earlier series.

 

[KeithD]

If my numbers of followers started going down, I'd worry.

Do you mean the rate of addition of followers is going down? I haven't observed many unfollowing a writer once they'd marked them to follow.

 

[KeithD]

Another huge factor is the category where you post. My first two stories were in niche categories. When I posted my third in Mature, the numbers looked wild in comparison.

True. We have some posters whose stories are in a high-read category here (like incest) who like to lord it over those in lower-read categories because their numbers are bigger--so, of course, they must be better writers.

 

[Voboy]

I think other people are more impressed with my follower numbers than I am. I guess it's gratifying that people like my work that much, but I'm GenX. I'm not looking for "likes" or "followers" to let me know my work is successful. I post work I'd like to read; that's almost my only criterion for "success."

 

[Zootonius]

That’s probably healthy, but I can’t help but crave some amount of exterior positive reinforcement…

Yes. The tale I tell myself is I write as a creative outlet. Yet to have 200 followers after only 4 stories and 12 works is an ego boost.

 

[Devil_PS]

Followers are cool but I'm mostly always glad there are readers checking my stuff despite not doing much since at least the story was read.

But the comment for my only two stories up has been pretty decent if not uplifting.

 

[other2other1]

I rely on personal satisfaction with what I've written as success criteria. Everything else is subject to too many variables and too much fretting.

I agree that personal satisfaction is the first metric that you want to consider, if you don't like what you have written then there is a good chance that no one else will. One of the stories I am working on is in its third revision, I like my beginning, however, the middle is not how I want it, so there is no way I am going to put it out there until I like it.

Looking at followers, I think we can all agree it's a good metric that in some ways outshines story ratings, I know I have seen my followers grow by around 20% since I started posting my new series. This is despite a whole lot of hate (I post LW stories) and quite a few hatters giving me one stars just because... But in seeing followers grow, I think that shows that what you write is connecting with other people.

Still ,always write what you want, we don't get paid to do this, we do it for our love of storytelling!