Followers as a “success” metric?

[KeithD]

The effect of following writers is that notice is given when they post a story. This being the case, to the extent you have detractors interested in knowing when you post a story so that they can down vote and/or negatively comment on it, they will sign up as one of your followers. So some followers may actually be stalkers. If you notice our stories being regularly zapped right out of the gate, you probably have such "followers."

 

[Limnophile]

If I read something five times and it still arouses me or makes me chuckle, it's a big success in my eyes. One of my least read stories has the best score, and one with a mediocre score has the most views. My second most favorited story also happens to be the one I'm bored with and want to quit writing.

The best measure of success is whether it makes YOU happy. If you happen to get a million views and a score of 4.99, those are just nice bonusses.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

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.

I've done just that.

If I read a story by an author that interested me, I will frequently follow them to go back and try some of their other works. If after a time I discover that I followed a "one-hit-wonder", I see no reason to hang on to them.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

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.

No, I meant numbers not going down. I've unfollowed some people when my Home page started getting filled with stories I didn't find worth a click, but it was just a flippant comment.

I don't get enough followers to observe any pattern beyond a few per story.

 

[KeithD]

No, I meant numbers not going down. I've unfollowed some people when my Home page started getting filled with stories I didn't find worth a click, but it was just a flippant comment.

I don't get enough followers to observe any pattern beyond a few per story.

OK. I know you can unfollow, but I haven't seen much evidence of that in my accounts. The number generally just goes up. (The most notable case was when I caught someone following me as an author just to know when I'd published a story--because there was a dustup with them on the discussion board, they followed me immediately thereafter even though there is no sign they read in my primary genre, and I started having a zap as soon as I put a story up--and then when I called them out for it on the board, they immediately unfollowed me.) My understanding is that if you put an author on follow, you'll receive notification each time a story of theirs posted. As I post a story at least once a week, I could see why that would become too frequent of a notification for readers and they would unfollow. But that doesn't seem to be happening to any noticeable extent.

 

[lovecraft68]

OK. I know you can unfollow, but I haven't seen much evidence of that in my accounts. The number generally just goes up. (The most notable case was when I caught someone following me as an author just to know when I'd published a story--because there was a dustup with them on the discussion board, they followed me immediately thereafter even though there is no sign they read in my primary genre, and I started having a zap as soon as I put a story up--and then when I called them out for it on the board, they immediately unfollowed me.) My understanding is that if you put an author on follow, you'll receive notification each time a story of theirs posted. As I post a story at least once a week, I could see why that would become too frequent of a notification for readers and they would unfollow. But that doesn't seem to be happening to any noticeable extent.

Or they could have unfollowed you because you pissed them off, but up to that point been a legit follower. But I get it, that doesn't play into your woe is me whiny martyr syndrome.

 

[lovecraft68]

Something that hadn't really occurred to be that was pointed out in a comment I received a few months ago. Gist of it was "You don't follow anyone, why should people follow you?"

I have maybe a half dozen I'm following, and a couple of stories, so they're right I don't follow many, but what does that matter? Fact is I hardly read anything here due to time constraints. Full time job, I run an e-bay store, I have a wife two grown daughters and four grand kids and my parents are in their mid seventies and being an only child I find I'm doing a lot for them around their house these days that my dad can no longer do.

Then of course I have my own writing, so its nothing personal, Its just low on the priority list. Apparently some people take that personally, but we all know there are people who look for things to be upset about.

Also made me think the opposite. I don't see it as flattering to be faved by someone who's fav author list is so long it would be easier to list who they don't follow, and the story list the same.

 

[Duleigh]

I look at my list of followers and am very happy that there's so many readers at Lit with such good taste

 

[MelissaBaby]

Well, I finally hit 500 followers today. I sure as hell feel like that’s some kind of success.

 

[KeithD]

Writing stories and reading stories are two different functions. There's no reason why there should be any corollary at all between your stories being followed and you clicking on following of anyone else's stories.

 

[j267]

What's the right number to indicate success?

 

[KeithD]

326.7

 

[j267]

I'm proud I was the .7

 

[FifthEstate]

Well, I finally hit 500 followers today. I sure as hell feel like that’s some kind of success!I'm proud I was the .7

I'm proud I was the .7

j267,
Your 3,000+ followers aren’t nearly enough!

 

[j267]

Hold on now. I didn’t reply to Melissa. I did reply to Keith because I thought he was making a joke and I have no idea what number indicates a good following which is the reason I asked.

 

[KeithD]

Sorry, the real winning number is 69.

 

[FifthEstate]

I hope everyone understood that j267. I think Keith was clearly making a joke and your response was to that, regardless if it somehow followed Melissa’s post. The operation of this Literotica forum is not intuitive to us novice users. My comment was in deference to the fact you are one of my favorite authors on Lit and I was sincerely suggesting that IMO you deserve to have more followers. I certainly didn’t mean for it to be a slight to you or anyone else.

 

[RowanWrites]

With regard to folks who proclaim "personal satisfaction" is the "important" metric... I see Fie on Thee.

If you're not enjoying writing, or you are unsatisfied with your own writing, then, admittedly, there's a problem. But that's table stakes. That's the urge to write, not the measure of success.

Because here's the thing: writing is a mode of communication. Communication happens between two (or more, we hope!) people.

If I'm in a meeting, and hold the floor and speak until people's eyes glaze over, but I love the sound of my voice... that does not make me a successful speaker... it makes me a blowhard.

If I'm an actor, standing in front of an empty theater after scorching reviews trashed the show, but I love the emoting I am doing... that does not make me a good actor. It probably makes me a narcissist.

If I tell my favorite personal anecdotes to friends and family, and they merely endure... I'm not a storyteller... I'm just the family asshole.

YES! I want to know if my stories are making people happy. (Or excited, or aroused, or intrigued.) YES! I want to know that. In the absence of a realtime fapometer, I want some way to gauge what is working and what isn't.

Views and follows are absolute numbers heavily dependent on category, story order, and the sheer persistence of a writer. Comments are too few to really generate reliable data, even with appropriate sentiment analysis. Within a category, given better global data, we could probably baseline some guidance on views or follows over time as a metric of success.

Ratings are at least proportional, thus theoretically independent of category... except we know that some categories attract scurrilous one-star curmudgeons. Moreover, ratings are not based on scientific approaches to surveys with demographic randomization. If anyone wants to pool data, we could probably build a metric that takes into account views proportional to category, follows proportional to time and number of stories, and ratings with category adjustments.

But in the absence of truly scientific measurements, I think those of us who actually care about our craft, who want to reach people, to connect, to inspire... I think we reasonably draw some good conclusions based on the overall combination of these various factors filtered by intuitive calibration adjustments.

 

[KeithD]

Well, fie on me then. And tough shit.

I don't read all of those writer pontificating prattles about why a writer has to do this or that. I pretty much spend the time you lot spend navel gazing with fancy reasons to do this and that just enjoying myself and actually writing and posting stories. And, as I've noted before, posting my stories here as much because I want them stored somewhere other than my computer rather than some highflying need to communicate with some fake name on a porn board of unknown assessment ability.

Most of what I have posted here, I wrote some time ago to make money from in the marketplace--and I did. Success for me IS in the pleasure and arousal of the writing process and being pleased personally with the result. I'd do it even if they didn't make money and it wouldn't be to "communicate" with some stranger.

 

[Duleigh]

To me the number of followers is not a metric of success because it's not a metric. Many of us haven't been out there like the folks that have been hitting contest after contest, event after event putting in the overtime getting their name out there and entertaining readers on a regular basis. When I see this writer has 500 followers and another has 700 followers and I look at their work and see that they've written some damn fine stories the only metric that matters to me is that there's 1,200 entertained readers out there.

Contest and event scores are metrics because we're not judged on an arbitrary number of readers of a body of work but on one specific work That's when our skills and story crafting shines, and when you start racking up the contest wins, that's when you start getting followers. Followers are a by-product or maybe a reward rather than a metric.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, the bottom line is that Literotica is a very loose sieve in terms of any stats meaning much of anything. Fun to play with as long as you don't let them fool you.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

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?

I believe it would depend upon what "success" you want to measure.

I consider "followers" those readers who view me favorably as a writer and want to keep track of what I publish here.

I consider "favorites" those readers who view the story favorably enough to tag it.

 

[Voboy]

If I'm in a meeting, and hold the floor and speak until people's eyes glaze over, but I love the sound of my voice... that does not make me a successful speaker... it makes me a blowhard.

If I'm an actor, standing in front of an empty theater after scorching reviews trashed the show, but I love the emoting I am doing... that does not make me a good actor. It probably makes me a narcissist.

If I tell my favorite personal anecdotes to friends and family, and they merely endure... I'm not a storyteller... I'm just the family asshole.

These examples are listing people who are oblivious to the effect their words have on others. They are also instances where the audience is at some level captive.

Neither of those is true here, at least for me. I would never presume to speak for others. But when I say I "write what I'd want to read," it does not imply blowhardism, narcissism, or family-assholism. It simply means that my standard for a successful story is would I want to read this? Would I enjoy this?

If I'm posting a story, those answers are "yes." There have been times that I've posted stories I was pretty sure wouldn't do well, metrically, but I liked them and put them up. I've also got stories in my folder that I'm sure would score pretty well, and yet I sit on them because I don't like them very much.

And unlike your examples, I know I have an audience: metrics matter in that sense, sure, but they're nothing like a sole determinant. And honestly, if I was getting a lower readership, it probably would not change my writing. It might make me do less of it, but it would still be the stuff that I'd want to read.

As for our audiences being captive? They can nope out of any of my stories any time they wish, and I'm sure plenty do. I don't hold it against them. Diff'rent strokes, diff'rent folks. I would hope those readers would someday do what I did once I started finding unsatisfying work on here: I stepped up and wrote my own. All are welcome to do that, here.

So. Yeah. Your "fie" is misplaced, dude.

 

[Limnophile]

I finally felt true joy in my writing when I typed the beginning of my story 'Farmer Frannie the Family Fanny'. I smile each time I see the title, regardless of what anybody else might think.

Unless you're getting paid for it, write to make yourself happy and quit worrying about the numbers.

 

[dmallord]

Amen. Let there be peace among writers in the Literotica Valley ... not war. The warriors are too busy sharpening their blades for battle. The writers need to be ready to tell their stories after the last sword is held victorious. Worry not about those who do or will not read your words. In the end none of it matters.