How many views is a lot of views?

[Johnevie]

So I got my first story posted on literotica this week. [insert applause here] Thank you, thank you. I'm pleasantly surprised to see it's racked up nearly 5000 views in its first three days. But is that anything special? Seeing as how there are stories on this site with over a million hits, I doubt it. What are your criteria for a successful story? How many views does it take to make you feel good?

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Where is the story posted? Link?

My criteria for a successful story is completely out of whack.

My one story, Oil Can is rated 2.something because most people hate it, but I consider it successful because it was an idea that I faithfully transferred from my head onto the page.

I don't consider Over The Sink 2 & 3 to be successful because I want to rewrite the entire thing, even though they have over to 1,000,000 views combined, and are rated over 4.5 each.

 

[ScouriesWorld]

5.000 is a good start...
10,000 and you're hitting your stride...
25,000 and you're starting to get noticed...
50,000 and you're ready to join the "FAVORITED" list...
100,000 views and you're on the best seller lists…
200,000 views and it’s a mega hit…
500,000 views and it’s a one-in-twenty-thousand blockbuster
and if you ever write a million seller then the ROYALTY checks start to flow...

Below are the sales for the stories entered in the latest contest... some solid numbers but no mega hits...

now if you want to know about votes...​

VALENTINE'S DAY - VIEWS Average 19,646- Median - 13,800

Getting Mom in Shape HeyAll 118854
Cheerleader Submission: A Love Story silkstockingslover 94895
My Sister Turned Me into a Slut BuckyDuckman 59040
Autofellating Brother? scouries 52042
Incest on Valentine's Day HeyAll 51810
Payback is a Bitch, You Slut Bitch SusanJillParker 48400
Finding the Truth DG Hear 42203
Valentine's Day Threesome silkstockingslover 41388
Summer Sucks! rampant404 41021
Valentine Treat: WhoreWife Creampie AverageBear 40547
Super Sunday silkstockingslover 40495
Eve's Awakening MsAlexisofLDW 40042
I [HEART] Intercourse PA AverageBear 38875
A Night of Unconditional Submission silkstockingslover 36921
Valentine's Day with Work Wife hermes25 33774
The Lynch Pin Transverse 29312
Meant To Be Together, I'm the One SusanJillParker 28986
Rose, For My Daddy Scaramouche123 28958
Valentine Threesome Comixgrl 27547
The Teacher's Valentine EsotericNiceGuy 26349
Valentine's Exhibitionism/Voyeurism SusanJillParker 24192
The Name of the Game TxRad 23961
Snowball's Chance patientlee 23815
Carla Rodgers, Sex Therapist clive2007 23807
Home is Where The Heart Is lovecraft68 22830
Alexandra's Valentine's Day nicecthulhu 20743
Valentine's Day Surprise gab365 20074
For Your Pleasure samantha4 19874
Inside of You Cia81 19581
Secret Valentine curlyspurs 19227
Pierced by Cupid's Arrow honey28 19093
Jenny and Me DG Hear 18833
Compromised Ironiclaconic 18810
Joe DG Hear 17877
Yolanda and the Professor olivias 17455
Heart-shaped Box RejectReality 17412
Flirting Goes Too Far DG Hear 17158
Just Another Normal Day a_dani365 16040
What Bears See TxRad 15786
Paper Cock learsdaughter 15334
Uh-Oh KeithD 14860
Chocolate Covered Cherries DG Hear 14694
My Love is Your Love NightTempest 14388
Miss Match Dual_Triode 13254
The Nutty Chocolatier sagethorns 12998
Gamine and Gambler Five_Eight 12637
Cheating Heart the_sex_kitten 12040
Mike and Chris Together Boxlicker101 11973
Fairy Holiday CatBrown 11064
Turnabout's Fair Play Angellica1612 10988
Go For Broke estragon 10472
Golden Arrows RedHairedandFriendly 9907
Val's Valentine's Day Panties EesomeBeastie 9664
One Last Valentine's Day CambriaRose 9511
Cupid's Arrow odax 9496
Magical Night Wildfire8470 9232
Maggie and The Professor lazyways 9230
Over a Piece of Pie Chiara23 8910
One Day My Prince Will Come carlieplum 8650
14 Ideas for Valentine's Day Tara_Neale 8374
First Valentine's Day misskatie87 8019
The Giver sr71plt 7840
Here We Go Again! double_entendre 7595
Free Sugar PMWhite 7485
Lost and Found rachlou 7443
Budget V-Day oOScarletWingsOo 7392
Eros Gets the Job Done Angellica1612 7236
Zoie's Valentine ZoieDoulos 6968
Vanessa's Tale Chiara23 6913
Twinkle, Twinkle My Wishing Star SusanJillParker 6529
Schwanky brentcanuck 6202
Absinthe Akerbeltz 6002
Happy Valentine's Day PhilBear 5523
Valentine's Day, 1945 PhilLanderer 5408
Our First Valentine's Day CallMeBambi 4406
A Date to Remember LoveForWriting 4387
Love Potion randibyrnes 4028
Funny Valentine PaulBenham 3759
I Love You Sean Renaud 3723
Pauletta's Valentine Boxlicker101 3590
St. Valentine Defeats the Wolf MrMax59 3491
Cupid's Power PrincessErin 3114
A Valentines Promise Lady_Eryka 2635
Ellie and the Great Cupid Heist EesomeBeastie 2436
Chapter Seven Zrnko_Pisku 2106

 

[mynameisben]

I consider it a success if at least one person views my story for every year I have lived.

 

[Stella_Omega]

So I got my first story posted on literotica this week. [insert applause here] Thank you, thank you. I'm pleasantly surprised to see it's racked up nearly 5000 views in its first three days. But is that anything special? Seeing as how there are stories on this site with over a million hits, I doubt it. What are your criteria for a successful story? How many views does it take to make you feel good?

Most of those hits are not reads. they are visits by bots and webcrawlers, gathering information for search agents like Google and Bing. You can figure maybe ten real people for every hundred bots-- off the top of my head, I don't remember what the percentages have been figured to be, but nothing like we all want to think here. Personally, I wish Manu would clean up the statistics software to differentiate between the various classes of visitors, because a bot is easy to identify. But that would make so many people so sad.

The only readers that really matter to you are the ones that vote or comment.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

I judge my chain stories by how many reach the end. Often, one-shot stories get thousands of views, but most of them just clicked, read a few sentences and left. Votes are another way to approximate how popular you are.

 

[Johnevie]

Where is the story posted? Link?

http://www.literotica.com/s/comic-book-sex

It's fairly hardcore. More pornographic than erotic.

 

[Johnevie]

Most of those hits are not reads. they are visits by bots and webcrawlers, gathering information for search agents like Google and Bing. You can figure maybe ten real people for every hundred bots-- off the top of my head, I don't remember what the percentages have been figured to be, but nothing like we all want to think here. Personally, I wish Manu would clean up the statistics software to differentiate between the various classes of visitors, because a bot is easy to identify. But that would make so many people so sad.

The only readers that really matter to you are the ones that vote or comment.

That's really informative, thanks. And yes, bit of a downer. So far the story has 44 votes, a 4.17 rating and just one comment. And one person favorited it. I'm pretty happy with that after three days. I assume the rate of views -- human or otherwise -- drops off dramatically after a while.

 

[Stella_Omega]

that's very good for three days!

the views will drop off, but if you write a second story and post it, you will get more views to the first story as well.

And then... you're off and running on that squirrel wheel we call "Authorship"

 

[Darkniciad]

That's on the lower end of the Group Sex average for views, but reasonable for a first time poster and normal positioning in the New List.

Keep in mind that your title, tagline, and luck in positioning in the New List have far more to do with how many reads you get than the story itself.

The story only comes into play when enough people are intrigued by those things to vote/favorite/comment, providing your second level of of potential eye-catchers.

============

Stella, the views could probably be filtered, but the problem is that it's impossible to retroactively filter the thousands of existing stories. I can't imagine that they'd be storing any data about individual hits.

That would create a situation where stories after the filtering are on a completely different scale from existing stories. I suppose you could determine an average percentage of bot views and strip the existing stories, but can you imagine the outrage that would cause?

( And that's normal people. Not even counting he-who-shall-not-be-named )

 

[Stella_Omega]

That's on the lower end of the Group Sex average for views, but reasonable for a first time poster and normal positioning in the New List.

Keep in mind that your title, tagline, and luck in positioning in the New List have far more to do with how many reads you get than the story itself.

The story only comes into play when enough people are intrigued by those things to vote/favorite/comment, providing your second level of of potential eye-catchers.

============

Stella, the views could probably be filtered, but the problem is that it's impossible to retroactively filter the thousands of existing stories. I can't imagine that they'd be storing any data about individual hits.

That would create a situation where stories after the filtering are on a completely different scale from existing stories. I suppose you could determine an average percentage of bot views and strip the existing stories, but can you imagine the outrage that would cause?

( And that's normal people. Not even counting he-who-shall-not-be-named )

Absolutely. So we all go on expecting thousands of hits per day and we scorn the more honest sites as being low percentile in views.

This site is a venerable old dinosaur. It was the best it could be back in 2000-- but can't easily trade some of its obsolete features for current best practices. The biggest problems, IMO, are the falsely inflated hit counts and the goofy categories that don't serve a certain percentage of the potential readership. Adding tags has been a boon for that particular issue, though not completely fixing the issue.

 

[sr71plt]

And what would be the commercial upside to be more honest about the numbers?--and to expend expense and effort to do it (especially since nothing else around here is being spruced up. The "favoritists" lists have been on a "coming" sneak peak button for six years that I know of, for instance. And the forum has been functioning as the "rules and procedures" not specified anywhere in the FACs information source for at least that long too).

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

I consider a story a "hit" when I get a lot of feedback via email and public comments.

 

[Stella_Omega]

And what would be the commercial upside to be more honest about the numbers?--and to expend expense and effort to do it (especially since nothing else around here is being spruced up. The "favoritists" lists have been on a "coming" sneak peak button for six years that I know of, for instance. And the forum has been functioning as the "rules and procedures" not specified anywhere in the FACs information source for at least that long too).

it isn't worth it for me to post the bulk of my stories here, anyway, too queer. Doubt that makes much difference to the owners!

 

[Feotakahari]

Most of those hits are not reads. they are visits by bots and webcrawlers, gathering information for search agents like Google and Bing. You can figure maybe ten real people for every hundred bots-- off the top of my head, I don't remember what the percentages have been figured to be, but nothing like we all want to think here.

My story that got Editor's Choice has five times as many views as my typical stories in the same category, and my least successful story has a third as many views as said typical stories. That doesn't make sense with the 10-100 statistic unless significantly more bots are viewing my more popular stories, and I don't think they'd be attracted to the E.

 

[Darkniciad]

If they're using Google Analytics to track the views, it doesn't track the normal, known bots like its own, Bing, etc.

No way of knowing if that's the case, or whether they're using their own tracking code for that and Analytics for the business side of things.

My story that got Editor's Choice has five times as many views as my typical stories in the same category, and my least successful story has a third as many views as said typical stories. That doesn't make sense with the 10-100 statistic unless significantly more bots are viewing my more popular stories, and I don't think they'd be attracted to the E.

It may not necessarily be the "E" itself. Is it on a toplist? Does it have a lot of favorites?

Every time something is linked within the main site is one more chance for a bot to find it, so the popularity may be generating those links and attracting bots.

( Forum links and profile links accomplish nothing, as they're all no-followed and legitimate bots will ignore them )

 

[Anjasa]

I care far more about comments and responses (like people trying to find more of my stories) than views. Views are a very passive thing. They might have read the first paragraph and decided it wasn't for them.

Comments usually mean people took the time to read the entire thing, and it made them feel strongly enough that they wanted to say something to me.

 

[lance gt]

I'm surprised that the 'Favourites' aren't compiled, at least for the author. They should archive them, so the author and readers can see the popularity of the story. After 30 days, they're gone and no way to go back and see them.
Favouriting displays interest far more than scoring or E's and H's.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm surprised that the 'Favourites' aren't compiled, at least for the author. They should archive them, so the author and readers can see the popularity of the story. After 30 days, they're gone and no way to go back and see them.
Favouriting displays interest far more than scoring or E's and H's.

At the bottom of every story it tells you how many people favorited that story. It will even tell you who favorited it.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm surprised that the 'Favourites' aren't compiled, at least for the author. They should archive them, so the author and readers can see the popularity of the story. After 30 days, they're gone and no way to go back and see them.
Favouriting displays interest far more than scoring or E's and H's.

A year ago they weren't compiled anywhere at all. Comparatively what we have now is a lot better. What would be nice would be for an author's profile to be tagged with his/her total "favorite author" statistic. Now the author only knows that if she/he is listed in the top 250. Maybe someday that will be added. (Probably if we don't ask for it. It seems that improvements here are made on things we haven't asked for rather than what we have asked for.)

And, yeah, I certainly look at the favoriting statistics as more indicative of reader support than the rating number, which can be--and obviously is for some folks--heavily trolled. That "most popular" today/7 days/30 days listing on the genre page lists is also a lot more indicative of readership.