Is there a way to reach a wider audience on Literotica?

[Syzoth]

So, one of the most popular categories on Literotica is "Erotic Couplings".

Obviously, the best way to attract more readers is to write a good story. I realize that the titles and descriptions of stories are also very crucial.

My latest post (specifically, in "Erotic Couplings") is entitled "Jailbait: My Daughter's Sexy BFF", and has a "Hot" rating so far. I've gotten some good feedback, and I'm very happy.

The irony is that I got a lot of initial views because "Erotic Couplings" has a lot of readers, but because there are also a lot of submissions in that category, my story got pushed of the "New Stories" list rather quickly, which drastically decreased my story's views and feedback. Conversely, if I post in a lesser-read category (like "Letters & Transcripts", for example), the stories tend to stay on the "New Stories" list for a much longer period of time; however, the foot-track there is much less

So, my question is, is there any way to increase/extend the exposure for our newly posted stories in popular categories? Because once stories are pushed out of the "New Stories", which can happen only after a day or two, the hits on them go down rapidly.

I'm guessing there's not a way, but thought I'd ask.

Thank you!

 

[THBGato]

If you write stand-alone but interlinked stories, when you publish a new one, readers will often go back to check out your earlier offerings.

There are threads on the Story Feedback and here where you can advertise new stories. You probably knew that, seeing as you've been around since 2015, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Some authors have Bluesky and X profiles and publicise their stories on there. I don't, but perhaps somebody who does will be along in a minute to give feedback on whether they think it is effective or not.

Lots of other authors say that entering contests is a great way to get more eyes on your work.

You can also add hyperlinks to stories. So, you can add a note at the bottom of your story saying "If you enjoyed this, then you'll probably like my other story XXXX" with the hyperlink being to another of your older stories. Here's what that looks like in practice:


Good luck!

 

[mildlyaroused]

The best way to extend the shelf life of a story, so to speak, is to split it into chapters. You will enjoy a longer period of visibility on the New Stories page if you publish a chapter each day or so, rather than publishing the entire narrative in one submission. Of course this comes with drawbacks, which have been discussed in various threads before (in great detail too, mind you; the choice between chapters and a single submission is large enough to warrant its own conversation). You'll find authors who swear by publishing their stories as a single submission and authors who swear by chapters.

 

[Syzoth]

If you write stand-alone but interlinked stories, when you publish a new one, readers will often go back to check out your earlier offerings.

There are threads on the Story Feedback and here where you can advertise new stories. You probably knew that, seeing as you've been around since 2015, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

Some authors have Bluesky and X profiles and publicise their stories on there. I don't, but perhaps somebody who does will be along in a minute to give feedback on whether they think it is effective or not.

Lots of other authors say that entering contests is a great way to get more eyes on your work.

You can also add hyperlinks to stories. So, you can add a note at the bottom of your story saying "If you enjoyed this, then you'll probably like my other story XXXX" with the hyperlink being to another of your older stories. Here's what that looks like in practice:

View attachment 2434385
Good luck!

Thank you for your response!

Yes, I've written several series and other interconnected stories, and they have definitely helped with viewership on my older stories.

I guess I'm just a little disappointed with my latest story because it started off so well, and then the hits and comments just dropped off a cliff after it was pushed out of the "New Stories" list. It's not like it's a new phenomenon... but still!

I've always known about the Story Feedback but, to be honest, I've never taken advantage of it. I don't use this Forum a lot; maybe I'll change that.

Great idea with the hyperlinks!

Thank you again! I will definitely check out your stories, too.

 

[Syzoth]

The best way to extend the shelf life of a story, so to speak, is to split it into chapters. You will enjoy a longer period of visibility on the New Stories page if you publish a chapter each day or so, rather than publishing the entire narrative in one submission. Of course this comes with drawbacks, which have been discussed in various threads before (in great detail too, mind you; the choice between chapters and a single submission is large enough to warrant its own conversation). You'll find authors who swear by publishing their stories as a single submission and authors who swear by chapters.

Thank you for your suggestion.

I have posted several series which has enabled me to maintain some readers over time, something that I do NOT take for grant.

My "issue" is that most of my stories are fairly long... like 50 pages in Microsoft Word, double-spaced. Whether they're chapters in a series or a stand-alone submission. For some reason, I've just never like submitting shorter stories. I feel like I want to tell the whole story at once, even it's just 1 chapter.

But I hear what you're saying. And it's making me reconsider a lot of things.

Thank you !!!

 

[Katie_Mae]

If you don't care too much about your star rating, you can enter competitions, they put your story on the competition page for the duration of the competition and it can help get you more views/followers. I've only entered one, but would recommend it if you're looking to extend your audience.

I say "if you don't care too much about your star rating" because entering a competition attracts all sorts of attention, including those who want to low bomb vote on your story (and your back catalogue) without even reading it, including voting on your story multiple times to try and drive your score lower. There's a "sweep" at the end where the website removes votes they think are fake which brings your score back up. As an example, I entered the Halloween competition and my story was at 4.22* but rose to a 4.53* after the sweeps. In total I lost the red H off five of my stories, and all came back after the sweeps. I found it really interesting to watch what happened to the scores, but I know some people get upset if they see someone drop ten 2 star votes at a time on their stories or something.

*These are estimated, I can't remember exactly and an too lazy to go back and check.

 

[StillStunned]

Some authors have Bluesky and X profiles and publicise their stories on there. I don't, but perhaps somebody who does will be along in a minute to give feedback on whether they think it is effective or not.

I've been advertising on BlueSky for perhaps a week. The biggest effect I noticed was with my newest story: slightly more views than I'd expect in SF&F, but loads more votes and an influx of new followers.

There are a bunch of us reposting each other's story advertisements, which helps. You can also add a longer description than in your story's tagline. I announced the story as soon as it was approved for publication, and then added a few short quotes to set the mood and generate interest.

(The other way to increase your readership, of course, is to publish a few I&T stories. But that comes with its own pros and cons.)

 

[RejectReality]

Depends on what you feel like writing. If you have any ideas for Incest, that's obviously a huge draw. Stepping down the squick rung, you have Anal and Mature which are huge categories. Age difference with an older and younger pairing is the kink that's the biggest hit in Mature.

A fetish story where you actually call out the fetish in the title/description can do quite well. The authors in that category seem to have some aversion to calling out their kink, making the grab-bag even harder to navigate. Maybe the regulars automatically check every new story for tags and such, but it's the casuals you're getting with calling out the kink up front, and there's a fuck-ton more of them. I've done well with feet, pregnancy, shaving, and pegging.

The only way to build your readership is to keep on publishing. Bigger categories will help, but you can build a following even in the small ones as long as you keep on keeping on.

 

[lovecraft68]

Each new story brings eyes to your old stories. They like the new one, they're likely to check out the older ones.

On site that features a lot of new stories every day and with tens of thousands of older stories, you're only as good as your last one.

Give them a chance to forget about you and they will.

 

[StillStunned]

A fetish story where you actually call out the fetish in the title/description can do quite well. The authors in that category seem to have some aversion to calling out their kink, making the grab-bag even harder to navigate. Maybe the regulars automatically check every new story for tags and such, but it's the casuals you're getting with calling out the kink up front, and there's a fuck-ton more of them. I've done well with feet, pregnancy, shaving, and pegging.

.... Dammit! Now I'm 500 words into a wintery foot fetish story, called "How Cold My Toes".

 

[BobbyBrandt]

How to grow your audience:

1. Write a successful story involving mom/son sex and post it in I/T
2. Repeat step one as needed.

Seriously, I think it's best to focus on the long-term success of a story here rather than the flash of being on the new story list. The most read story on this site, with over sixteen million views was published 15 years ago and it's still raking in the readers. It doesn't have a red H, but that just shows that scores are fickle for all of us.

One other advantage of posting something in I/T is the number of followers you will attract versus other categories. Followers get notifications every time you post something new or update your profile, which helps with keeping them engaged.

 

[Syzoth]

If you don't care too much about your star rating, you can enter competitions, they put your story on the competition page for the duration of the competition and it can help get you more views/followers. I've only entered one, but would recommend it if you're looking to extend your audience.

I say "if you don't care too much about your star rating" because entering a competition attracts all sorts of attention, including those who want to low bomb vote on your story (and your back catalogue) without even reading it, including voting on your story multiple times to try and drive your score lower. There's a "sweep" at the end where the website removes votes they think are fake which brings your score back up. As an example, I entered the Halloween competition and my story was at 4.22* but rose to a 4.53* after the sweeps. In total I lost the red H off five of my stories, and all came back after the sweeps. I found it really interesting to watch what happened to the scores, but I know some people get upset if they see someone drop ten 2 star votes at a time on their stories or something.

*These are estimated, I can't remember exactly and an too lazy to go back and check.

I've often considered entering competitions, but always seem to miss the deadlines.

I care about my story ratings more than I should. I derive a great sense of pride and satisfaction when I see that "Hot' rating.

Thank you for your input. I'll be sure to check out your stories.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I've been advertising on BlueSky for perhaps a week. The biggest effect I noticed was with my newest story: slightly more views than I'd expect in SF&F, but loads more votes and an influx of new followers.

There are a bunch of us reposting each other's story advertisements, which helps. You can also add a longer description than in your story's tagline. I announced the story as soon as it was approved for publication, and then added a few short quotes to set the mood and generate interest.

(The other way to increase your readership, of course, is to publish a few I&T stories. But that comes with its own pros and cons.)

I have been linking to one of my stories on Bluesky every couple of days. In most cases, I saw an immediately significant increase in views that persists for several days. I have seen increases in followers after each, as you have.

The structure of Bluesky, which basically allows users to create their own customized feeds, should be very conducive for cross-promotion between authors, and the building of a larger community city of authors and readers.

 

[THBGato]

Yeah, Bluesky....

My wife is a real evangelist for it. My problem is I already have a Bluesky account that I use (very rarely) for professional purposes. I'd be terrified that if I set up an account for my stories I might accidentally get them muddled and post erotica under the wrong moniker. It would be professional suicide.

 

[TheLobster]

Yeah, Bluesky....

My wife is a real evangelist for it. My problem is I already have a Bluesky account that I use (very rarely) for professional purposes. I'd be terrified that if I set up an account for my stories I might accidentally get them muddled and post erotica under the wrong moniker. It would be professional suicide.

Worse yet, you might post something related to your day job on your Lit account! What would your readers think?

 

[Rob_Royale]

I'll second the links to other stories in the author's notes of your stories.

 

[lovecraft68]

I can't wait for the Blue Sky pimps to realize its no better there than anywhere else for erotica, shadowbanning, dungeon, whatever they have, erotica will find its way into it. Irony is that many are flocking there for political reasons and that crowd is already blowing up the sites report feature with everything they don't like, and that will include NSFW material. EWWW Pornnnnn!

But what do I know? 15 years of seeing it happen all over the net doesn't compare to the pied piper they all want to follow. Just remember to only put the 'good' people in your lists, but bank on some bad people seeing the links and come here just to troll and be asshats.

The people who focus on ideas related strictly to what can be done on this platform have the right idea.

 

[MillieDynamite]

You can use social media, Facebook, Twitter (I mean X), Reddit, and other sites to pump stories and post links. Litterotica has accounts on X and Reddit, and I'm sure they'd let you post links on their pages. Though I never have.

 

[Cagivagurl]

So, one of the most popular categories on Literotica is "Erotic Couplings".

Obviously, the best way to attract more readers is to write a good story. I realize that the titles and descriptions of stories are also very crucial.

My latest post (specifically, in "Erotic Couplings") is entitled "Jailbait: My Daughter's Sexy BFF", and has a "Hot" rating so far. I've gotten some good feedback, and I'm very happy.

The irony is that I got a lot of initial views because "Erotic Couplings" has a lot of readers, but because there are also a lot of submissions in that category, my story got pushed of the "New Stories" list rather quickly, which drastically decreased my story's views and feedback. Conversely, if I post in a lesser-read category (like "Letters & Transcripts", for example), the stories tend to stay on the "New Stories" list for a much longer period of time; however, the foot-track there is much less

So, my question is, is there any way to increase/extend the exposure for our newly posted stories in popular categories? Because once stories are pushed out of the "New Stories", which can happen only after a day or two, the hits on them go down rapidly.

I'm guessing there's not a way, but thought I'd ask.

Thank you!

Hardly an expert, I would suggest if it's something that interests you...
Write in different categories. The 2 most read categories are IT and LW. Posting stories in either will bring twice as many readers as any other category. LW, It's a blessing and a curse. Lots of views and votes. Also heightened comments depending on whether it's something that sits well with the noisy ones who reside within.
Aside from that. Post as frequently as you can. More stories...

Good luck

Cagivagurl

 

[madelinemasoch]

I don't find it out of the question to directly DM people, start an authentic conversation, and introduce them to your work organically through that conversation. I'm not convinced that blindly posting links to your work on social media platforms actually increases your exposure by any significant amount. You'll have a better time messaging many people daily to find likeminded or even simply interested people when it comes to what you have to offer in terms of work. I don't think that we should be afraid as writers to talk about our work, and I don't think we can afford to avoid talking about our work and be all reclusive about it in 2024. I just don't think that's a very smart strategy when it comes to gaining popularity and influence in the culture. As writers, we're competing with every other form of entertainment, especially when it comes to erotica, filmed pornography, sex work, and OnlyFans content, not to mention sports, video games, social media doomscrolling, movies, and TV. We should be the people who our readers can trust and feel a closer, more personal connection to that isn't based on a parasocial phenomena but an authentic, direct form of social interaction between us. This will give our entire art form a boost. When you're reaching out to another human being and offering them your work, that trust has a chance to form into an authentic bond that they won't find with other forms of media to consume.

 

[oneagainst]

I think you need to play the long game. A 4.2 rating might become a 4.5 H if it's given enough time, and you have found readers who "get you" waaaay after the drive-bys in that first 2 days of exposure have been and gone. You need to put in place structures to allow readers to move easily between different stories, funneling traffic across your back catalogue. In my particular example, I get ~3,000 reads per day as just background activity as readers navigate through the other stories.

As a concrete example Only Consenting Adults contains interlinks to 8 books of avg. 50k works/13 ch. - a less extreme case of flow direction would be Ch 1 of A Place For Us All To Belong, which brings together two story arcs. An interesting experiment here, given that it's a meta-story, is the use of the multiplicity tag that binds disparate stories together into one corpus. I work on the assumption that a reader would get to the end of my story and (if favourable) would click on a link to my curated next offering rather than going back into the free-for-all of the general stories category. YMMV and obv requires a larger story corpus before the network effects begin to surface.

 

[MillieDynamite]

In a universe that exists entirely between 1 and 5, a 4.2 is nothing to be ashamed of.

 

[SimonDoom]

Others may have different experiences, but I'm not sure how much external social media marketing makes a difference with "popularity" at Literotica. The main thing is to keep writing, write as well as you can, and be smart about things like the category, title, tagline, and tags that you choose for your story. My mantra has always been to think of the text of the story as art, and everything else as marketing, and this has worked pretty well for me.

It helps a lot to build your base of followers. Do this by publishing stories regularly and consistently, and publishing stories that satisfy what readers want. When you have a large base of followers, every time you publish a new story it will show up on your followers' feed. You have a ready-made foundation of readers who are likely to read and like your story. This process builds on itself. "Success" engenders more success.

One recommendation I have is NOT to focus too much on story scores. I think too many authors do this. I have stories that have scores under the "red H" threshold that nevertheless have received plenty of views, favorites, and comments, and have therefore increased my profile.

It helps to do things like participate in contests, and PLACE in contests. That gets a lot of extra exposure.

This may seem a little mercenary for some, but if you are very open-minded about the subject matter of your stories, pick a niche kink that is very popular, and write your own version of story in that niche kink. Be smart about picking tags so somebody looking for that type of story will find yours. For example, there's a large readership for stories about women in bikinis. "Bikini" is an erotic trigger word. Early in my Lit career I wrote a story about a woman in a bikini at the beach. I used "bikini" in the title and "beach" in the tagline, and "bikini" as a tag as well. That story never cracked the 4.5 threshold, but it has 381,000 views and it's number 30 on the all-time most favorited Exhibitionist story list. And what THAT means is that it's likely to pop up on similar stories lists for other "bikini" stories, giving it even more exposure. This strategy only works well if you're like me and you're very open-minded and flexible about what you want to write about. I read widely and when I stumble across a new interesting erotic category, like "hucow" stories, I think, "I'm going to try writing my own version of a hucow story." Many authors prefer to stay inside well-defined erotic lanes, and this approach wouldn't work as well for them.

 

[StillStunned]

In a universe that exists entirely between 1 and 5, a 4.2 is nothing to be ashamed of.

Kind of like an afternoon at work, and the closer you get to 5 the more acceptable it is to knock off and grab a drink.

 

[SimonDoom]

Something to keep in mind about Bluesky v. Twitter/X, at least for now. I just signed up for a Bluesky account to see how it goes. Right now Literotica's Bluesky account has 182 followers. Its Twitter/X account has over 20,000 followers. That's over 100 times as much.