Learning about my Readers

[EroticCupcake]

My favorite piece of my own writing (so far) was chapter 12 of a 13 part story. It has many fewer readers than chapters before and after. The needy part of me wants the most readers on my favorite writing. However, the situation makes sense and there are some obvious lessons.

#1) People will read (or click) on a middle chapter of a longer story without reading prior chapters. This is odd to me.

#2) The click is based purely on story notes / description. My story name doesn't indicate obvious sexual content. The more explicit notes get more clicks.

#3) Story notes should match category. Story was posted in reluctance category. Chapter 10 had 18k readers and note was something indicating being used / humiliated. Chapter 12 has 3k readers and note is about NOT being dub-con. This is reasonable. Overall story was reluctance, but not that chapter. A non-con stoke reader shouldn't read it.

What will I do with this information?
Find a way to onboard readers in middle chapters without insulting core audience. Probably by adding quick physical description and emotional tags. This is also probably good general advice. People generally change their clothes everyday, why not describe how good they look on someone's body.

I probably have 3k core readers and 15k people who click based on notes. I wish the 3k was bigger, but that will grow over time if the writing is good.

I think I'm OK getting 15k fewer readers on my favorite writing if that's not what the audience would have wanted. The notes did their job.

I will try to err on the side of being explicit about content in chapter notes. This is a struggle. I prefer clever and hiding spoilers versus direct. However, this is fundamentally a porn endeavor. Seems reasonable.

If I want to write something multi-chapter, find a way to put a version of the incoming explicit content and tag it as such.

 

[SimonDoom]

What do you mean by "notes"? Do you mean the tags? Or the story tagline?

This is what I see with your story. It follows a fairly common pattern of attrition, with significant dropoff after Chapter 1. Other facts that lead to erratic numbers are the long time between publication of some of the chapters, and the variability of the score.

Chapter 10, published on Sept. 6, has over 17K views, which is very good, especially relative to the amount of views of the first chapter, which was published on Jan. 22, 2022--over a year and a half ago. But there's a big dropoff with Chapter 11, published 10 days later on September 16, which has 3,000+ views. That's a weirdly big dropoff. Since that chapter all chapters have had lower numbers.

The tagline for that chapter isn't as appealing as for the previous chapter. Plus, the score is significantly lower. My guess is that Chapter 10 ranked high for non-con stories at that time, so it attracted more viewers, and Chapter 11 didn't get as many views because it's rating was relatively lower.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My favorite piece of my own writing (so far) was chapter 12 of a 13 part story. It has many fewer readers than chapters before and after. The needy part of me wants the most readers on my favorite writing. However, the situation makes sense and there are some obvious lessons.

#1) People will read (or click) on a middle chapter of a longer story without reading prior chapters. This is odd to me.

#2) The click is based purely on story notes / description. My story name doesn't indicate obvious sexual content. The more explicit notes get more clicks.

Except the click-in is made on the basis of title and sub-title alone. Readers don't see notes or tags until they're into the chapter.

That's a really weird down-shift in View numbers though. Did that low chapter coincide with a contest or a holiday, something like that, where it lost visibility quickly? Normally, by chapter 12, one might expect to see a 10% or so slide in numbers (because you've hooked in those who are interested), but not a drop as big as that. That is very odd.

 

[Mastered_again]

From my limited experience, the story tagline (subtitle if you will) and category have more to do with generating clicks (reads) than stand alone tags.
Category interest:
1. Anal
2. BDSM
3. Noncon/Reluctance or E/V
4. Erotic Couplings

Just a highly unscientific observation

 

[EroticCupcake]

Except the click-in is made on the basis of title and sub-title alone. Readers don't see notes or tags until they're into the chapter.

That's a really weird down-shift in View numbers though. Did that low chapter coincide with a contest or a holiday, something like that, where it lost visibility quickly? Normally, by chapter 12, one might expect to see a 10% or so slide in numbers (because you've hooked in those who are interested), but not a drop as big as that. That is very odd.

Yeah, I used the wrong word. A better word would have been description, not notes.

I don't know if it coincided with a contest. It makes the most sense to me that the negative sounding sexual situation pulled 5x the readers as the positive one because the category was non-con, and there is 15k difference between core audience reading everything and random clickers.

If you write a story with title / description. Bad Practice 09: Cheerleader is humiliated by jealous friends you can get 18k clicks even though 1 to 8 don't exist. This doesn't bother me, but it's interesting.

What do you mean by "notes"? Do you mean the tags? Or the story tagline?

This is what I see with your story. It follows a fairly common pattern of attrition, with significant dropoff after Chapter 1. Other facts that lead to erratic numbers are the long time between publication of some of the chapters, and the variability of the score.

Chapter 10, published on Sept. 6, has over 17K views, which is very good, especially relative to the amount of views of the first chapter, which was published on Jan. 22, 2022--over a year and a half ago. But there's a big dropoff with Chapter 11, published 10 days later on September 16, which has 3,000+ views. That's a weirdly big dropoff. Since that chapter all chapters have had lower numbers.

The tagline for that chapter isn't as appealing as for the previous chapter. Plus, the score is significantly lower. My guess is that Chapter 10 ranked high for non-con stories at that time, so it attracted more viewers, and Chapter 11 didn't get as many views because it's rating was relatively lower.

Thanks for doing the analysis also. I didn't make it easy on you.

Yeah, I agree that my tagline was not appealing to that category, and that the lesson learned is that tagline alone drives like 80% of the engagement. This is not what I expected. I assumed it would be 80% core audience and 20% randos. It never occurred to me someone would read chapter 10 and not 1. This doesn't bother me, just something to learn.

Chapter 11 is super dark (even for me) and I excluded some of the actual dub-con stuff I was uncomfortable with. Very likely a better strategy (if clicks were my only care about) would have been to make it more explicit, then tag it as such.

I don't think I would do it much differently, other than to make the tags even more direct, and let readers opt in or out.

I'm just trying to articulate any lessons I can learn as I do this. Thanks for analysis.

 

[EroticCupcake]

As pointed out by EB, I also didn't account for specifics like day released or contest or other factors. It's possible that could explain some variance, but I don't really care about variance caused by timing, because it's not related to the quality of writing or communication with reader.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for doing the analysis also. I didn't make it easy on you.

Yeah, I agree that my tagline was not appealing to that category, and that the lesson learned is that tagline alone drives like 80% of the engagement. This is not what I expected. I assumed it would be 80% core audience and 20% randos. It never occurred to me someone would read chapter 10 and not 1. This doesn't bother me, just something to learn.

Chapter 11 is super dark (even for me) and I excluded some of the actual dub-con stuff I was uncomfortable with. Very likely a better strategy (if clicks were my only care about) would have been to make it more explicit, then tag it as such.

I don't think I would do it much differently, other than to make the tags even more direct, and let readers opt in or out.

I'm just trying to articulate any lessons I can learn as I do this. Thanks for analysis.

Now you are overgeneralizing. You cannot assume that the tagline is 80%. You don't have enough information to know that. It's extremely unlikely that it's 80%.

You also cannot assume that people are reading chapter 10 but not 1. You have no way of knowing that.

It's likely, when you publish Chapter 10, that some readers see it and click on it to figure out what it's all about before they decide to track down Chapter 1 and read it. But you have no idea what the numbers are.

I suspect something else was going on that was beyond your control, like a bunch of other non-con stories were published that day and yours got bumped down to the bottom of the list and didn't get seen, and then the score wasn't high enough to attract more readers.

 

[EroticCupcake]

Now you are overgeneralizing. You cannot assume that the tagline is 80%. You don't have enough information to know that. It's extremely unlikely that it's 80%.

You also cannot assume that people are reading chapter 10 but not 1. You have no way of knowing that.

It's likely, when you publish Chapter 10, that some readers see it and click on it to figure out what it's all about before they decide to track down Chapter 1 and read it. But you have no idea what the numbers are.

I suspect something else was going on that was beyond your control, like a bunch of other non-con stories were published that day and yours got bumped down to the bottom of the list and didn't get seen, and then the score wasn't high enough to attract more readers.

Thanks for the feedback.

The real goal is to keep writing and to be good (or get good), and things will take care of themselves, but I am interested in the optimal way to communicate intent and / or onboard readers if that is the way people engage.

I also gather that there is a built-in drop off in engagement over multi-chapters stories (especially when released as sporadically as mine). I think that is why the established authors do long form self contained stories. This is a lesson to internalize, but at the moment I'm pretty new at this, and releasing chapter by chapters seems helpful for my process.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for the feedback.

The real goal is to keep writing and to be good (or get good), and things will take care of themselves, but I am interested in the optimal way to communicate intent and / or onboard readers if that is the way people engage.

I also gather that there is a built-in drop off in engagement over multi-chapters stories (especially when released as sporadically as mine). I think that is why the established authors do long form self contained stories. This is a lesson to internalize, but at the moment I'm pretty new at this, and releasing chapter by chapters seems helpful for my process.

This is a good way of looking at things. Focus 90% on the writing, and just keep doing it, and keep trying to get better.

The rest is marketing. It matters too, but not as much.

A few tips:

1. Be mindful that if you take a long time between chapters, you will lose readers.
2. Some attrition is inevitable no matter what you do. It makes sense. 30,000 people click on your first chapter, but some aren't going to like it, and they're not going to click on chapter 2, so it's inevitable that there is dropoff. Your numbers looked totally normal until that weird dropoff in September of this year.
3. Try to maintain story quality from chapter to chapter. Be mindful that if the quality dips, or if your story zags after readers have gotten used to zigging after 10 chapters, you'll lose people.
4. Do be mindful of the category, chapter title, tags, and tagline.
5. Next time a new chapter is published, check out where it stands on the new story category hub. Is it near the top of the list or buried and invisible at the bottom? That could make a difference.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I suspect something else was going on that was beyond your control, like a bunch of other non-con stories were published that day and yours got bumped down to the bottom of the list and didn't get seen, and then the score wasn't high enough to attract more readers.

That's my guess.

@EroticCupcake - for what it's worth, my rule of thumb for drop-off in Views from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 is 50%, a further 50% from Ch.2 to Ch.3, then flat line (ish) through to the end. That is, maybe one in five who click into Ch.1 will actually read the story through to the end.

I've got some stories that in fact do better than that retention rate, but they were deliberate writer experiments, to see if I could drag readers along with increasingly longer chapters, coming out quickly. Conclusion: yes, I can.