Post Early Or Post Late?

[GrantBricksly]

So, The Valentine's Contest is only my second ever contest. And watching my scores, and those of the other stories in the contest has got me wondering a few things.

First and foremost is what the title of my post suggests. For those of you who have frequented contests, I am curious. Have you found that Early entries or or Late entries are the better way to go?

I assumed, that getting my story in early allowed more views, and thus a better chance of a good score. But..I wonder...I know that low scores (1-bombs) can be "swept" away, but some low scores will stay. So, the longer it sticks around, the better a chance of higher scores evening the score out...But that assumes that the low scores start at the beginning.

If you tend to get higher scores to start with, then you'll start with a high score, but then over time it will drop with lower scores. So perhaps a later posting date would be better.

Does any of this matter at all? Do they take into account how many votes it's gotten? I know it needs to get 25 minimum to count...but let's say 2 stories have a 4.8, one has 30 votes, and the other has 500 votes...isn't the 500 vote 4.8 a little more impressive? Does that one get the bump instead of the other?

 

[alohadave]

For the official contests that have voting thresholds, you'll want to submit early if you don't have a large following that tends to vote on your stories.

You only need 25 votes to qualify for this one, so it may not be an issue, but if you need that extra time to get the votes, submit early.

 

[KeithD]

Have you found that Early entries or or Late entries are the better way to go?

Yes. I make opening day and often the last week as well. My last one should post tomorrow.

 

[GrantBricksly]

For the official contests that have voting thresholds, you'll want to submit early if you don't have a large following that tends to vote on your stories.

You only need 25 votes to qualify for this one, so it may not be an issue, but if you need that extra time to get the votes, submit early.

I'm not worried about how many votes I'll get, I have well over 200. I'm more..curious..about whether a story that posts in the final week, and just barely passes the threshold and ends up with a score just as high (or higher) than mine which has been up since the beginning, will end up counting as "doing better" when in reality, if that same story had the same month of voting, their score may end up lower?

Example:
Story A posts on Day 1. It does reasonably well, and ends with a 4.8 after 30 days and 500 votes
Story B posts on day 25. They have loyal followers that upvote it to start, and on Day 30, it has a 4.85 with just 50 votes.

Now, on day 55:
Story A, still has a 4.79. with 600 votes. The scores have been reasonably steady, and the rating has evened out over the course of time.
Story B has now been up for 30 days, and has faired less well, with a rating of 4.02 and 320 votes.

Clearly Story A was the better story (by the readers opinion anyways) But because Story B only had 5 days of voting, the score did not have a chance to reflect that yet...

 

[NotWise]

If a higher percentage of readers like your story and vote, then it will probably do better. Not sure that has anything to do with when you post the story. I've never noticed that it makes much difference.

Posting early gives your story more views. The contest page pulls in a roughly constant number of views/day -- except for April Fools, which is up so long the that the views/day tails off after a while.

 

[KeithD]

There are too many variables running to achieve useful answers to these questions. The answer is to write a better story than anyone else and to gather more favorable voters than anyone else--this whether you post early or late. I've placed with one posted the first day and I've placed with one posted in the last week.

 

[JGittes]

The main advantage of posting in a contest is that contest entries are posted at the top of the new story lists on both the category and the new story pages. If you post in a high-story submission category (LW and IT), your story will be guaranteed to be visible at the top of the new story page for at least a day. If you post in a low-story category, your story could be visible for a couple of weeks.

I am not convinced that many general readers use the contest page to find stories. I'm sure some do, but not as many as AH readers who want to view all the submissions. My main reason for saying this is the only information on the contest page listing is the author's name and the story's main title. The contest listing has no description line, category, score, or story length. I've found all those bits of information are important for a general reader to click on a story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am not convinced that many general readers use the contest page to find stories. I'm sure some do, but not as many as AH readers who want to view all the submissions.

My limited experience with Contests is that most of a story's initial traffic comes off the Category front page, and when the story drops off the front page, the traffic obviously drops. The Contest listing generates a bit of a tail, but in my experience, only another ten percent or so. What was noticeable was the score drop within that tail, as if readers were inadvertently wandering into their squick zones, and marking the story down - to the extent that I no longer bother with contests, as having a negative effect.

The main reason, though - the Contest themes don't interest me much, they're too northern hemispherical for me.

 

[PennameWombat]

IMHO you’re overthinking this. Besides, trying to outguess the readership here is a fool’s errand. On this note, my Nude Day story last year (2022) was, I thought, a perfect entrant in E&V. It received a decent number of views but… very few votes. The ones it received were high, but even now it’s still under the 25 vote requirement. Yet, it has more views than a number of my other stories. Its votes per view ratio is so far out of line with everything else I’ve posted that I, uh, well, I’ve zero clues.

I’ve never won a contest, so what my opinion is worth is up to you. But some of my best performing stories were ones that were submitted during the last week or even (in one case) the last submission day. Since the key is to amass at least 25 votes, that can happen quite quickly, but there is some dependence on category. Although contests help, some categories just seem to have generally lower ramps of views and slower voting.

As a rule, my ‘favorite’ categories for writing are some of these slower ones, such as Erotic Horror, so being in the contest adds some impetus, it helps to push a few more views. But I haven’t seen much difference over the long term about entering early or late.

My general issue is I’m undisciplined and I’m not doing this for money. The original story I’d been working on for Valentine’s Day wasn’t quite working, but I was planning to force it. Then I saw the Crime & Punishment announcement and suddenly it had a perfect home. So then I had to set off from scratch on a single sentence idea I’d captured but put aside. This didn’t particularly worry me as, like I said, I’ve not seen any specific reason to enter early or late.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I haven't entered many contests (2 I believe), and it wasn't with any intention of winning but to see how participating in the contest impacted my total portfolio of stories here.

My Valentine entry posted the first day of the contest, and as of today, I have seen the view count for all my stories (except that entry) increase by approximately 13,000. (The contest entry has had 67,147 views on its own) I can tell you that is a much lower increase in overall views than what I typically see after posting a new story. There have been no noticeable surges in any of the other data categories so far.

It has obviously dropped off the "new story" list by now, so unless people find it within the contest list, it is subject to the same selection routine that readers would typically use to stumble upon it.

The story has been up for two weeks and the rating has remained virtually unchanged. This is true for all 18 of the stories which posted at the beginning of the contest, (maybe a few hundredths up or down) with the exception of the OP's story, which has increased by three-tenths over that time (4.44 to 4.74).