Story activity.

[TheBard1982]

Looks like you've used NotWise's info (thanks, NW!) to get your profile linked but you can have up to a total of four links.

I usually link three stories (currently 2 plus a sketch from a story) plus the list of all my works posted on Lit. It probably doesn't generate huge amount of additional traffic but I know I've read sampled and read a number of linked stories over the years by seeing them in authors' signatures, and some other authors do as well.

Thanks for the info. I'll do that. Other than posting stories, I haven't done much else on the site.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I posted a story a few days ago, and usually when I post, the first few days are pretty active. This time however, the activity has been almost non-existent. Is that normal?

If you are a low profile writer (not popular yet), it's not unusual at all.

If you don't have much of a following then by far the biggest factors in your views total will be the category that you publish in and presence on the new lists and presence on that category's recent 25 (or 35 whatever) list.

If you are in a high traffic category (say incest) you should get good and high response. If you are in a quiet category (like Toys) you will have less response.

If you are in a slow category - a category with few submissions (like Humor) - you will stay on that category's recent list a long time (days/weeks/months) which over the first few day/weeks/months your traffic will be okay until your story drops off of that recent 25 list. If you are in a fast category - a category with lots of daily submissions (like LW) - you will get high traffic for only a day or two until your story drops off.

For instance:

High Traffic
Incest will get something like 5k hits and 50 votes in the first day maybe, but then drop off after 1 day maybe 2 days max (Incest get about 15 submissions per day).
LW will get something 3k hits and 30 votes in the first day or two, then drop off after a couple of days (LW gets maybe 10 submissions per day).

Low Traffic
Letters will get something like 100-200 hits in the first day but continue to hit for a couple of months before it drops off the recent list (Letters will get about 1 or 2 submissions per week).

Compare two of my stories (I am a very low profile, very unpopular writer):
Published 29 months ago, category EC, 2697 views, 16 votes
Published 16 months ago, category L&T, 2744 views, 31* votes
* is very short making it easier for readers to finish and vote

Even though my L&T story has been around only half the time that my EC story has, it gets equal numbers (and has slowly caught and passed and will continue to outpace my EC story!). Why? L&T actually gets more views than EC. First, EC gets 10-15 submissions per day which keeps it on the recent list for 1 or 2 days max. But unlike Incest, it does not nearly get the traffic during that time. It might get me 1 or 1.5k views on the first day. That's it. Then immediately drop into obscurity. On the other hand, L&T gets very little traffic over all. It's basically invisible, but it hangs onto the recent 25/35 list for a few months! Not only that, once it drops off the recent list, it still consistently outpaces (albeit slowly) all of my EC stories (I have four of them) despite the fact that both stories have long dropped into obscurity.

Both of my stories in dead categories (my L&T story and my Chain story chapter) outpace all four of my EC stories in traffic! If you are a low profile writer looking for more eyeballs, do anything that you can to stay out of EC.

The most effective way to get eyeballs however is to just publish to a popular category like Incest or LW. Even though you won't stay on the recent list for very long, over time even the trickle hits and votes will be larger than in other categories. Plus it will be easier to score a 'hit' with the masses and develop a following.

I had a story go live this morning. So far, there have been 2.2k views and 18 votes, which feels typical.

Those are typical numbers for most of my stories after a few months. If I post in EC those will likely be my numbers after a year or more.

I use EC because I write stories which are not eligible for any of the niche areas.

That is the only reason that I would ever consider EC ever again. I won't significantly engineer a story just to make it fit somewhere else, but if there is any element at all in my story that qualifies it for anywhere else but EC I will stay the fuck outta EC.

What happened to your story is very unusual. Someone has to be last on the hub, so you had one chance in 22 of being that story, but being last on the EC hub and last on the New list is unusual. Maybe your story was added late.

That happened to me once. I have an EC story that was not added to the main new lists until 48 hours after publish which put it waaay back on page 5 or something. It had 700 hits in it's first week and is doomed to be the least popular story ever published on lit. Bad doctor (the site) fucked up the delivery and my child is handicapped forever, but I still love her.

 

[SkyBubble]

Not really, but you posted your story to Erotic Coupling, and that could be the problem.

EC gets a lot of stories and doesn't have a lot of engaged readers.

It's kind of my default when none of the other categories seems right.

 

[NotWise]

It's kind of my default when none of the other categories seems right.

I've used it quite a bit. It can be good, or it can be a ghost town. It's hard to predict.

 

[TheLobster]

In my experience, EC can work (by which I mean 20k+ views and 100+ votes) if you can get the H on your story the first day.

Of the three stories I posted there, two did and are doing well. The one that didn't has less than 4k views and <50 votes after months, even though it missed the H mark only by 0.1-ish.

 

[StillStunned]

In my experience, EC can work (by which I mean 20k+ views and 100+ votes) if you can get the H on your story the first day.

Of the three stories I posted there, two did and are doing well. The one that didn't has less than 4k views and <50 votes after months, even though it missed the H mark only by 0.1-ish.

I have 7 stories in EC, with a combined total of about 70k views. I think the lowest view count is about 4.5k, the highest nearly 22k.

They have a total of about 900 votes. Only two have fewer than 100 votes. Overall, the vote-to-view is around my average of 1 in 60 or 70.

What does this tell us? Well, in my specific case it means that EC is more popular than SF&F, but less popular than I/T. And about the same as all my other stories.

 

[NotWise]

The best illustration I have for EC is my Pixie series. The first of six stories is in Mature, but the remaining five are in EC. They're all very similar. All of them are titled "Pixie in/by [some location]." They all have similar short descriptions. They all have the same female protagonist. They all use the same plot and the same 3-part structure--right down to the word count for each part. They each stand alone, but they form a daisy chain with the last part of each story introducing the male protagonist for the next story.

Their scores range from 4.39 to 4.64, with the lowest-scoring and second-highest scoring published four days apart. The vote counts range from 33 to 212. The views range from 9k to 45k. Comments are low (one or two) across the board.

Low-scoring stories have low views and votes. As @TheLobster pointed out, the H makes a difference. Without it your story can't get the readers' attention.

EC is the go-to category for beginning writers and often for writers who aren't well-versed in English. A fairly small number of readers sees a very large, mixed bag of stories. As a result, their acceptance of new stories is unpredictable and the chance that a story will produce unsatisfying results for no good reason is pretty high.