The Plan

[Otto26]

I think of this effort as “The Plan”. In summary I wanted to increase the number of people reading my stories. How? Good question. The first thing to do is look at the forum where a lot of experienced writers have offered advice. What did they say?

-Write more. Doing that.​

-Write series works. Doing that.​

-Enter site contests. Nope, not at all interested. See writing-what’s-popular below​

-Engage with everyone who comments on my stories or sends me feedback. Doing that.​

-Write what’s popular. See: https://tags.literotica.com/ And use those tags for my stories. Ain’t gonna happen; I have zero interest in a lot of the most popular tags. Okay, perhaps I can do something with Big Boobs, Bondage, and Blowjobs.​

That’s all the conventional advice. But what else could I do? Was there anything other folks were doing or weren’t doing yet? Yes, but are they reasonable? Or even possible? Only one way to find out.

Publishing outside of Literotica was one-hundred percent possible. Given my subject matter Amazon and the more mainstream retailers were out of the question (although, it’s hard to take Amazon’s holier-than-thou policies seriously when they continue to publish John Norman’s Gor series). Smashwords has been purchased by Direct2Digital but they’ve promised to keep the smut flowing on Smashwords. Retaining my anonymity was a priority and it was possible. It was just a boatload of work. And since I was never going to be paid enough to make it worth my time I might as well stick with just publishing on Literotica.

Engaging with more readers means getting my work in front of more readers. How could I do that? I’d already ruled out publishing outside of Literotica so I needed to broaden my engagement on Literotica. What mechanisms does literotica have to engage with viewers? Forums, stories, audio, images, and choose your own adventure coded stories. I’m a jerk so the forums are out. I’m not going to enjoy coding CYOA stories, so those are out. I’m already writing stories. So that leaves images and audio.

Images went down in a blaze of ignominy. I used AI to gin up the elements of an image and then I edited and combined several elements to make a new image. It was pushing the envelope and it was rejected by the site. No problem. I put together a new image using licensed image elements. Let me be clear about this: I had explicit permission to use (and modify the images) granted via documented licensing for each element that I didn’t create myself. It was no different than buying the image from someone. And I was very clear that I had the license rights. But the test image (which used multiple, modified images) was rejected because images have to be 100% original work. Which was interesting given the number of 3D images published on this site which are clearly taken from various 3D environments or poser programs. Maybe I should have lied about the licensing rights? Not my style. And the images I was making can’t go into illustrated stories because the same rules apply.

I could post the images to the forums because there are very few rules on the forums. But I concluded that was like preaching to the choir and likely to annoy some people. I don’t need to annoy more people, I’m doing just fine without posting images that will upset them because I cheated by using images in the public domain. Maybe I could use the image as a series ‘cover’? Not without some serious editing. Series covers can’t include nudity. Or a bunch of other things. And they don’t display when people are searching the series titles so, really, there’s not much point to the exercise.

Audio. I listened to some audio. Now, I like hearing a woman in pleasure more than the next guy (seriously, it’s a kink), but there’s not much writing involved in most of those. I’d done two audio scripts a few years ago (Jayzus, sixteen?) with a very talented voice actor. It took awhile to find anyone willing to read them, let alone perform them, and the site makes it difficult or impossible for two creators to list a single work on their profiles. There’s no shortage of people who want to work with a woman with a sexy voice so there’s a lot of competition. But I could make audio books out of my existing, and future, works. It would cost me a little bit but not enough to make me instinctively say “Nope”, and it might be worth it. It would not be worth paying a live voice actor because I was looking at quotes in the thousands for some of my 30K word stories. It was going to have to be some form of text-to-speech. Which I was pretty sure would not be allowed by the site. I needed a test case. So I took my shortest story (7K) words and ran it through a free text to speech tool. It was almost as horrible as you are thinking. Not quite that bad, but close enough. I didn’t care, it was a test case. I was sticking it up out of the trench to see if it got shot. It didn’t. You could knock me over with a feather. So now I know that it’s worth my time to get access to some better text-to-speech tools.

I’m investigating using DeviantArt to store/publish my images. I can’t point to them in my published stories but I can point to my published stories in the images. I might even be able to mention that images associated with the story are on DeviantArt so long as I don’t include an actual URL. It’s a slog for readers, but it might be worth it. Audio conversion is going to be interesting and it might be the case that I can upload those to a non-monetized YouTube channel as well as Literotica and drive some traffic to my Literotica stories. Which would be nice. I might even be able to use the images on the YouTube site.

And there it is, “The Plan”. Am I missing anything?

 

[SimonDoom]

I would say that the best way to get more readers is to write well and write often, so my one caution about your plan is that you shouldn't do anything that detracts from that. Avoid time wasters. I'm not sure how much audio and images will help, except to the extent you publish your stories in the Illustrated category, which is an excellent way to attract more views. If you are having trouble getting images accepted, then contact some authors who've had success in that category, like HeyAll, and ask them what they are doing to do it right.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

The truth is that the size of one's readership is very much connected to specific themes and kinks. It's also connected to the amount of sexual content in the stories, the activity and the number of stories, the quality of writing, interesting plots and characters, etc.
I, for example, write exclusively femdom/vanilla as a sexual theme, and long fantasy series where I focus on worldbuilding, more complex plots, twists, etc. Considering all that, if I continue to publish stories, which I am not doing right now, I can hope to grow to maybe twice the number of followers that I have right now. I'd say that's the likely limit of my following unless I delve into some other, more popular sexual themes.
Taking a quick glance at your stories, the most obvious issue that I see is that your last story was published four years ago. You are probably not perceived as an active author. There are likely other reasons as well but that would require reading your stories

The categories you write in are capable of a much bigger readership and following than what you have. Start writing and publishing again and see what happens is my best advice.

 

[yowser]

Writers here have a range of motivations, and I don't usually want to analyse or comment on them, since writers want what they want, and more power to them.

However, you've been clear, even blunt, about your goal: more attention.

Simon is right, I think your effort should be on more work, and a focus on quality. (An over-simplificaiton of social media life, and maybe even mainstream authorship, is that you are only as good as your last effort.)

There was a baseball player a dozen years ago for the San Francisco Giants, Pablo Sandoval. Tremendous hitter. He was in a minor slump and some sportswriter asked him about his 'numbers' (batting average, hits, homeruns, etc.) going down. He said, in essence, 'I don't worry about the numbers. The moment I start looking at the numbers, they go down. My focus should be, and is, on the act of hitting, each time I come up to bat, what I can do, and how I can get better.'

Good advice all around.

 

[StillStunned]

When I wanted more views, I wrote a short I/T story. Together with its sequels, it's given me more than half a million views.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

When I wanted more views, I wrote a short I/T story. Together with its sequels, it's given me more than half a million views.

Sal is just that engaging...

 

[Lifestyle66]

Getting more views for your stories?
Publish in Loving Wives!

But be careful what you wish for!

 

[Otto26]

I am writing more. I have one story ready to publish, three more in various stages of completion, and another three plotted after that. My goal is to build up a reserve so that I can release a story (or installment) each month while I continue to write new stories. I'll post images for each new story to DeviantArt after the story is published here. Nothing fancy, just reference images I like to generate for my own use when writing. Audiobook versions of stories will follow a month after 'print' publication. That should make me a fairly active author. Eventually if not immediately.

Planning will help me maximize my impact. Or so I believe. "The Plan" is experimenting with this. Knowing that my images will be published on DeviantArt rather than Literotica changes how I create them (content, format, etc..). Knowing that I can use text-to-speech to generate audiobooks alters my schedule and opens up some story possibilities. An example of an image on DeviantArt can be seen here: https://www.deviantart.com/realotto26/art/Better-Black-Hart-Cropped-1100198180

I don't care to write incest or loving wife stories. Yes, that limits me. I accept that.

 

[TheLobster]

When I wanted more views, I wrote a short I/T story. Together with its sequels, it's given me more than half a million views.

Getting more views for your stories?
Publish in Loving Wives!

Adding A to B, the conclusion seems to be that you should write more stories about people cheating on their spouses with their own siblings.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

There absolute best way to get more viewers is to write incest (specifically mom/son) and cuckold - the two biggest kinks by a mile or seven. Writing one mom-son story (regardless of quality) will get you more hits than five or ten pulitzer worthy pieces in almost any other category. Most people search by kink (whether with category, tags or both) and no other kink comes close to mom-son. No other method will get you nearly so many hits so quickly.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Adding A to B, the conclusion seems to be that you should write more stories about people cheating on their spouses with their own siblings.

Boy meets girl, boy marries girl, girl cheats on boy...with identical twin sister...who is also into men and threesomes...but boy chooses instead to go on a Rip-Roaring Rampage of Revenge against both his unfaithful wife and her equally hot, bisexual twin sister, leaving both of them destitute and widely recognized for the gorgeous, promiscuous women they are?

Am I doing this right?

 

[ElectricBlue]

And there it is, “The Plan”. Am I missing anything?

Yes. The "write more stories" part. This is way too much over-thinking, and all it's doing is watering down your basic creative energy. Written erotica is written medium, not a visual one. Focus on the words. All the rest is a distraction, and won't get you anywhere. The next story will do far more to get more readers than any of this stuff.

 

[Otto26]

Yes. The "write more stories" part. This is way too much over-thinking, and all it's doing is watering down your basic creative energy. Written erotica is written medium, not a visual one. Focus on the words. All the rest is a distraction, and won't get you anywhere. The next story will do far more to get more readers than any of this stuff.

A) Overthinking is what I do.
B) I don't think it's watering down my creative energy. When the writing gets hard or starts to drag dipping into the other creative wells renews my energy and, in the case of the visual work, helps to inform my writing.

Thank you all for the comments. I appreciate your honest feedback.

 

[Otto26]

And all that went down in flames. After approving a TTS conversion of one of my stories to audiobook format, and removing it at my request so I could improve it, they rejected it when I resubmitted and quoted the AI policy to me.

So the only thing to do is write.

 

[mildlyaroused]

So the only thing to do is write.

Commiserations - though writing on its own isn't the worst vocation in the world.

 

[Lifestyle66]

And all that went down in flames. After approving a TTS conversion of one of my stories to audiobook format, and removing it at my request so I could improve it, they rejected it when I resubmitted and quoted the AI policy to me.

So the only thing to do is write.

Something else to consider getting more views is with your choice of title and descriptions. These are the only things which your story has different from all others when a reader sees the list of stories.

When your story appears on the "New" list and in the latest 25 stories in the category, look at your title & description and ask yourself "Does it GRAB my attention?" And even if the reader is searching for a specific tag, your story comes up in a list. What makes YOURS the one they decide to click on?

For example, among your older work, does "The Diary" with "Jane summons her desire." tell me enough about the story entice me to click on it and find out more?

I'd suggest before publishing a story to look at the selected category page and the most used tags for that category. Then select longer titles to make best use of those title word limits and the length of the description to SUGGEST the most sought-after tags for your story. For the Non-human category, a more eye-catching title might be "The Diary - Jane's Secrets", with "Werewolves or aliens, the Diary knows!" Or give them a hint of the content such as "Werewolves? Not everyone's cup of tea."

So, to attract more views, you must make your title and description shout "THIS IS WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING FOR!" Don't be subtle with the title. Shout it into their face.

My most viewed story was in Loving Wives, where they hate cheating wives. The title is "What Were You Thinking?" "Husband discovers his wife’s deception." Now THAT grabbed their attention for over 113K views!