Views don't matter?

[blozo]

For some reason when I wrote my first story, I wanted to write until I had a million views.
19 stories and less than a year later, I had my millionth view.
By then I had become convinced, mostly by reading these boards, that views were perhaps the most meaningless statistic of all.
So why, with 8 partially written stories in the drafts box, can I just not bring myself to write another word?

 

[John988]

[This content has been removed due to a copyright violation.]

 

[NotWise]

For some reason when I wrote my first story, I wanted to write until I had a million views.
19 stories and less than a year later, I had my millionth view.
By then I had become convinced, mostly by reading these boards, that views were perhaps the most meaningless statistic of all.
So why, with 8 partially written stories in the drafts box, can I just not bring myself to write another word?

I don't know why you'd say that views don't matter. It's true that views don't translate directly to reads, but everything starts with a view. It is the most fundamental statistic we have.

And congratulations on your millionth view. I've been here for three and a half years and I'm not very close to a million views.

 

[rescatooor]

I truly believe what you have achieved is impressive and not completely without merit.

But there is more than views. As NotWise said, that's just the beginning of it. It shows more your skill at naming your story, tagging it. Which is all an excellent beginning.

Try to find joy in little things. Be it a sole follower who reads through all of your work and comments on all of it. There are plenty of stories to tell.

And don't just do it for the readers. Write for yourself for a while. It might just inspire you.

 

[GroverLang]

So why, with 8 partially written stories in the drafts box, can I just not bring myself to write another word?

Perhaps your motivation was wrong? I’m sure you began writing for your own enjoyment. That was my initial motivation and I would be surprised if that wasn’t the initial motivation for everyone. The bonus is people reading your stories, enjoying reading them as much as you enjoyed writing them, and maybe voting and in exceptional circumstances leaving a comment.

It could be because your target was a million views and you have reached the target your mind, subconsciously, has come to the conclusion there is no point continuing. You say you have 9 stories at various stages of writing. Select the one you enjoyed writing most and put everything else out of your mind.

The most important thing is not to set yourself a deadline. You’ve spent a year churning out stories as fast as you can in an effort to reach your target as quickly as possible. Take a rest. Take however long it takes to finish the story you’ve selected. Otherwise your stagnation will never go away.

 

[SimonDoom]

No statistic is meaningless. Every piece of information means something. It's just a matter of being sensible and putting things in perspective. You don't convey enough information for anyone to help you with why you can't write. I'm sorry that's the case, though.

Like most authors here who are being honest with themselves about it, I like getting good numbers -- views, scores, favorites, whatever. But I try to put it in perspective. Numbers are fine as a sideshow, but they shouldn't be the main attraction. You should write because you enjoy writing, and focus your energy on what will make that process more effective or more enjoyable. Focusing on numbers can drive you crazy. it makes me amused but a bit sad to see authors occasionally wrapped around the axle about how in the world some anonymous voter knocked his or her story from its lofty perch at 4.73 all the way to a basement-dwelling 4.71.

I was happy to reach 1 million views, and to see them keep going higher. But the higher they go the less it seems to mean. They're just funny numbers. Focusing on them can't be a primary motivation.

Nothing obliges you to keep writing stories. If you've lost the motivation to do so you could do something else. See if the desire to write comes back later.

 

[oggbashan]

Views only matter to me as an indication of the popularity of my story's title and category compared with my other stories.

Having said that, my stories get far more attention on Literotica than on any other site.

But the view number only shows how many people (or bots) opened the first page.

 

[Hypoxia]

Obsessing over numbers when you ain't getting paid leads to madness. Treasure every fave, follow, up-vote, and useful comment, and ignore the rest. Every response means you've affected somebody. That's good.

 

[CuteSlaveLisa]

Obsessing over numbers when you ain't getting paid leads to madness. Treasure every fave, follow, up-vote, and useful comment, and ignore the rest. Every response means you've affected somebody. That's good.

A store I once patronized had this sign over the door...

"Every person who goes through
this door brings a smile to my face.
Some when they enter,
Others when they leave."

Love and Kisses

Lisa Ann

 

[blozo]

I was happy to reach 1 million views, and to see them keep going higher. But the higher they go the less it seems to mean. They're just funny numbers. Focusing on them can't be a primary motivation.

I think that's it in a nutshell.

I was writing one for the geek pride thing when I totally lost my drive, I thought it was some of my better work too.

Maybe someday I'll finish it.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have never even bothered to add up my views... until now.

Who would like to take a guess?

All right, all right...

My story with the most views has 250,073.

My story with the fewest views has 1,378.

My grand total for all stories(131) is... drum roll... 3,011,586 views.

I'm not really bragging as I really don't give a damn about view. But someone will bring up the fact if I didn't care then why did I post them.

 

[KeithD]

When I started submitting stories here it was purely to have a storage unit (more than one) other than my computer in which to keep my stories. I keep coming back to that as probably being the best reason.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I have never even bothered to add up my views... until now.

Who would like to take a guess?

All right, all right...

My story with the most views has 250,073.

My story with the fewest views has 1,378.

My grand total for all stories(131) is... drum roll... 3,011,586 views.

I'm not really bragging as I really don't give a damn about view. But someone will bring up the fact if I didn't care then why did I post them.

I never thought to count the views either. It’s nice but I’m more interested in telling a good story that I enjoy writing. 10k views or 250k views doesn’t really matter to me as long as I’ve written the story I wanted to write.

I’d have guessed 2 million views Zeb.

 

[TxRad]

With 244 stories posted, i ain't counting views. But for general information, one story of mine has over 1.02 million views.

Views may not mean much but when you look at a number that size, it has to mean something.

 

[Hypoxia]

Stories published (excluding poems/songs removed): 117.
Most views (and lowest-score) story: 154k, but with 38 faves.
Total views: I ain't counted, but maybe around a couple million in six years.
Most faves: 118 on 116k views, then 116 on 98k views, then down to 78 and less.
Most comments: 72 each on two LW stories. LW always gets most comments.
Red-H's: They vary over time. Currently 40%; used to be more, when I cared.

I used to care about the numbers. Frantic one-bombing cured me. Write what you want. Ignore the feces-flinging monkeys.

 

[gordo12]

For some reason when I wrote my first story, I wanted to write until I had a million views.
19 stories and less than a year later, I had my millionth view.
By then I had become convinced, mostly by reading these boards, that views were perhaps the most meaningless statistic of all.
So why, with 8 partially written stories in the drafts box, can I just not bring myself to write another word?

When I hit 180,000 views I gave that some thought. Two things occurred to me:

1/ With approx 9,000 votes 1/20 people cared so much about the stories they told me so. Even if it was to kick my ass

2/ There was no where else on the internet that I could possibly have gotten that much attention.

Are views meaningless. No, I don't agree. In your case I would consider it a million chances to have sold a book at retail if you had one for sale. We don't sell here so consider it a million chances to impress your brand on your audience. That's valuable.

 

[SimonDoom]

With 244 stories posted, i ain't counting views. But for general information, one story of mine has over 1.02 million views.

Views may not mean much but when you look at a number that size, it has to mean something.

That's a lot of stories. Just over ten times the number I've written.

With the "Download Story Stats" feature views and other stats can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet and aggregated with virtually no effort.

 

[LexxRuthless]

The "views" stat certainly mattered to me. When my I/T stories were getting over 50k views in a day or two, and my romance story got 2.5k views in a week, I just couldn't get motivated to write another romance story.

Likewise, when I realized that my chapters of my ongoing series were getting maybe 20% of the views of the standalone stories, I started writing more standalone stories.

I started writing in May of last year. I have just a smidge under 4 million views between my 44 submissions. I had not bothered to add that up until this post, but it just means I have found a popular niche on I/T and Anal, really. There are some absolutely amazing writers in other categories who get far fewer views.

So if it motivates you, then the stat isn't meaningless. If you were motivated to hit a million views and feel satisfied with that, then good for you.

 

[SimonDoom]

The "views" stat certainly mattered to me. When my I/T stories were getting over 50k views in a day or two, and my romance story got 2.5k views in a week, I just couldn't get motivated to write another romance story.

Likewise, when I realized that my chapters of my ongoing series were getting maybe 20% of the views of the standalone stories, I started writing more standalone stories.

I started writing in May of last year. I have just a smidge under 4 million views between my 44 submissions. I had not bothered to add that up until this post, but it just means I have found a popular niche on I/T and Anal, really. There are some absolutely amazing writers in other categories who get far fewer views.

So if it motivates you, then the stat isn't meaningless. If you were motivated to hit a million views and feel satisfied with that, then good for you.

This is similar to my experience. I wrote 6 stories in other categories before I wrote an incest story. Some did pretty well, some not as well. When I published my first incest story I was bowled over. It's true the absolute numbers mean nothing -- you can't tell how many out of 100,000 viewers actually read your story. But because view:vote ratios consistently fall (for me) between between 180:1 and 50:1 (averaging around 90:1), I can say confidently that a story with 100,000 views has far more readers than a story with 10,000 views. My incest stories average 3 times as many viewers (and, therefore, readers) as my non-incest stories. That is motivating, to be honest. My most popular incest story was published nearly 2 years ago and still gets over 500 views every day. I find the idea of connecting with readers who like the stories to be motivating.

Those are impressive numbers, by the way. 44 stories in one year. I can't imagine.

 

[oggbashan]

I used the view total on the Control Panel to rank my 298 stories by number of views.

I wasn't surprised that my 3 incest stories rated highest at nearly .75 of a million between the three.

The lowest? The most recent ones and later parts of several part stories.

Poetry? The worst have less than 500 views but even after discounting bots that is still more people looking at my poetry than they would on any other site.

 

[GroverLang]

The "views" stat certainly mattered to me. When my I/T stories were getting over 50k views in a day or two, and my romance story got 2.5k views in a week, I just couldn't get motivated to write another romance story..

I found this a very interesting comment and prompts me to ask, and this is not a criticism, do you write for yourself or for the reader or do you, in your opinion, write for both?

I find it strange you lost motivation for a category, apparently because of low views, when the story is at 4.81. It’s also averaged around 50 views a day although we never know how many are click on/click off. I see you submitted a second in Romance recently and readers appear to be enjoying it. It seems to be doing okay despite the usual anonymous 1 star.

I have stories in several categories and one more category will shortly be added because, spookily, it will be in I/T. Ideas come into my head and I write them no matter which category they suit. That’s just me and again is not a criticism of you. Everyone needs to do their own thing.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I'll never have views like that, but I don't write in the categories that get read more like incest or LW.

I guess I'm happy for any views. To get a rating is really great. And a comment is amazing!

It's always strange to me, sometimes when I post a story I'm thinking, people are not going to like that chapter, I bet I get a bunch of negative comments, and then I get none!

Speaking of views though
Here I get a few thousand views, I posted a few things at WattPad and I got 9 views. Not 9000 just 9.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I won’t pretend that it doesn’t piss me off a little bit that most of you have single stories with more views than all my submissions combined, but I made the choice that I was going to write what I felt called to write and not worry about popularity. I would rather putter along with my couple of thousand loyal readers and feel like I am presenting them with high quality work, then try to appeal to a bigger audience. Those who can do both have my admiration.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I won’t pretend that it doesn’t piss me off a little bit that most of you have single stories with more views than all my submissions combined, but I made the choice that I was going to write what I felt called to write and not worry about popularity. I would rather putter along with my couple of thousand loyal readers and feel like I am presenting them with high quality work, then try to appeal to a bigger audience. Those who can do both have my admiration.

I would love to have that many followers, I have like a handful. But I understand why. Life gets in the way and sometimes it can be over a month to get a chapter up, so it's all on me that I don't have many followers. That and my type of writing has been called many things, but never hot or erotic. Slow, sweet, stuff like that has been used to describe my writing.



SAME!

 

[oggbashan]

I won’t pretend that it doesn’t piss me off a little bit that most of you have single stories with more views than all my submissions combined, but I made the choice that I was going to write what I felt called to write and not worry about popularity. I would rather putter along with my couple of thousand loyal readers and feel like I am presenting them with high quality work, then try to appeal to a bigger audience. Those who can do both have my admiration.

Views accumulate with years of posting and numbers of stories on site. Even my older crap stories still get more views 16 years after posting.

Post Incest and watch the views climb...