Operation Shameless Self-Promotion is GO! · 6:35am Sep 20th, 2012
So while I was chatting with Tayman this evening as I often do of late, and I happened to noticed that the number three feature box entry was a...less than stellarly written Spike x Applebloom clopfic. Generic, full of cliche, desperately calling out for either an editor or an incinerator? You know how it is.
And this story had gotten 4,500 views. 200 of which were in the fifteen minutes between my looking it over and writing this blog. I naturally contrasted this to View From The Window's 135 total views over more than a week and two updates.
Since the conversation had already turned silly, I began musing on the idea of throwing together a cheesy shipfic loaded with sloppy makeouts solely to garner myself some popularity.
Ten minutes of shenanigans ensued, and the idea took stage on the soapbox in my mind, and argued its case to be written...
Operation Shameless Self-Promotion was inaugurated shortly thereafter. And tomorrow I'm writing a cheesy shipfic!
Because...it argued well enough to be given a chance. And because even cheeseball romance can be well written! And because if that's how fimfic wants to play the game, then I will shamelessly take that game and BREAK IT!
DRUNKEN CUTESY LUNESTIA SHIPFIC IS GO!
If you would like to play this game, I can help! It's not the game I played, I just write ship fics like some kind of ship fic producing factory, but I've known people who played the game and here are some tips:
Your story should be between 2000 and 5000 words. Less and people don't take it seriously, more and you lose people with short attention spans.
Submit your story sometime during mid morning EST. There's no way to predict posting time, but you want to be posted somewhere between about 4pm and 10pm EST. Slightly later is okay if it's clop, but overnight is the graveyard.
Biggest cover art allowed, preferably something that hasn't been used before with the characters prominent.
Romance and comedy tags win. If you fail with shipping, try comedy.
Join all the shipping groups your story applies to, especially "Shipping" and "Organized Shipping (Most Common)" and add it to the groups ASAP after it's posted. If you can't be around to stalk the site all day, arrange with a friend to add it.
Bad Horse is the master of this game. He's the only user I know who actually understands the metrics for how the feature box works.
I will add that from what I've seen as Bad Horse, Church and I made the feature box for the first time, the number of watches you get, as well as views on other stories, is related to how many other stories you have that are similar to the one that made the feature box. You get new watches and views either way, but you just get more if people see they can expect this from you.
For instance, I made the feature box with a TwiJack fic, and my other story with both AJ and Twilight got a lot of new views, my other ship fics got a handful, and my non-romance fics got the least. I also got more new watches than Church did, which I credit to having a bunch of ship fics, where he made the feature box with a comedy and had mostly slice of life and sad fics.
Finally, the story you refer to in your blog post is awful. It's so bad it boarders on parody. I wish I believed the author intended it that way, a tiny push in that direction would have made it hilarious.
(Edit to add that if you like writing ship fics, it will earn you watches even if you don't make the feature box. Shippers are hard core, and will watch people who might produce their favorite ships.)
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Yeah, I was leaning toward incinerator myself.
And woohoo, pointers! I was thinking 3-4 thousand words, and I did recall shenanigans for timing the release, which is why View went up when it did. Also, yes, romance/comedy. But joining and dropping the story on the shipping groups? That I hadn't known of, so thanks for that idea!
I don't usually write shipping. At least not blatantly. If anything, the shipping I write is not the main focus of the story. I like sad to slice of life, but mostly bittersweet.
Since this is the case, I immediately get less views on my stories.
I am liking your idea... even though that's what the majority of fimfictioners try to do now. Wanna know how to get it featured? Easy.
1) Post your story at the right time. How do you do that? Luck. Not even kidding. It's hard to say just when your story goes out anymore. I usually submit at around 10:00 in the morning and it comes out at 10:00 at night. No promises on that though.
2) Put a joke in the description. I guarantee you almost all of my views in my featured fic came with the joke "rated teen for not having random sex scenes with Twilight Sparkle". A very cheap way to get views. I will most likely never do something like my featured story again.
3) Add the comedy tag. It doesn't even have to be all that funny. Once people are reading, they completely forget about what tags there were. As long as a few jokes are cracked, that's totally fine. Then add the romance tag and you already have a story that will get thousands of views no matter if it makes the featured box or not. Add it to a shipping group and people come like crazy.
4) Yeah. As bookplayer said, talk to Bad Horse. Either him or Art Inspired. The featured box seems to be their updated fics list nowadays.
So there you go. That's how you usually do it. Comedy and Shipping tags are best tags for the box. Really good sad stories are next on the list, but they have to be really good.
I chose the route "Write original stuff, OC's and sad and slice of life". I chose a very poor route for me to get more followers and views, but in the end, I guess I don't really care.
Good luck on your endeavor.