What fanfic of yours got less views than you expected? · 4:35am Jan 29th, 2017
Generally, when I publish a new fanfiction, I have sort of an idea of how it'll perform. Sometimes it'll take off, sometimes it'll do a middling level of activity, sometimes it'll hop onto the Feature Box for five minutes then slip off, never again to make it back.
I'm certain a few of us have had fics take off we didn't expect. This blog post is not about those fics. Have any of you written a ponyfic that you expected to be pretty popular, and then it was dead on arrival? If so, shill here.
For me, the one fic I sort of expected to be popular that wasn't was The Maudyssey
Maud Pie is evil. Maud Pie is scarily hyper-competent. And Maud Pie has been plotting for years on how to take the Equestrian throne by conquest.
Fortunately for Equestria, she's still obsessed with rocks.
With a premise like that, I expected the sheer novelty would get a lot of people reading it, plus I had the cover image from Day 1. It didn't. It got about 300 hits in the first three days, then another 400 hits in the 14 months since it's been published.
That is the kind of thing that sounds interesting, but at the same time the more unique something is the less likely it is to be seen unless it gets featured. Everything i read comes from either features, related works, or just key words that i decide to search for. When its unique that kinda rules out two of those. Don't misunderstand this, being unique is GOOD. It just has its own unfortunate pitfalls. :(
Yeah, same! :D :'(
I am terrible at predicting which of my stories will be successful.
Things I thought would be popular:
Fluffy Fiction (Leaked MLP Season 7!) — isn't the title clickbait enough? The upvote/downvote ratio is lovely, but view count is still tiny.
Adagio Dazzle and Rainbow Dash Eat ALL The Cookies — similar situation really.
Slice of WIfe (no link because M-rated) — Cranky Doodle x Matilda clop story, published about one hour after their wedding episode was first broadcast. Surely this should have been featured?! But nooooo, I guess nobody wants to read about the sex lives of elderly donkeys!
Parties, Preening, and PTSD (again, no link) — clop with a plot. Maybe people were put off by me including a serious mental disorder in the title.
Things I didn't expect to be popular, but were:
Poison — not that it's a bad story, but I have no idea how it became my second most viewed story.