. Again, thank you all for the support and I hope to continue
Mar
31st
2019
Blog Entry #42-I Think I figured It Out · 5:11pm Mar 31st, 2019
Now I know why my stories dont get much traction(aside the fact the my stories suck)- Its because about 30% of my followers aren't even active(!). And the other 50% either don't care or dont see it. Well, if I wasn't depressed before, this certainly makes it a thousand times worse.
So, in short, I only really have about 100( followers(and that's not counting those who don't comment or whatever. I'm aware the math is wrong but worth with me here...). Story of my life, I swear...
I think a majority of the casual fans stopped logging on after the announcement of Season 9 being the final season. Because the view counts on my stories have dropped off drastically since that announcement.
5035697 Well, I did have followers since 2016 but haven't been on since 2017... ugh, I wish I could maintain my followers...
hey, I still exist!!!
please don't give up now!
everyone else is reading your stories!
your stories are way more better than the ones that actually suck, so please don't give up!!!
5035815 I'm glad to see your still here. It means a lot to me.
That's a problem everyone here has, though, it should be the same across the board. I think the simple truth of the matter is - and I say this as an author with fewer followers than you - that having 192 followers still means there are 2,200 users on the site with more followers than you. Everyone's competing for seven slots in the feature box, or three updated ones, or a dozen on Popular or New Stories or Recently Updated. And over two thousand of them have more punch than you, me, and most of the other people I know.
5046527 While that may be true, I can't exactly imporve if I lack an audience so to speak. Also. That number may be lower since as I stated previously a lot of my followers are either inactive or don't comment. I apologize for the late reply btw
5046678 No worries, I think it's quite alright to leave a day or so between replies to comments on here, people are online only when they're online after all.
Right, but if that number is lower for you (because some are inactive, don't comment, have left the site etc) then it's going to be lower for everyone. So you might have, say, 100 'active' followers instead of the 200 listed, but that means Pen Stroke has only 4,000 'active' followers instead of the 8,000 listed. I imagine the follower dropoff is fairly similar across the board, so all that really happens is that everyone loses half; the ratios between your follower count, my follower count, Cold in Gardez's follower count remain much the same. So either everyone should be having trouble getting traction, or no one should be.
I think it's important to remember what following someone means. It doesn't mean you're going to read their latest story. It means you've liked something they've done in the past, so you're going to look at their latest story and then decide whether or not it's something you're going to read. My point is that they're not a guaranteed audience, and your story still has to be the thing to win them over each time.
5047816 That's true... it's still unfortunate that happens. I have gotten a pattern down now but due to irl, I'm not writing as much as I use to. That and editors keep dropping out of left field.
5047828 I'd say if finding editors is a problem, maybe work towards being able to edit them yourself? So, maybe next time you do work with an editor, try to keep track of everything they're changing and why - I'm not saying you should question their decisions, but if you try to understand what they're doing and why they're doing it, then you should end up in a position where you can have a reasonable go at it yourself.
You might find that from the first story you study like that, you learn more about, say, grammar. The second, pacing. The third, character, and so on. Or whatever, in whatever order. Until basically you hardly need an editor anymore.
Editors do remain very useful, not least because they often spot things you don't. But if you're having trouble finding them anyway, this might be a good way to learn to make do when you have to. My latest story, for example, wasn't run by any editor, prereader or proofreader, and when my usual associate did read it after publishing, they only found a couple of typos. And a lot of that was because I'd listened to what they'd said on previous stories, and taken that on board, and started doing it myself.