April 28th, 2017 at 05:17pm
hey! i've been on wattpad for 2 years and i've gotten some mild success, so here's some tips! don't worry about it being too busy, there will be people to read your story, but you just have to put some work in it to make it stand out a little. c:
one: don't expect millions of reads from the get-go, ahah. in fact, you probably won't see a big pick up in reads until you hit somewhere between chapter 10-20, because people are a little wary getting invested in something they're not sure will be finished. in fact, you'll find the biggest uptick in reads when you actually finish your book! both my stories went from 300k to 1+ mil, or 500k to 2+ mil, so big increase!
two: looking at your book- you should look into getting a better cover. look at the covers on the teen fic what's hot list- the title stands out, they're interesting, they grab your attention. a tree... kind of doesn't, ahaha. if you can't make your own cover, i'd recommend looking in the multmedia club and there's a bunch of people that will totally do that for you!
three: i'd try cracking something like humour/chick lit or some other category before teen fic- teen fic is the most concentrated and therefore way harder to rank in. ranking high in a small category gets you more exposure than ranking low in teen fic/romance
four: update often! weekly updates work best for me. the ranking algorithm really works well with frequent updates, and getting better ranks = getting more exposure, and more reads.
five: join book clubs! there's some you can find in the clubs, or look them up. guaranteed comments, and generates at least some traffic for your book
six: make friends! i always read my friend's stuff/my friends read my stuff.
this is getting long so i should stop now, but good luck! remember it's not going to be instantaneous, but it's perfectly reasonable to gain a little following on wattpad ^^
Thank you so much! That's really great advice. I'm definitely working on a better cover as we speak, and since the book is almost finished, I'll be able to crank out several updates. I really appreciate the specifics here. Thanks again.