Is there a way to regain visibility?

[Britva415]

5. Get on "similar story lists" at the ends of stories by other authors that are somewhat similar to yours.

if you do this I believe you enhance the chances of getting on the similar stories lists of other stories

Speaking for myself, I've learned to completely ignore the "similar stories." They're never similar in the way I want them to be similar.

But yeah - OP needs to hear, and I think some of the other responders here do too, that every time you publish a new story, readers will look at your older stories. Some of these responses focused only on the performance of the new story, which isn't what OP asked about and isn't the whole picture of reader engagement.

 

[Djmac1031]

From someone who's been at this almost two years and only has around 650 followers:

Just write stories and hope for the best.

None of my stories have blown up in any major way. But each one draws at least a few new faces, new readers, new followers.

I've tried all the suggested tips and tricks as well, and while they help, the only real thing that will bring in readers is stories worth reading.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Write. Keep writing, especially for contests and events. Sometimes my 'reads' increase three or four-fold for an event. Each read is a reader who might be interested in your other stories.

 

[MrPixel]

Write. Keep writing, especially for contests and events. Sometimes my 'reads' increase three or four-fold for an event. Each read is a reader who might be interested in your other stories.

Yep. This is my exact experience, noticed just today. I have not done contests or events in the three years I've been posting stories... until these past couple of weeks. I had five stories in the Nude Day contest and one Ogg heroism contribution. All of a sudden the read counts on old stuff are shooting through the roof.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

Consider: the push to stay relevant longer is coming from people who don't write the kinds of stories that can be churned out once a week. The kinds of stories I want to tell are 15k words or more.

The whole "produce high quality work and produce a lot of it very quickly or forever drown in obscurity" is dare I say kind of bullshit, and gives a distinct advantage to people churning out short form content.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

AWD, your point is not wrong. A solid rule of business success is that you can promise the customer price or quality or speed. You can promise them any two, but never all three.

I’ll stick with what I said, though. However much one writes, to get more views on one’s older stories, one needs to be writing now. Writing for contests and events in particular brings in a lot of views, some of which will lead to people looking at one’s older stuff.

 

[oneagainst]

AWD, your point is not wrong. A solid rule of business success is that you can promise the customer price or quality or speed. You can promise them any two, but never all three.

Clearly you never worked in software sales. There's a special hell just for them.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Clearly you never worked in software sales. There's a special hell just for them.

I bow to the exception.

 

[SimonDoom]

Consider: the push to stay relevant longer is coming from people who don't write the kinds of stories that can be churned out once a week. The kinds of stories I want to tell are 15k words or more.

The whole "produce high quality work and produce a lot of it very quickly or forever drown in obscurity" is dare I say kind of bullshit, and gives a distinct advantage to people churning out short form content.

I don't think that's what people are saying, and it would be wrong if they were. I've published 58 stories in about 80 months, so it's not like I'm churning them out at lightning speed. My stories average about 5000 to 18,000 words.

You don't have to produce work at lightning speed to retain visibility. I don't produce work at lightning speed, and my stories' visibility and view numbers have been reasonably steady over time. Overall, the views of most stories go down over time, but that's not true if the story gets visibility on a toplist or a similar stories list. If that happens, views can go up over time. That's happened to a few of my stories.

It helps to just keep publishing. That doesn't mean once a week, or any particular pace. Just keep writing and publishing. Continued, ongoing exposure makes a difference.