Is Incest Best?

Is Incest Best?

YES!

If you want to maximize views on Literotica.

I am back with more statistical 'stuff' for everyone. I've heard many times that to get maximum views write for Loving Wives or Incest/ Taboo. I remember multiple threads on the forum boards where authors or potential authors asked about categories and the number of readers they could attract. One thing to consider is that Literotica counts views which is not the same as the number of actual reads.

I've read that the majority of views are not reads, but have no data on page dwell time.

Does Incest or Loving Wives get more views? I did a dive with the numbers so here is what I found. Repeating that views does NOT equal actual reads.

In the same spirit as my analysis of the scores in several categories, I did a count with some sorting and research.

I used a slightly different date range but avoided a big change from my original story in Essays about the scoring in Loving Wives vs. other categories. I chose Sept 28 to Oct 2, 2023, The same year and avoiding holiday times which would affect the number of stories submitted. Like the last submission in this category, I chose the time to be far enough back in time to avoid the initial flurries of activity in stories when first published. I pulled my data on March 28, 2024.

I chose Loving Wives, Incest, Erotic Couplings, and Romance again. I chose loving wives and incest because the general idea on the forums was that they had the highest views. I chose Erotic Couplings as it is a catchall category and finally, I chose Romance as a specialist category with some very dedicated readers with very dedicated tastes.

Loving Wives. 42 Stories

Most views: 60900

Fewest views: 1900

Mean: 19152

Median: 14900

Incest. 69 Stories

Most views: 95500

Fewest views: 2700

Mean: 23132

Median: 18100

Erotic Couplings. 82 Stories

Most views: 51900

Fewest views: 699

Mean: 8270

Median: 5450

Romance. 12 Stories

Most views: 14000

Fewest views: 626

Mean: 4769

Median: 3850

So, yes, Incest is best!

If you want views.

Loving wives will get you views and a ton of insults and trolls.

Incest had approximately 20 percent more views both by mean and median versus Loving Wives. Incest had three stories with more views than the top story in Loving Wives and had five stories over 50K views versus just one in Loving Wives. Incest was higher in views across the board vs. Loving Wives. Incest had one story that was approaching 100K views which is much less common than 50K views

If you look at the top-read stories of all time, incest has the top ten. Interestingly the top story that is not Incest is a story in the mature category at #12 and the next one is a loving Wives story.

Romance had the fewest stories of the four categories and only one story had over 10K views. This is a specialist category that I am hoping to one day publish knowing full well that it will not have the number of views that even a medium viewership story would have in Loving Wives. The story will be about the story and the views will happen or not.

Erotic Couplings had one story with more than 50K views, but the mean and median were well below both Incest and Loving Wives. It was a bit of an outlier as the second-highest was only over 40K and the third-highest was only over 30K views.

Both Erotic Couplings and Romance had two stories each with under 1K views.

There it is, Incest and Loving wives have many more reads. Some categories are easy or hard for some authors to write in. My writing process is usually based on either a scene that pops into my head or an outline that I think of. Often I have a beginning and an end with no idea how to get from one to the other. I have two dozen outlines or scenes in my writing folder for Loving Wives and none for Incest. Note I dont think this makes me a better person for not thinking about the Incest category. I will see or hear something that triggers an idea and none are Incest.

I've written multiple stories in the lower viewership categories. Sometimes... many times... the idea just does not fit into the high-traffic category.

I hope this helps clarify things for authors and I know some want views. The top two categories will get you views and the others fewer. I was pretty guilty for a while early on hoping to have a story with over 50K views. It was just a goal I had. Then it happened and now I have two above that mark. Once I had the first one, the number of views dropped in importance to me since I had accomplished the goal.

As to what causes more readership within a category and in the longer term, I believe it is ROUGHLY: 25% Title, 25% rating. 15% having certain words in your story. 15% of your description. 15% % tags. 5% other random things. I have no hard proof but it is based on how many views a day I get on my stories. My story Tenth Anniversary still gets 30 to 50 views a day and has now passed 60K views. Several of my lower-viewed chapter stories get only 4 to 10 views per day. I did notice as my story catalog grew, my lower-viewed stories got more views long after published. That is, as my catalog grew, more people would click my name and select another story from the longer list. Eight months ago, a low-viewer story got only 1-3 views a day after it fell off the 30-day lists.

In the short run, the score is probably the most important for views.

Hopefully, this will provide some insight for everyone. This story will mark my 30th submission which will hopefully be published before my first anniversary date of publication. 30 submissions in a year. Just an easy round number.

Happy writing!

Tomh1966