My traction on SH seems to be about ten times higher than on RR!

[Shoemilk]

On RR, my story is top 10 on 4 different genre rising stars categories, is on 11 genre rising stars lists in total and has a solid chance of hitting the main RS. Checking SH, I've got 13 readers and 4 favorites with 490 views. That doesn't even come close to the numbers I'm pulling on RR.

@beast_regards there's actually very few amazon ads:

https://emmalemon2.github.io/rr-ad-list/ad-catalogue.html

Less than 10% I'd say.

 

[Anonjohn20]

On RR, my story is top 10 on 4 different genre rising stars categories, is on 11 genre rising stars lists in total and has a solid chance of hitting the main RS. Checking SH, I've got 13 readers and 4 favorites with 490 views. That doesn't even come close to the numbers I'm pulling on RR.

@beast_regards there's actually very few amazon ads:

https://emmalemon2.github.io/rr-ad-list/ad-catalogue.html

Less than 10% I'd say.

・OP MC power fantasy.
・School setting.
・classist society where people treat OP badly and he gets revenge on them.
・LitRPG elements.

Yeah, you'd definitely appeal to the 13 to 16 year old crowd that's over there. As long as the cliques don't get mad at you, encouraging mob mentality, that site is where your story will thrive.

 

[beast_regards]

Is it still them? I thought Webnovel took over. Those Chinese people have aggressive business practices.

Depends.
The "read webnovels online" (with or without spaces) would certainly result in Webnovel the site.

Yeah, you'd definitely appeal to the 13 to 16 year old crowd that's over there. As long as the cliques don't get mad at you, encouraging mob mentality, that site is where your story will thrive.

I find it very unlikely that the vast majority of people on the Royal Road is indeed 13 years old.

The owners of the site certainly claim so, repeatedly even, but it doesn't prevent them from exhorting the binding legal agreements or charge people the exorbitant sums of money.

They are very keen to speak of 13-years old when they want to ban someone, but for money, they don't have qualms asking for money for nothing where the more exploitative youtubers at least provide lousy t-shirt and chocolates. It is obvious they don't believe that they charge children (otherwise they would make "I lured 10-children in the basement with my best friend" kind of Youtuber run for his money)

@beast_regards there's actually very few amazon ads:
https://emmalemon2.github.io/rr-ad-list/ad-catalogue.html Less than 10% I'd say.

More.
I would say 25 to 75% depending how lucky you are.
In the best case scenario, one of the four (story) ads are Amazon.
Not counting the ads on mobile app, or ones that appear if you disable adblock

 

[Shoemilk]

・OP MC power fantasy.
・School setting.
・classist society where people treat OP badly and he gets revenge on them.
・LitRPG elements.

Yeah, you'd definitely appeal to the 13 to 16 year old crowd that's over there. As long as the cliques don't get mad at you, encouraging mob mentality, that site is where your story will thrive.

Get burnt on RR once? Quite dismissive there.

More.
I would say 25 to 75% depending how lucky you are.
In the best case scenario, one of the four (story) ads are Amazon.
Not counting the ads on mobile app, or ones that appear if you disable adblock

Check the link. Someone scraped every ad on RR currently and put them there. They ordered it by target link so all ads to stories on RR come first, then amazon, then the audiobook place. So if you scroll pretty much to the bottom, you can see them. Using chatgpt to calculate based on where the link send you, this is the breakdown:

Domain	Count	Percentage
www.royalroad.com	989	88.22%
amazon.com (redirects)	90	8.03%
podiumentertainment.com	31	2.77%
links.royalroad.com	5	0.45%
www.audible.com	3	0.27%
www.amazon.com	1	0.09%
www.amazon.ca	1	0.09%
geni.us	1	0.09%

 

[Our_Lady_in_Twilight]

I think that bigger sites don't necessarily translate to more views. I've posted on small sites that only get about a dozen chapter uploads per day, and the upshot of that is that pretty much everyone lands between 500-5k views/chapter.

On a site like this with hundreds of uploads per day, there seems to be more of a telescoping effect where the few breakout superstars can get like 50k/chapter while others might find themselves lost in the shuffle and get barely any views at all.

If Royal Road is bigger still, I imagine there's a lot of work to just get your foot in the door before you see any benefit of the bigger base.

 

[Piisfun]

I think it's been around since 2019? So 6 years.

December 2018.

 

[Clo]

SH readers are far more interactive. In my current main series, I have released a chapter recently that got many comments.... 40 on SH. This came out on Friday, so it's like 5 days old. This is by far the chapter with the most comments I have. And it's the 89th releases chapter, so these are all from people who are following new releases on day of drop (or close to)

The same chapter has 7 comments on RoyalRoad, even though I generally get more reads per chapter there.

Basically, if you want views, RR's got you.
If you want engagement, the SH readers tend to be far better at it.

 

[Anonjohn20]

Get burnt on RR once? Quite dismissive there.

LOL, It's dismissive of me to point out how more of your target audience is over there? It's not like your own post proves it. Feel free to read what you posted again...

On RR, my story is top 10 on 4 different genre rising stars categories, is on 11 genre rising stars lists in total and has a solid chance of hitting the main RS. Checking SH, I've got 13 readers and 4 favorites with 490 views. That doesn't even come close to the numbers I'm pulling on RR.

@beast_regards there's actually very few amazon ads:

https://emmalemon2.github.io/rr-ad-list/ad-catalogue.html

Less than 10% I'd say.

...we joke about this place being "SmutHub," but the reality is that this site really seems to like drama, relationships, good dialogue, character growth or changes, etc. (which mature series sometimes have or eventually develop), while RR really loves OP MC and constant gratuitous fanservice.

 

[Sapphirale]

Is it still them? I thought Webnovel took over. Those Chinese people have aggressive business practices.

Yes, WN took over but its view count is heavily inflated, you get more viewers but most of them are inflated, WN viewer statistics cannot be compared to SH or RR.

 

[jbcantwell]

I think that bigger sites don't necessarily translate to more views. I've posted on small sites that only get about a dozen chapter uploads per day, and the upshot of that is that pretty much everyone lands between 500-5k views/chapter.

On a site like this with hundreds of uploads per day, there seems to be more of a telescoping effect where the few breakout superstars can get like 50k/chapter while others might find themselves lost in the shuffle and get barely any views at all.

If Royal Road is bigger still, I imagine there's a lot of work to just get your foot in the door before you see any benefit of the bigger base.

I'm curious about what smaller sites you used to such great effect if you don't mind sharing.

 

[lambenttyto]

On RR, my story is top 10 on 4 different genre rising stars categories, is on 11 genre rising stars lists in total and has a solid chance of hitting the main RS. Checking SH, I've got 13 readers and 4 favorites with 490 views. That doesn't even come close to the numbers I'm pulling on RR.

So all in all, I've finished posting my chapters. I only have 10 followers on RR with 30 here on SH. Not sure why that is.

 

[Timarli]

Isn't SH and RR cater to different readers? Smut for SH, and Litrpg for RR.

 

[beast_regards]

Isn't SH and RR cater to different readers? Smut for SH, and Litrpg for RR.

They cater to the same readers.

The readers (and writers) are very likely to have the accounts on both sites.

Exceptions are lurkers, or people who have been banned from one site.

General audience remains the same. It's just the general attitude what is different.

 

[reskisz]

Whoa, RR still tops Google search? I thought they're waning.