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Any fiction writers here use Wattpad?

MJ DeMarco

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MTF

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I'd rather publish my works on Amazon and other retailers where all the customers are and actually pay for stuff than on a website where people are accustomed to getting stories for free. Same with running a blog where you post your stories while you could be publishing them on Amazon and getting paid (or offering them for free, tapping into their huge audience, and directing people to your newsletter).

Maybe Wattpad is helpful to get feedback, but for that, you can hire an editor and get some beta readers, too.

I'm opposed to writers publishing their writing for free because I believe that it's best to focus on what's most effective, and the most effective way to expand your audience is to have a larger catalog of widely-distributed books. Seems like the only way to get compensation via Wattpad is to hope that a traditional publisher will approach you (unlikely). They recently launched Paid Stories, but it's not available for everyone, and again: what's the point if most people buy books on Amazon/other retailers or in traditional bookstores?

If Wattpad allows writers to promote their newsletters, then it can definitely be useful to build your list. If there's no self-promotion allowed, I'd rather either publish the stories on Amazon/other retailers or find another place where I can send people to sign up for my list.
 

Andy Black

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I'd rather publish my works on Amazon and other retailers where all the customers are and actually pay for stuff than on a website where people are accustomed to getting stories for free. Same with running a blog where you post your stories while you could be publishing them on Amazon and getting paid (or offering them for free, tapping into their huge audience, and directing people to your newsletter).

Maybe Wattpad is helpful to get feedback, but for that, you can hire an editor and get some beta readers, too.

I'm opposed to writers publishing their writing for free because I believe that it's best to focus on what's most effective, and the most effective way to expand your audience is to have a larger catalog of widely-distributed books. Seems like the only way to get compensation via Wattpad is to hope that a traditional publisher will approach you (unlikely). They recently launched Paid Stories, but it's not available for everyone, and again: what's the point if most people buy books on Amazon/other retailers or in traditional bookstores?

If Wattpad allows writers to promote their newsletters, then it can definitely be useful to build your list. If there's no self-promotion allowed, I'd rather either publish the stories on Amazon/other retailers or find another place where I can send people to sign up for my list.
Really interesting @MTF.

I always wondered why folks post all that free content on their blog and then try to get footfall, when they could post where there’s already a lot of footfall.

My preference is forums and Facebook groups, mostly because it’s interactive and I must somehow crave the community aspect of it.

I hadn’t actually considered “posting” for free on Amazon. In fact, I’m face-palming that I’ve completely overlooked Amazon.
 

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If so, does it help expand your audience? Find readers?

Doesn't look like something a non-fiction writer can use.

View attachment 24320 Wattpad - Where stories live
Whoa... what a bad homepage. I got referred, arrive, and don’t know what it is.

“Where stories live”? What does that even mean? Is it a newspaper? A library? Is it books, newsletters? Is it free? Why the heck do I need to enter info before I learn any more?

I don’t get it.

I don’t get why their homepage is so bad either!
 
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rogue synthetic

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I know we're averse to "platform building" for its own sake around here, and not without good reason.

Why might someone want to build a platform with "free" and use that to leverage paid works later?

Derek Thompson's recent book Hit Makers gives one answer:

In the final analysis, this was perhaps the key mechanism in the Fifty Shades phenomenon. Like a viral video, it was propelled by a combination of traditional broadcasters (the Today show and the New York Times), dark broadcasters (the massive fanfic cluster and Facebook groups), and ordinary sharing (readers talking to readers). Millions of people were exhilarated, maddened, and puzzled by the book, but there are thousands of books that exhilarate, madden, and puzzle.

None of them sell one hundred million copies. What separated Fifty Shades is that its notoriety became a distinct product; people who didn’t even enjoy reading still wanted to avoid being the last person to have read it.

In this way, E. L. James’s saga is both extraordinary and typical. For many cultural achievements, the art itself is not the only thing worth consuming; the experience of having seen, read, or heard the art for the purpose of being able to talk about it is its own reward. Such consumers are not just buying a product; what they’re really buying is entry into a popular conversation. Popularity is the product.

(The whole book is excellent, by the way.)

His point, if you don't want to read the whole thing, is that the "viral hits" like 50 Shades and Twilight before it didn't break out of nowhere like a mystery disease.

Stephanie Meyer and E L James built large followings on obscure fan-fiction forums and sites like Goodreads, leveraged that to reach traditional media outlets with a massive reach, and rode the resulting buzz to get people talking about their books.

This being one of those unforeseeable Black Swan events, it's probably not lightning to capture in a bottle.

That said, if I were a savvy publisher who wanted to sell a lot of books, I'd be thinking real hard about how I could model a process that's sold a few hundred million books.
 

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Really interesting @MTF.

I always wondered why folks post all that free content on their blog and then try to get footfall, when they could post where there’s already a lot of footfall.

My preference is forums and Facebook groups, mostly because it’s interactive and I must somehow crave the community aspect of it.

I hadn’t actually considered “posting” for free on Amazon. In fact, I’m face-palming that I’ve completely overlooked Amazon.

Thanks for rep, Andy. Many people don't know that they can publish books for free on Amazon because it's not a straightforward process (first you need to publish it on several retailers for free and then ask Amazon to price match; there's no option to publish your book for free on Amazon).

That said, if I were a savvy publisher who wanted to sell a lot of books, I'd be thinking real hard about how I could model a process that's sold a few hundred million books.

There are certain things you can do to increase the odds, but I'd say it's impossible to create a fail-proof process. Even some of the books written by very popular authors who are extremely skilled at marketing fail (like Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss).
 

rogue synthetic

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Yes, which is why the sentence right before that quoted paragraph is:

> This being one of those unforeseeable Black Swan events, it's probably not lightning to capture in a bottle.

:)

Fool-proof process is only something that concerns fools. Everything is about odds.

And if we're talking probabilities, then all of the Blue Sky break-out hits have come from people who built a fan base with free. I can't think of a single example off-hand of a game-changing self-publishing success story that came from marketing exclusively by selling on the Kindle store.

Maybe Andy Weir? But even he had an audience from serializing The Martian on his own blog first...

Something worth remembering about the Black Swan phenomenon: it's scale-invariant.

You probably won't skyrocket to world-class fame. But "mini breakouts" are certainly possible and maybe even repeatable. Like that old Kevin Kelly article, 1000 True Fans.

A hundred million readers is a dice-roll. 1000, though? Even 10,000?

If the idea is to model what works by following the clues that success leaves...
 
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MTF

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I can't think of a single example off-hand of a game-changing self-publishing success story that came from marketing exclusively by selling on the Kindle store.

Hugh Howey is the best example of this.

But for most of such examples, what worked in the past no longer works today.
 

rogue synthetic

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I guess I just don't see your point.

You say it's about odds, but then we've got one example -- and Hugh Howey is really stretching the point to breaking if you want to talk about the low odds of being a shooting-star success story -- weighing against, and plenty more in favor of, building up a fan base.

Anyway, whether you can sell 100 million books or not wasn't really the issue. The more intesting question is whether you want to be:

- Dependent entirely on Amazon's goofy whims for your income, or

- Build an independent platform of fans who love your work, who will support your work, and not suddenly vanish because Mega Globo Corp decides your books aren't their thing.

If we're looking at reliability, then there's a pretty clear winner between the two options. Not only that, but you aren't capped by Amazon's bizarre and anti-author policy whims, which is Control 101.

Not only that, but I suspect that with all the changes on Amazon, you might have better luck finding and dominating a niche on these more obscure platforms and then leveraging that influence into a wider reach. That's fully speculative on my part, but it does jive with what we've seen happen with big and smaller success stories.

Sure, use the Kindle store as the marketing and distribution arm...but that's different than relying on it as a sole source of leads and sales.

I'm honestly not seeing the downsides you're seeing here.
 

Andy Black

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Thanks for rep, Andy. Many people don't know that they can publish books for free on Amazon because it's not a straightforward process (first you need to publish it on several retailers for free and then ask Amazon to price match; there's no option to publish your book for free on Amazon).
Oh now look what you’ve done @MTF. You’ve added a wee splinter to my mind that’s going to keep gnawing away at me till I do something about it.

I’m trying to stay focused but feel another another 30 day progress thread coming up. (The Instagram one was a pain to complete. The paid email newsletters is running in the background. The podcasty one is also running in the background. I’ll restart YouTube at some point. And want to “do Udemy” at some point.)

Where’s that one-trick pony thread again?

Thanks for the splinter. I think.
 
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- Dependent entirely on Amazon's goofy whims for your income, or

- Build an independent platform of fans who love your work, who will support your work, and not suddenly vanish because Mega Globo Corp decides your books aren't their thing.

My point is that there's income with Amazon and there's no income with Wattpad. Wattpad is IMO yet another example of a site that preys on people's vanity. You have 10,000 views of your story on Wattpad or 5,000 fans there. Who cares? You aren't getting a dime for it and your relationship with the fans is like talking through glass (with Wattpad being the gatekeeper).

Nothing wrong with it if you're doing it for fun, but if you want to build a self-publishing business, I'm of the view that only two things matter: real-world money or newsletter subscribers.

Platforms that give you vague promises of "recognition" or "influence" are usually a waste of time. Influence doesn't pay your bills in this industry. Here are some examples based on my experience:
  • Facebook fans (had well over 10,000 of them or maybe even 20,000, don't remember and want to forget how much time and money I wasted on it - no real effect on book sales),
  • YouTube subscribers (have over 25,000 of them, no real effect on book sales),
  • Quora views (had over 250,000 views, no effect on book sales).
  • Udemy students enrolled for my free course (have well over 30,000 of them, no effect on book sales)
I'd put Wattpad in the same category of "come to our site, give your valuable content for free and help us make money while you hope that your influence nobody outside of Wattpad knows about translates into money." At least Amazon establishes a win-win money-making business relationship with you.

Having said that, this is just my personal opinion and I'm not saying that my approach is the only one that works. There are examples of people who succeeded the other way. I personally consider it a waste of time and energy to do stuff for free, particularly as an author. People largely don't value free books or anything else they get for free. I myself as a reader never respect free stuff as much as the books I pay for.

As for using the platforms to build a fan base, if you can't easily get people to join your newsletter (which is the only true independent means of building a fan base), you're building a sand castle. Wattpad isn't anything different from Amazon when it comes to the lack of control - they own your fan base, not you. As I said, if they let authors send people to their newsletters, it might be a cool marketing tool. If not, it's a win-lose kind of a thing (obviously with Wattpad winning and you losing).

In my view, when choosing between a closed platform (you can't even access any story unless you sign up, so you can't even easily share a story you enjoyed with a friend who doesn't use Wattpad) that doesn't pay you for your content or an open platform that does that everybody uses, I go with the latter.
 

Andy Black

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My point is that there's income with Amazon and there's no income with Wattpad. Wattpad is IMO yet another example of a site that preys on people's vanity. You have 10,000 views of your story on Wattpad or 5,000 fans there. Who cares? You aren't getting a dime for it and your relationship with the fans is like talking through glass (with Wattpad being the gatekeeper).

Nothing wrong with it if you're doing it for fun, but if you want to build a self-publishing business, I'm of the view that only two things matter: real-world money or newsletter subscribers.

Platforms that give you vague promises of "recognition" or "influence" are usually a waste of time. Influence doesn't pay your bills in this industry. Here are some examples based on my experience:
  • Facebook fans (had well over 10,000 of them or maybe even 20,000, don't remember and want to forget how much time and money I wasted on it - no real effect on book sales),
  • YouTube subscribers (have over 25,000 of them, no real effect on book sales),
  • Quora views (had over 250,000 views, no effect on book sales).
  • Udemy students enrolled for my free course (have well over 30,000 of them, no effect on book sales)
I'd put Wattpad in the same category of "come to our site, give your valuable content for free and help us make money while you hope that your influence nobody outside of Wattpad knows about translates into money." At least Amazon establishes a win-win money-making business relationship with you.

Having said that, this is just my personal opinion and I'm not saying that my approach is the only one that works. There are examples of people who succeeded the other way. I personally consider it a waste of time and energy to do stuff for free, particularly as an author. People largely don't value free books or anything else they get for free. I myself as a reader never respect free stuff as much as the books I pay for.

As for using the platforms to build a fan base, if you can't easily get people to join your newsletter (which is the only true independent means of building a fan base), you're building a sand castle. Wattpad isn't anything different from Amazon when it comes to the lack of control - they own your fan base, not you. As I said, if they let authors send people to their newsletters, it might be a cool marketing tool. If not, it's a win-lose kind of a thing (obviously with Wattpad winning and you losing).

In my view, when choosing between a closed platform (you can't even access any story unless you sign up, so you can't even easily share a story you enjoyed with a friend who doesn't use Wattpad) that doesn't pay you for your content or an open platform that does that everybody uses, I go with the latter.
I wonder if those numbers could be translated into sales MJ?

Also... what free Udemy course? I didn’t know you were on Udemy!

@Lex DeVille ... how many Udemy students have you got at this stage?

@Fox ... how many YouTube subscribers are you up to?

Maybe have a look at Substack MJ. I’m using it for my paid email newsletter. I don’t have a free email newsletter. My free content is in forums and Facebook groups.

Is it worth relooking at the audience you’ve already built on those other channels?
 

MJ DeMarco

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I don’t get why their homepage is so bad either!

Yea it took me a while to figure it out.

I thought it could be used in combination with Amazon. So if you have a book on Amazon, you can post chapters at Wattpad and get interested readers.

Wattpad isn't anything different from Amazon when it comes to the lack of control - they own your fan base, not you.

I haven't signed up for it so I don't know the ins-and-outs... but is that true? I can't have access to my readers who like my content?
 
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I haven't signed up for it so I don't know the ins-and-outs... but is that true? I can't have access to my readers who like my content?

I don't use it but as far as I know you can have followers there, but you won't get their contact information. I just checked and they allow people to post external links at the bottom of the story, so depending on how many people click it, maybe it makes sense as a tool to send people to your newsletter (I doubt many will sign up, though, as usually platforms that run on free content attract people who don't want to leave them, with Quora being a great example).
 

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  • Facebook fans (had well over 10,000 of them or maybe even 20,000, don't remember and want to forget how much time and money I wasted on it - no real effect on book sales),
  • YouTube subscribers (have over 25,000 of them, no real effect on book sales),
  • Quora views (had over 250,000 views, no effect on book sales).
  • Udemy students enrolled for my free course (have well over 30,000 of them, no effect on book sales)

Very poignant data.

I'm finding this to be true as well.

I also noticed that many big YT celebrities with huge subscriber lists have books for sale on Amazon that aren't big sellers. Lok has a huge SM presence and his book doesn't do that well on Amazon, of course, he's not monetizing thru Amazon but thru his own programs with better control and margins.
 

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A few years ago I looked into Wattpad.

I'd say one of its biggest problems (or strength) is its audience. It was heavily female oriented, aged 13-25, and almost entirely based around romance (usually fanfics or rip-offs of 50 Shades of Gray).

That said, I don't know if anything has changed over the past few years. The demographics may have shifted, but it's likely still built around the same as it was before. If that's your target audience, then it may be a good place to focus on.

I'm not sure if the standards have been raised, but when I checked it out anyone can post anything. This led to a lot of fanfiction on a popular boy band at the time.
 
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Nothing wrong with it if you're doing it for fun, but if you want to build a self-publishing business, I'm of the view that only two things matter: real-world money or newsletter subscribers.

Platforms that give you vague promises of "recognition" or "influence" are usually a waste of time.

Sure. Where did I say otherwise?

If you just show up, post work, and expect your big check, surprise -- there is no check.

That's not the same thing as using a fan base as leverage to bootstrap your way to more visibility and bigger deals.

All of which requires work, not "post on platform + cross fingers".

Your choice is still:

- Go on Amazon, hope they don't delete your books or destroy your visibility.

- Build your own fanbase and promote the offers that matter to you.

I'm still not seeing the downside here.
 

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Your choice is still:

- Go on Amazon, hope they don't delete your books or destroy your visibility.

- Build your own fanbase and promote the offers that matter to you.

Let's agree to disagree. You can do both as long as they both work for you. For me, the latter doesn't work but I know people who think of Amazon as primarily a traffic source, not an income source.

I'd say one of its biggest problems (or strength) is its audience.

If Alexa.com isn't wrong, then the US traffic accounts for only 13.8% of the site, with the other major countries being Indonesia, Mexico, Venezuela, and India - Indonesia and India are cash-based societies with few people using cards and buying online, Mexico largely, too, Venezuela - well...
 

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If so, does it help expand your audience? Find readers?

Doesn't look like something a non-fiction writer can use.

View attachment 24320 Wattpad - Where stories live
Yes, its more of a fanfiction place. Fiction, to be exact.

I've written on fanfiction.com before, but I've spent some time reading on Wattpad how fans spin the characters and stories of established books into different angles.

However...

The lack of money coming in for my works was the reason why I eventually lost the motivation to write fanfic.

Sure, it was nice exchanging and listening to feedback from interested readers, but it just wasn't enough.

However, if one first started writing on such sites for free, even from a young age of let's say, 14-16, he would have developed quite a useful writing skill that could transition into copywriting or regular content marketing.

These marketable skills only grow when you 'pull the trigger' many times, and I believe Lex did lots of short stories before doing copywriting on Upwork?

Sure, following that route won't have you earning money quickly, but you would have sowed a seed for a good skill, just in time to start an actual hustle or Fastlane right before your 20s.

Now to think of it,I unconsciously took this route before.

My point is that there's income with Amazon and there's no income with Wattpad. Wattpad is IMO yet another example of a site that preys on people's vanity. You have 10,000 views of your story on Wattpad or 5,000 fans there. Who cares? You aren't getting a dime for it and your relationship with the fans is like talking through glass (with Wattpad being the gatekeeper).

Nothing wrong with it if you're doing it for fun, but if you want to build a self-publishing business, I'm of the view that only two things matter: real-world money or newsletter subscribers.

Platforms that give you vague promises of "recognition" or "influence" are usually a waste of time. Influence doesn't pay your bills in this industry. Here are some examples based on my experience:
  • Facebook fans (had well over 10,000 of them or maybe even 20,000, don't remember and want to forget how much time and money I wasted on it - no real effect on book sales),
  • YouTube subscribers (have over 25,000 of them, no real effect on book sales),
  • Quora views (had over 250,000 views, no effect on book sales).
  • Udemy students enrolled for my free course (have well over 30,000 of them, no effect on book sales)
I'd put Wattpad in the same category of "come to our site, give your valuable content for free and help us make money while you hope that your influence nobody outside of Wattpad knows about translates into money." At least Amazon establishes a win-win money-making business relationship with you.

Having said that, this is just my personal opinion and I'm not saying that my approach is the only one that works. There are examples of people who succeeded the other way. I personally consider it a waste of time and energy to do stuff for free, particularly as an author. People largely don't value free books or anything else they get for free. I myself as a reader never respect free stuff as much as the books I pay for.

As for using the platforms to build a fan base, if you can't easily get people to join your newsletter (which is the only true independent means of building a fan base), you're building a sand castle. Wattpad isn't anything different from Amazon when it comes to the lack of control - they own your fan base, not you. As I said, if they let authors send people to their newsletters, it might be a cool marketing tool. If not, it's a win-lose kind of a thing (obviously with Wattpad winning and you losing).

In my view, when choosing between a closed platform (you can't even access any story unless you sign up, so you can't even easily share a story you enjoyed with a friend who doesn't use Wattpad) that doesn't pay you for your content or an open platform that does that everybody uses, I go with the latter.
If I had to choose between getting paid for my work, and building a follower base, why not have your cake and eat it too? :)

But whatever the route taken, the writing or content put for free or for a fee, MUST be of great quality.

I've read lots of Wattpad stories based on high-trending fanfic series like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, and while I liked many of them, the writing was not structured and elaborate. Sometimes, i even found some grammar errors.

Quite expected from the main author demograph of college kids who just write in a hassle, out of pure love for the movie or book at hand, without caring for a second edit or initial feedback session.

There's still room for quality content on Wattpad, I guess.
 
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Let's agree to disagree. You can do both as long as they both work for you. For me, the latter doesn't work but I know people who think of Amazon as primarily a traffic source, not an income source.

No worries, my friend. I'm just trying to offer a different perspective, and hopefully get the readers here to think about what they are doing and why, whatever decisions they make :)

You're spot on about the foibles of "free" and I want to stress (if I wasn't clear enough) that I don't argue with what you've said on that.

I also agree with the Harlan Ellison Thesis: pay the writer. Absolutely. 100% right.

The rest of this post is mostly me churning through some of the ideas we've kicked around, so feel free to ignore if that's not your thing.

I thought a little more about building up followers on Quora, Youtube, etc., and I think it's worth drilling a little deeper into this.

First thing: there's a difference between platform, as in somebody else's technology, and an audience, which is your loyal readership. I used the word "platform" interchangeably for both, and I apologize for the confusions that may have caused.

With that in mind, I can clarify my complaints like so:

Writing for free on platforms with no intentional plan: probably bad.

Cultivating an audience using platforms as part of an intentional plan: probably good.

My gripe about Amazon can be reframed: even though you do get paid, you're still grinding unless you're using it as part of an intentional plan. It's still a platform, just one that can pay pretty dang well if you hit the right buttons.

If that's what you're after, who am I to argue?

My questions in the earlier posts are about whether the short-term positives of getting paid offset the potential of building a serious audience...and whether this is a real trade-off at all.

I don't think we have to frame this as a choice between either Kindle publishing and getting paid or else building an audience by writing for free.

I also wonder whether Amazon is the best, or even the most appropriate, place to build an audience. There's getting paid, and then there's building a viable business as a writer.

Clearly this isn't a place for black & white answers. Though I have a personal story about this which leads me to think "no" to that last question. I'll come back to that shortly.

Second thing: By intentional plan, I mean something more than showing up with a megaphone and a sandwich board and hoping to rack up conversions.

I think we all understand that there's a difference between superifical "likes" and serious buyers. Part of this is control, since the platform can take your audience at their leisure.

Part of it is intent. Clicking "follow" is much less a commitment than clicking "buy now". And that gets fine grained. Free isn't like $0.99, which isn't like $2.99, which isn't like $9.99...and that goes up the ladder, if you're selling info-products and coaching and the like.

This has my wheels turning. If we want fine-grained audiences, shouldn't we be thinking of granular promotion?

And if we're going that far, we should probably ask after more than just the bait...we'd want to know if we're casting our lines in the right fishing holes.

It's the difference between a shotgun blast and a sniper's precision shot from half a mile away.

The first question to ask is whether the platform has the right people for your audience. Are you even fishing in the right hole? Are your fish here?

For example, are highly visual media like Youtube or Instagram going to be the best way to target readers? Are Q&A forums the best place to find readers?

I think there's a temptation to translate reach into quality. But shouldn't we say: Reaching lots of people matters a lot less than reaching the right people.

Maybe Goodreads and niche forums would be a better place to look for potential audiences. If your niche has its own blogs and forums (etc.) maybe (almost certainly) they would be better than shooting for "mass reach" on the popular apps.

The goal is to find interested people who will put their hands up, not accumulating worthless social signals.

Platforms can be a part of this. They cannot substitute for the work of building relationships with the right people.

Are you broadcasting or building a community?
Broadcasting is talking at. Building a community is talking to...not just amassing followers with content, but engaging with them. Answering comments. Having conversations. Taking constructive feedback. Learning what your people want and how best to give it to them.

We can appreciate the financial value of a buyer or a subscriber. But it's also helpful to remember that these aren't abstract economic units. These are real people that we're trying to talk to and build long-lasting relationships with, not "convert" with tactics lifted from direct marketing gurus.

If your message isn't resonating, with the right people, then you are probably wasting your time.

Another fine line to walk. No clear black & white answers. Just something worth having in view.

Curation, selection, and filtering means more than broadcasting.

What could you do to make sure that you did resonate with the right people?

To build relationships instead of "advertising"?

Are you positioning yourself as someone who is worth buying from? Seth Godin sends me a blog post every day by email. I always make a point to read them. When he has a new book out, I get it. When he makes an offer, I pay attention.

Seth doesn't use social media, or any platform except his own. He has spent a lot of time and effort building an audience and creating relationships with them.

Would he have gotten there by showing up and selling because he won't write for free?

And let's twist that point of view inside out. Would Seth have found his tribe if he hadn't built his audience and become a trustworthy and valuable voice?

(These are open questions -- play with your answers and think about your reasons.)

Back to the story I mentioned above. The reason I'm harping on this is that my own experience was that the audience I built up in a niche was enough to support fairly succesful Kindle offering with literally zero promotion.

I just checked my KDP dashboard and the book I released in April of 2013 to the fanfare of a single Facebook post (on my personal feed, not even to a page or group) is still ranked in the top 100 of its category on US, and <20 on all the local .country sites. At its peak it spent a few years in the top 20 of its category and came close to breaking the top 10,000 in the overall Kindle store.

If I'd done that as an unknown author, would that have happened? Maybe. Maybe if I'd used paid ads or something, or just a stroke of luck, but I'm having a hard time seeing it. This is a competitive niche dominated by some well-known names and deep-pocket publishers.

Looking back at it knowing what I know now, I'm pretty stunned that it played out like that.

The thing is, I knew most of those players, or they knew who I was, because I'd spent years in that space. It was easy to get traction by word of mouth because my networks had even bigger networks.

The audience fueled the successful book. It's not impossible that it could have worked the other way around.

But the possible is a distraction. We care about likelihood.

What seems more likely me is that leveraging existing relationships to make it happen is going to beat out writing into the void and churning cold traffic to your work.

Obviously these strategies can "work" if your results satisfy your personal and business goals. But if they don't? You've got alternatives.

Sorry about your thread @MJ DeMarco ! I don't know whether Wattpad can be part of this kind of strategy, or whether it's worth it for you even if it could be. Maybe it could be useful as an audience-builder. Or a test-bed to see what kinds of stories get attention.

Or it could be full of empty likes and tween vampire porn.
 

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If I had to choose between getting paid for my work, and building a follower base, why not have your cake and eat it too? :)

Yes, I explained myself badly, see below.

First thing: there's a difference between platform, as in somebody else's technology, and an audience, which is your loyal readership. I used the word "platform" interchangeably for both, and I apologize for the confusions that may have caused.

Yeah, when I think of a platform I think of a website that has the community aspect built-in that you can't easily export to your list or elsewhere (a "closed" platform like Udemy or Quora). In this case, I oppose such sites because you're not getting paid and you're not building a direct channel with your readers.

My questions in the earlier posts are about whether the short-term positives of getting paid offset the potential of building a serious audience...and whether this is a real trade-off at all.

I didn't express myself clearly and my post sounded too much like a black and white kind of a thing, saying that only Amazon matters. No, it doesn't. Whatever the site is, as long as you can build an audience there that you can later easily reach out to (and most people will actually see your notification/update/message and act on it), it's worth it. I just don't like sites that expect authors to provide free content but don't even let them promote themselves a little bit to help them grow their career.

Part of it is intent. Clicking "follow" is much less a commitment than clicking "buy now". And that gets fine grained. Free isn't like $0.99, which isn't like $2.99, which isn't like $9.99...and that goes up the ladder, if you're selling info-products and coaching and the like.

I have several books available for free and my list isn't of best quality buyer-wise because I have a lot of people who don't buy books. That's why I'm also opposed to free stuff - it attracts readers, true, but it attracts readers who: don't buy, don't review, don't provide feedback, and often expect more and more free stuff, complaining if you want to sell something. I don't mind readers who can't afford my books but still try to help out somehow; I'm referring here to freeloaders who get really annoying after a while.

Maybe Goodreads and niche forums would be a better place to look for potential audiences. If your niche has its own blogs and forums (etc.) maybe (almost certainly) they would be better than shooting for "mass reach" on the popular apps.

Yeah, I forgot about Goodreads. I experimented with it as well and found it useless, too. But I mostly ran giveaways (with thousands of people entering into each one), not interacted in the comments, etc. The reason why is that a lot of readers on Goodreads are trolls or super snarky people who are there only to criticize every single book they read. Nowhere else have I seen more vicious reviews than on Goodreads, which is why I don't visit this site at all (and IMO, for the sake of mental health, no author should lol).

Are you broadcasting or building a community? Broadcasting is talking at. Building a community is talking to...not just amassing followers with content, but engaging with them. Answering comments. Having conversations. Taking constructive feedback. Learning what your people want and how best to give it to them.

100%. I prefer email for that simply because it's very personal and often people really open up during an email conversation (unlikely on a social media site), but I do agree that this is not about talking at people, it's talking with people.
 

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Yeah, I forgot about Goodreads. I experimented with it as well and found it useless, too. But I mostly ran giveaways (with thousands of people entering into each one), not interacted in the comments, etc. The reason why is that a lot of readers on Goodreads are trolls or super snarky people who are there only to criticize every single book they read. Nowhere else have I seen more vicious reviews than on Goodreads, which is why I don't visit this site at all (and IMO, for the sake of mental health, no author should lol).
Haha I found that to be true as well!

But for all it's snarkiness, the reviews are a lot more detailed and honest than on Amazon. I have skipped many books (I think it was some marketing and product design ones) that folks said that it wasn't worth my time.

IMO, I think that there are some readers on the platform who have high expectations of the books they read.

Although Amazon has some filters to check on readers' reviews before they get published, I still see weak ones like 'book was good, arrived in good condition'.
 
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If I wanted to go through Wattpad as a funnel there's a couple of things I'd roll over in my head:

- What are these people reading and writing here for?
- How can I give them more of that on the platform?
- How can I make them feel however they are trying to feel by reading this specific type of material?
- What thought seeds can I plant in that material to prep them for action soon?
- What can I say to make them feel really good, positive and motivated?
- How can I leave them on a cliffhanger to encourage them to join my list?
- What can I use as a tripwire sale that's super low cost to move them to paid customer immediately? (maybe something like $1.99 for secret access to another part of a story)
- What product would they actually buy once they become a customer? (is it even a book? Maybe it's a $3.99 subscription for access to parts of stories not shared on Wattpad or publicly)

What I like about entertainment consumers is they will pay for weird stuff that isn't always what we're selling. We try to sell our book but maybe they just want a cool bookmark that fits their personality. The bookmark doesn't cost as much as the book, but once they become a customer, you have more permission to get that book in front of them again and again.

To me a strategy similar to Fortnite could make sense. Offer stories for free and use side stories and cliffhangers to move people to buy low cost upgrades.

For instance if you write romance on Wattpad then maybe there's a cliffhanger while you finish the next chapter, and if people want a sneak peek at the chapter or early access, then sign up to your email list (alternatively a "which romance character are you" personality quiz opt-in would probably work well.

Once they're on the list you give them an opportunity to unlock another story or another part of the same story with your tripwire $1.99. After that you might have an instant upgrade for ongoing stories each month that aren't available to the public for $3.99. If they don't buy that immediately, then you have an autoresponder set up to take them down another story path that ultimately leads back to the $3.99 purchase.

Along any story path you can always lead to other products and small sales. If the hero of my romance gets a text message, looks up at the heroine, then turns and storms out of the room and slams the door behind him...if you're invested in the main storyline, then you'll want to know WHY he left and WHAT the text message said. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to pay .25 cents or .50 or maybe $1 to discover what the text message said instead of waiting until next month for the next part of the story and possibly never finding out at all.

Another way this scenario could play out is pay per options. Maybe they read the main storyline by email and the character has to make a decision at some point. There could be one decision (the decision the author selects) or for $.50 maybe another decision(s) option becomes available (pick your path). This leads down a second story automation path and makes them feel more invested in the hero's outcomes.

Story
- Path A > Leads to version A of story > leads to side stories > leads to special unlockables
- Path B > Leads to version B of story > leads to side stories > leads to special unlockables

This requires advanced automations and you will need a small team of writers and probably someone good at building advanced funnel automations because it's gonna take some work and a lot of time to do it on your own.
 

Lex DeVille

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Elephant Journal has an interesting model.

They serve the same purpose as Wattpad in many ways. They give people an opportunity to share and read stories and gain credibility and publicity in exchange for writing articles for them. The catch with EJ is you can only read like three articles a day. If you want more you have to subscribe, and if you want to post articles you also have to subscribe (which costs money).

So you still end up with an ecosystem of people writing because they want to feel like a star or whatever without going through the pain of pitching places like Forbes where it will be much harder to get published. You also have readers who show up for a specific type of material. The main difference is they all have to pay. I guess the moral here is own the platform.
 

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