Short story writing

1. 79

   TheNaturalRozeposted 6 years ago

   I've been considering getting back into some fiction writing lately and was wondering how successful short stories are on this website? Do you get good revenue and a nice amount of views?

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      Short stories and poetry don't do so well  because they don't attract search engine traffic However, if you have some way of promoting them to a good number of people, you never know, they might take off.

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2. 83

   Marisa Wrightposted 6 years ago

   As Raggededge says, fiction and poetry don't attract search engine traffic.  Over 90% of HubPages' readers arrive at our Hubs via Google, because nobody visits HubPages to browse around. 
   
   Think about it - how do you find things you're interested in?   Unless you know the name of a website that has what you want, you Google it.   If you're looking for short stories to read, how do you find them?  You don't know the title of any short stories, so all you can do is Google "short stories about...."    Because of the nature of fiction writing, it may not be clear to Google what your story IS about, so it won't appear on the search results, and therefore readers can't find it.
   
   That may change, because recently HubPages created a site, Letterpile, which is exclusively for creative writing.  If that manages to build a reputation with the public as a site to come and read good fiction and poems, then you would stand a much better chance of earning.  But right now, it's difficult.
   
   You're likely to get much better traffic putting your stories on a site that specialises in stories, but unfortunately I don't know of any that pay.
   
   BTW I notice you say you're trying to create a business to sell your own products.  If you have a website, then be sure to add it to your profile (there's a section on your profile to enter the URL).

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3. 79

   TheNaturalRozeposted 6 years ago

   I would be sharing my stories on a website that I believe would get me some good traffic to short stories I would just be earning through hubpages. Do the ads that hubpages places on short stories receive good payments?

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   1. 97

      theraggededgeposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      That's not how it works. Your income depends on your traffic, not on individual adverts. Hubpages and its vertical sites don't market your hubs. It's up to you to drive visitors to the page, and that happens as Marisa described.

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   2. 83

      Marisa Wrightposted 6 years agoin reply to this

      I'm confused.  So you're saying you'll share links to your Hubs on another website, and you believe that lots of people will click through to read your stories? 
      
      Bear in mind you get paid between $2 and $5 per thousand views here.  So you'd need an awful lot of people clicking your link.

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4. 97

   RonElFranposted 6 years ago

   It is possible to get some Google traffic to creative writing here on HP (rather, on LetterPile). Probably not a lot, but my short stories do get a steady trickle from Google and Bing. I think what has helped is advice another hubber wrote in a helpful hub about creative writing on HP (I wish I could remember who it was, but I don't).
   
   Their advice was to put generic search terms into the title, in addition to the actual title of the work. Take, for example, my story "Final Exam at the Twin Towers: A SciFi Time Travel Story" which gets Google traffic every month. Obviously, nobody's searching for "Final Exam at the Twin Towers", but many people do search for "SciFi" or "Time Travel", often in combination with "story" or "short story".
   
   As I said, the search traffic probably won't be overwhelming, but it can be significant. As I mention in another post, my stories on LetterPile get enough steady traffic to keep me encouraged to write more fiction. And I've even earned a couple of dollars on those stories!

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