How to become successful on Wattpad: A beginners guide.

How to become successful on Wattpad: A beginners guide.

The first thing to know is that you will not become successful right away. You will not get 1000 reads in your first week, you will not get 1000 votes in your first month.

Of course, there are those who will achieve those marks but they are few and far between. If you have achieved these benchmarks, good for you!

The thing to remember here is that it takes time and effort to become a Wattpad star, and if you’re not willing to put in the effort, it won’t happen.

The bottom line: become a Wattpad regular. Comment, read stories, make friends, post in the clubs.

The second thing to know is that you will not become successful without hard work. Your story might become famous with only a few pages but the odds are against you.

Most of the stories at the top of the Hot List are 60+ pages. This kind of writing takes a lot of effort and that effort pays off in votes, reads, and a spot on the Hot List.

The bottom line: keep writing your story. You might only have a few votes and fans right now but their number will increase if you keep adding on to your writings.

How long should a chapter be?

First off all, how long should a chapter not be? A chapter, in my personal opinion, should be longer than one Wattpad page, or about 750 – 800 words.

Also, think about your readers. If you upload only 600 words at a time, I will probably become disinterested and stop reading. You want enough so that it will keep your readers interested. Take my chapters for example.

My chapters are just under 2,000 words, usually around 1,800. I shoot for 2,000 but that usually doesn’t work out. At about 1,500 words I start looking for a suspenseful place to end the chapter and that comes in a few hundred more words.

But what about chapters that are really long?

I find that I cannot just write 7 Wattpad pages before uploading. I inevitably come to a perfect cliffhanger to cut the chapter short and end up stopping there.

However, if you can write 7 pages at a time, good for you!

There is one drawback to that though. Votes.

If you upload a whole chunk of writing at one time, people can only vote once for the entire thing. If votes are really important to you, think about shorter chapters.

The bottom line: Keep your chapters long enough that readers don’t get bored, yet short enough that you get votes for them. (Again, in my opinion, shoot for at very least 1000 words.)

When should I post my chapters?

You should post your chapters every few days, probably about three days to a full week in between each chapter.

Why? Because this allows your readers to catch up on what’s going on without getting bored. Go too long and you’ll lose readers.

What if I have a whole bunch of chapters to post right now?

Here’s a very good tip for you to remember… If you have more than one chapter finished, don’t post them all at once!

Post your chapters one at a time, every few days. I’d say wait at least 24 hours before posting the next chapter if you’re really antsy about it, and three days would be even better.

This allows you to begin to accumulate reads and votes. If you dump 5 chapters onto Wattpad at one time, only the people online at that time will see your chapters on the What’s New list. You’ll only get as many reads as if you just posted one single chapter.

The bottom line: No matter how bad you may want to post all of your story right now, don’t. If you wait between each chapter, you’ll accumulate more reads and votes. Do NOT post more than ONE chapter at a time.

Earlier I talked about how I try to stop at a cliffhanger. This is perfect because it keeps people coming back for more.

If you have a whole chapter that’s just intro to your characters or them sitting around, I won’t have any incentive to keep reading. Keep the story going and keep people coming back to see what happens.

The bottom line: End your chapter with a carrot to keep your metaphorical rabbit readers hooked on your fascinating story.

Now we’ll talk about something extremely important.