MY WATTPAD 101

Followers, where are you?

To some extent, Wattpad is like YouTube in a way that a person with zero subscribers can still get 1k views on their video. Like Wattpad, you can have no single follower and still get reads.
However, unlike YouTube, reads are not directly proportional to followers. Meaning that even if your story stands at 1k reads, you may still stand at 8 solid followers.

It's crazy, I know.

From my experience, most people don't normally click on the story's writer's profile - unless it is to read more stories from them or if that particular story is in a series.

Then, Allias, how do I make people follow me? Where am I supposed to find followers?

I can come up with a couple of ideas, and however questionable they are, feel free to experiment and see if that works for you. That's of course if your follower count matters to you.

1) From Wattpad's official profile:- when you look at Wattpad's official profile, it has over 50 million followers. Here's how you can use that to your advantage. When you sign up to Wattpad, you follow Wattpad - by default (although you can later unfollow them if you don't want to). This means that half of the first thousand of people following Wattpad HQ's profile are new users who are following Wattpad by default and don't have followers of their own. Usually, those follow back when you follow them - because they are desperate for followers too.

Recap: search for Wattpad's official profile, follow a couple of profiles on their followers list and wait for a miracle. Give it 24 hours. It might work .

Remember, like any other platform, Wattpad also has action block. What do I mean? It has a maximum number of people you can follow, unfollow and votes in a day. Once you exceed that number, Wattpad blocks you from doing that action for solid 24 hours. So, stay in your lane.

2) New stories list:- when you go browsing through story categories (on the search tab), you'll find many many categories: romance, teen fiction, paranormal, general fiction... etcetera. Now, you know what category you like, the one where you know your story will fit into. I'll use romance for this one. You'll click on romance. When you do, there's a hot list on your left and a new stories list on your right. We'll go with the new stories list.
Here's where you find stories that are
1) recently updated
2) very low in reads and votes
3) both of the above.

After that, look through for a story you think you like. Genuinely. Click on it, read, vote, leave a comment and add it your reading list. A genuine comment. The logic behind this is that since the story is new and not getting many reads, the writer will appreciate any new votes and comments. They will most likely inbox you, write on your message board, or give you a follow!

This will only go wrong if you do this very often, like 20 stories daily. Don't be obvious sis because your followers will definitely know.
With Wattpad not being a social media site, 5 followers per day is even too much. Appreciate it and move on!

3) Fan fiction:- Believe me or not, the first story I read on Wattpad was a Riele Downs x Jace Norman fanfiction. Also, believe me when I say that I still have a couple of friends I made from reading that fanfiction.

Here's the deal. If there's something you're a fan of: Disney, k-pop, BTS, One Direction... etcetera, find fanfics about those. Most people who read and leave comments on fanfics are usually big fans...just like you.
Remember when I said to include crucial info like that in your bio? That's when it'll get useful.

What you'll do is start conversation with some of the active readers of that fanfic - ones that seem approachable enough. Who knows? They may give you a follow if you're bringing something to the conversation!

4) Advertise your profile:- relying on Wattpad to promote you is not a wise decision. So, if you have social media - Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter or WhatsApp -, please go ahead and tell people where they can find you.

What if you don't want people that know you to find about your Wattpad profile? That's a good question. Hence why you can use three of the above methods since they are all limited to within Wattpad only. Plus, you can always ask your new Wattpad friends to give you shout-outs. Politely ask. You are not entitled to shout-outs because you're friends with some people.

Here's a couple of things to remember.
- Don't spam people asking them to follow you. That's rude and if anyone did that to me, I'd ignore them till further notice.
- Following popular people on the site doesn't mean that they'll follow you back. Just follow Selena Gomez on Instagram and see if she will follow back.
- Followers don't mostly matter but I know that some people lose sleep over numbers. But if you can live with 300 followers like me and still smile about it and sometimes never notice anyway, don't bother with followers.
- Be polite and follow people back. If someone has given you a minute of your time, it's only fair that you recognize their effort. Thank them and follow them back!

I hope that was useful. If it was, leave a vote! If it wasn't, leave a question of correct me where I went wrong.

Next chapter:- My story: pre-publishing steps.

Until the next chapter, have a good time
Peace 👋