The Journey to Writing a Successful Story: a tip book

Rankings

Many have asked questions about getting ranked. The main questions are: what is it, how to be ranked, where can you find out that you are ranked, why are most stories have a lot of reads?

What is it?

Being ranked means that you're on the Hot List. The Hot List is a list of stories in one particular genre that are currently popular. There's only 1,000 stories on the Hot List to each genre. If you're ranked, you are one of those thousand stories.

How can you be ranked?

A lot of people think that people who are ranked get picked by ambassadors or Wattpad itself to be on the list. This is wrong. It's an algorithm, meaning that it's set on its own. It's based on the reads and feedback. However, it's not based on how much you have, but how much you get in a short amount of time. Let's say within five hours, you get 300 reads and 50 votes in the Werewolf genre. This may mean that you can get put on the list. But let's say that within five days, you get 300 reads and 50 votes in that same genre, you may not be put on the list as it's not that short.

The one thing that you have to consider is how popular the genre you're in. There are three major genres that are popular. You have Teen Fiction, Fan Fiction, and Romance. Those three genres are the hardest to get in because most of Wattpad are people who create stories in those three genres. It can take a long time to get in and from experience, you can get kicked off easily. The last time I was ranked was in the Romance genre, and it was about over a year ago that I was ranked. But I was kicked off in about ten to fifteen minutes.

The less popular genres such as Action, Historical Fiction, Non-Fiction, and so on, are quite easy to get in and stay in since not many people make stories in those genres.

Where can you find out that you were ranked?

I'm not too sure what it looks like by phone, but on a computer... Go to your profile. Scroll over to the book you have (if it's not the first one with the larger cover) and just have your mouse hover over the cover (don't click on it). In the small box, it'll have a short excerpt of the summary, and look below that. Underneath the excerpt, you will find a pound sign (#) with numbers and the genre of your story. If you're looking at the first book, it'll be the same but without hovering over the cover. If you click on the book, look to the right top corner, right across the buttons that say "Read," "My Lists," "+," and so on. That's where it'll say the pound sign, numbers, and genre of the story.

Why are there a lot of popular stories and how can there be stories with not many reads and feedback?

To the first question:

Popular stories get the most reads and feedback in a short amount of time. Again, if you're looking at something with over a million reads, that author probably gets a few thousand a day or per few days. As far as feedback, votes probably come in with at least 50-200 per day or so. Because of that, they are getting to the top of the list. That is the reason as to why it's hard for undiscovered stories to get on the list.

You're also probably wondering why there are stories with a lot of reads in the Undiscovered section. When that happens, you have to look at the amount of votes instead. Honestly, 20,000 reads is nothing compared to people who have 100,000 reads or 500,000 reads or over a million. 20,000 reads may be a lot, and is, but if it's compared to another story with more, it seems like nothing. Which is why some stories in the Undiscovered sections probably have that much. However, look at the votes. It may not have a lot of votes which is why it's in there. When I was going through the Fan Fiction area, one book had over a million reads, but it had only a little over 3,000 votes. It's a lot and it's a little average to those who have a little over a million reads, but if you compare it to those in the Hot List, it's not even enough. Apparently, the average is having over 20,000 votes, even if it has a million reads. One story in the Hot List of the Fan Fiction had a little over one million reads, but over 60,000 votes.

To the second question:

If you see a story in the Hot List with a small amount of reads and feedback, it may because they got a lot of votes in a short amount of time. Let's say within a few hours, their story has 5,000 reads and 500 votes - they earned at least 200 in a few hours. That's probably why they're on there.

But even through all of this, I would advise you to just not worry about being ranked. It doesn't matter much, and even if you get on there, it probably won't be for very long anyway. Don't waste your breath.