Cracking the Wattpad Code: Insider Secrets the Pros don't want you to know!

Tiny tweaks that yield BIG Results

My suggestion is this: find out what in your story would be specifically interesting to your target demographic. If it is a romance for example, make sure you point that our RIGHT UP FRONT and ALSO what makes your romance UNIQUE. Romance is an over-saturated genre. Every other book out there is about good girl meets bad boy. The key to standing out then, is a UNIQUE take on the tired old formula. You don't have to change the winning formula, just tweak it enough to stand out. DYING good girl meets bad boy. Good girl meets GAY bad boy who is a WEREWOLF (LOL! I swear I've seen a book like this on Wattpad!). Good girl meets bad boy who turns out to be a secret agent for the CIA. It doesn't really matter. Prove in the description that your story is a UNIQUE and INTERESTING on a POPULAR TOPIC, and you'll get readers.

3) Your Profile Description MATTERS A LOT for getting followers.

90% of the profiles on Wattpad are like this:

Hi! I'm so and so, and I like X. I also don't like X. I do or don't do, follow for follow, read for read, and then they include an ASCII graphic of some sort, which is a BIG WASTE OF PROFILE SPACE by the way, if you are an author. If you're purely a reader, you can do whatever you want with your profile! You're probably not reading this book anyway. ;)

Speaking of ASCII, here's a really useful ASCII you can copy-paste in reply to self-advertisers on your profile or via PM:

........................./'¯/)

......................,/¯..//

...................../..../ /

............./'¯/'...'/'¯¯'·¸

........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\

........('(...'(..'......,~/'...')

.........\.................\/..../

..........''...\.......... _.·'

............\..............(

..............\.............\

You're welcome. :)

So, how do we get more followers?

Tell people RIGHT on the FIRST LINE of your profile what YOU can DO for THEM and what makes you different. Have you seen my profile? The first line tells potential followers what I've accomplished. Second line tells them I can show them how to do the same for themselves! Now, if you're an unknown author on Wattpad, and saw that, you just sat up and took notice of my profile, BIG TIME.

I also included something interesting: "Want to know the 3 biggest things that influence a book's success on Wattpad? PM me and I will tell you."

Why the need for a PM? Because you HAVE TO FOLLOW ME first to PM me! In other words, it's another guaranteed follow for yet another target audience I am after (which is aspiring and unnoticed writers on Wattpad).

Why 3 biggest things? Because people are addicted to the easy button. If I can make it so that Wattpad success can be distilled into 3 simple things and I can tell anyone what they are, who wouldn't want to know? I get TONs of PMs from this one tweak! And guess what I respond with? My "big 3" and then a link to "Cracking the Wattpad Code". Ta-dah! Instant conversion! :)

PLUS, I now have that person's permission to stay in touch with them on any "Cracking" tips I might want to put out.

This type of "permission marketing" works especially well if you pair it with specific baits like the above that then follow up with specific actions required (like a follow, or a PM, or a vote), etc.

Shortly after I put these tiny tweaks in, I dramatically boosted my follows.

In contrast, it took me forever to get to my first 3K followers (those of you who remember my experiments with putting my wife's face on my profile will laugh and attest to all my "experiments" back in the day), none of these worked as well as the tweaks I described above. I'm now about to double my followers to 6K now in only a few months/weeks. All because of a few tiny tweaks.

4) Want to get more comments? ASK QUESTIONS.

At the end of the chapter, don't just say, "Vote and Comment!" ask questions like, "Can you guess what will happen next?" or "Who is your fave character?". These are awesome because they can trigger comment storms from your readers as they discuss/debate with one another about which character is best, or what will happen next, etc. which DO count in the rankings!

That's it for now. Good luck!

And...just to put what I preach into practice:

What did you guys think? Are there any topics that you would like to see that haven't been covered? I plan to do more interviews, so let me know if those have been helpful as well and if you have any suggestions on who to interview! :)