So it has been a little over a week that I have started writing on Wattpad. The story I’m writing is a gothic, bully romance. A servants daughter and the rich son of a wealthy family get haunted by the ghosts of an old estate and neither is sure if what they are doing to each other is them or the ghosts. It’s called The Haunting of Tempest Bradshaw.
Now, to rank high on Wattpad, it all comes down to tags. And you can’t just tag your book sci-fi or fantasy or romance. No, most die hard readers aren’t going to search by that. You want to make sure that you are tagging by tropes.
For me, when I originally posted my story The Haunting of Tempest Bradshaw, I put the following tags: bullyromance, enemiestolovers, ghost, ghoststory, gothic, gothicfiction, hatelove, hatetolove, haunting, newadultromance, richboypoorgirl, and finally, romance.
Wattpad determines your ranking by which category your story is the highest in. So for instance say you are ranked 41 in a category with 15,000 stories but number 2 in a category with only 800 stories they will rank you based on the more impressive category. Because 15,000 is a larger pool of stories to choose from, 41 is actually the better ranking than number 2 in a smaller category.
Here’s where The Haunting of Tempest Bradshaw is right now:
Is it ranked higher in gothic fiction? Yes. But, it’s not as impressive because there aren’t as many stories in gothic fiction. Only 93. Whereas in the gothic category, there are 6,400 stories which means ranking 52 in such a large category is actually more impressive.
Want to help The Haunting of Tempest Bradshaw climb up the ranks? Go read and vote for it on Wattpad! It’s totally free right now and you can be part of the process.