Two Months of the Ravishment Academy - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

[Claire]

One month ago, I created the announcement with the ominous title Headed for Closure in the wake of the poor engagement with the Ravished in a Flash Quarter Final. Where does the Academy stand now after its second month?

The forum is doing extremely well in many metrics: Daily Visitors, Bandwidth Use, Findability via Search Engines, Daily New Users. But sadly, it shows essentially 0 progress in the most important metric of all: users commenting on stories they read. It will be the development of that key metric over the course of the next month that decides whether this forum has a future or not. And it is up to you what this number will show on July 1.

For more information, read the second post.

[Claire]

The aftermath of my last announcement was a tremendous success. Much more people commented and voted on the Semi-Final and Final of the Ravished in a Flash Tournament. @LaLia's semi-final contribution The Chastity Belt is to this day the highest rated story on the forum with a reputation of 18. For the first time since the launch, did the forum feel like a somewhat active community and not like an archive for stories. So that last announcement thread? It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It provided a proof of concept that a more active, more engaged community is possible.

We also crossed several milestones in the meantime. On May 10 we reached the 100 user threshold and just today we made that 200. After starting with 15 stories on launch day, @Vela Nanashi posted the 100th story Seraphina's Flowering just a few days ago on May 27. Since then, we pushed past 120 stories mainly because of @RapeU's recent flood of stories, but also because of new authors on our forum like @chloevee with What I am going to do to you, @AdmiralPiet with his Gang Rape Galore contest entry Spoils of War or @Lucius with Dance of the Sun Goddess. We now have three full pages of stories in our Public Stories board, so plenty to read for every new user finding us.

The greatest success so far is the fact that this forum is very findable for such a young community. We are in the rape fantasy niche within the erotic fiction niche. The deck is stacked against us. But the Google data shows that more and more people see us in searches every day and they also do click on what they are shown. Here is the evolution of impressions (how often we are shown to people) and clicks (how often people actually land on the forum):



We started around 25 impressions per day during our first week after the launch, now we sit at 10 times that with 250 impressions per day and there is no sign that this upwards trend is slowing down.




The clicks we get confirm that trend and increase even smoother over time. We just now reached an average of 100 clicks per day and if anything, the growth in clicks (and impressions) is currently accelerating. The forum is getting found more and more.

Now make no mistake: This is not a natural development, this is the result of countless hours I spent trying to figure out what is called Search Engine Optimization. And it worked. Our biggest success is the The RavishU Memorial contest. Instead of naming RavishU's final contest the Valentine's Day contest, I chose the name RavishU Memorial contest for two reasons: One, to honor our spiritual predecessor, and, two, to establish this link between us and RavishU. This worked so well that the search term "Ravishment University" is now more associated with us than with RavishU itself, that is we show up as the first result when you search for that on Google.

We also get a sizable share of our search traffic from DuckDuckGo, roughly 30% of what Google produces for us. That number is huge: Generally, DuckDuckGo makes up something like 1 or 2% of total search traffic.

Why am I telling you all this? To destroy the illusion that the development of the forum you've seen so far has been some form of natural evolution. It has been carefully crafted and planned and is the only reason why this forum isn't effectively dead already.

That increase in search traffic can also be seen in other metrics.



This image here shows the evolution of daily bandwidth used by activity on the forum. We started with less than 100MB per day on average for the first week and sit now at over 500mb per day. In that sense, activity on the forum increased by more than a factor 5 since launch and seems to be still growing. That of course makes sense as more and more people find the forum, primarily via Google and DuckDuckGo as I explained above.




This image here shows daily visits as measured by Awstats which my webhost automatically provides for me. We started around 180 daily visits and are now close to 650, no end of the upwards trend in sight.


That data also tracks nicely with the evolution of daily registrations on the forum:



We started with 2 registrations per day during the first week, inflated by the launch weekend that saw 5, 6 and 2 registrations on the first three days, mainly driven by personal invitations. Once the launch hype was over, we settled on roughly 1 new user per day. That climbed quickly to 3 new users per day and now we have breached 5 new users per day, the same increase we saw in daily bandwidth use. To give you a feeling for how large that number is for a niche erotica forum like ours: The Black Van reached 537 registered users after three years of being online and is arguably comparable to us as a niche rape fantasy focused erotica forum. It had 0.49 people registering per day or 1 person every day 2 days. We are outpacing that currently by a factor of 10 and would breach that total user count of 537 in about 70 days at the current rate of user registrations.

Long story short: While none of these metrics is a perfect measure of the forum's growth on its own, they all point in the same direction. The forum is growing fast and much faster than you could reasonably expect from a small niche community like ours. This is the result of my team and me carefully preparing this forum for a month and a half before the launch and now being an active presence on the forum but also behind the scenes trying to further increase the visibility of the forum on the internet. We did our part.


That was the good part. Let's get to the sobering part. Did all this growth in visibility, daily traffic, number of visits, daily registrations lead to more activity on the forum? The answer is no. Let's start with two very basic statistics:



This graph shows the number of daily topics created over time. After starting with quite a lot of new topics per day because we slowly reposted many of our previously published stories, the number of daily topics declined. That was expected. Yes, we would of course gain new authors over time, but I always suspected that the number of daily topics would decrease at first as the number of new authors would not be able to keep up with the "old" authors running out of material to publish. So while that downward trend might look scary at first, I always expected it to occur and didn't care about it much. And what is that peak at the end? That is the gang rape contest inspiring authors to contribute stories, then a few new authors posting stories and finally @RapeU going bananas with posting his stories. I can't tell you what the data will look like exactly a week from now, but that sudden spike over the last few days will disappear as RapeU has run out of stories to publish.




This statistic is much more concerning. It shows the number of daily posts on the forum. It peaks around April 23 mostly driven by @Shocker, @LaLia and me. We posted without restraint in the early days of the forum and were carrying the activity on the forum almost alone, trying to set a positive example. But once LaLia and I made the conscious choice to post a little less simply because it was too time consuming to be sustainable in the long run the number of daily posts starts to drop. Then you see a quick spike in the graph around May 7. That was the aftereffect of my last announcement thread and the subsequent increase in activity for the Riaf semi-final and final. After that, we returned to the previous downwards trend and reached a new absolute low at around 20 posts per day on average. And that sudden spike? That is @RapeU posting his stories. He has posted 149 times since his registration on May 26 which is reflected in that sudden rise. Again, in a week from now this will no longer be visible in the data.

I decided that I would barely comment on stories this last week and @LaLia had to take a break from the forum due to being busy for other reasons. The two of us taking our foot from the gas meant that the number of daily posts collapsed to its all time low despite there being 200 registered users now, 50 of those being online everyday, more than 100 over the course of last week. With 5 times as much bandwidth use, 3.5 times as many visits, 10+ times as many clicks from Google and 5 times as many daily registrations, this community was not willing to compensate the activity loss of two people taking a step back.

With me not posting deliberately, LaLia being busy and Shocker waiting to respond to the other contest entries until he has written his own, we currently have 2 contest entries with 0 replies and 1 contest entry with 1 user giving feedback despite those topics being online for a week now. During that time on each single day more than 40 registered users where online. The sad truth is: When Lia, Shocker and I don't post regularly, the forum comes to a halt in terms of user feedback.

I measured this explicitly. I calculated a few days ago for each story how many different people had responded to it and how many of those were Shocker, LaLia or me. The result: On average a story was commented on by 1.4 users not being Shocker, LaLia and me. And that number has basically not changed since the launch of the forum.



You can see that brief peak around May 15, that is again the effect of my last announcement and the subsequent rise in activity associated with the Ravished in a Flash Semi-Final and Final. But immediately after, the number of posters on stories not being Shocker, LaLia or me crashes down again. All that growth that I showed you earlier had little to no effect on the average number of people commenting and when LaLia and I slow down a bit compared to what we did at launch a user base of 200 people is not enough to compensate for that.

To end this on a personal note: I posted 12 stories here. Over all my stories combined, the number of people that commented, me excluded of course, is 15. The number of people that have thanked me personally for running this forum and that seemed outright ecstatic over this place existing is likely closer to 50 if not higher than that.

So where does all of that leave us? I will resume commenting on stories next week, starting with all the contest stories. I will keep trying to get more eyes on this place, to be available when you have questions or need help with something. I will keep organizing contests and make changes to the forum with the help of @Vela Nanashi. I will do my best to make sure that people find us via search engines. And if I can, I will even try to finally finish chapter 8 of Record Chaser. But if that statistic of the average number of users posting on a story does not show any significant upwards trend after another month of growth in all the statistics I showed you in the beginning, then this will be the end of the Ravishment Academy. I will not put my time, effort and money into running an archive for stories. I did my part to give this community what so many who expressed their thanks to me seemed to desire. The question is: Will this community start to act as if it actually cares about a place like this existing and help me with my efforts to build something new here? Or do you want to see another place go down because there is simply no reason for the people running the place to do so once a problem occurs? It is up to you. July 1 will be the moment of truth, I encourage you to comment on and rate stories.

[LaLia]

The statistics on clicks, new users, etc. are really great and I think better than we thought and expected. This shows how few opportunities there are in this form and we didn't have that much competition.

Now to the topic that's been causing us problems since the beginning: I can completely understand you now. Shocker, Blue, and a handful of other people have commented on my stories. Many (especially other authors) sometimes haven't provided a single piece of feedback. You just have to say that if it's so noticeable when two people give less feedback with 200 users, that's a real problem.

I'll have more time after Pentecost and will give more feedback again, but I must also honestly admit that I won't pay much attention to authors who only post their stories and don't give feedback here and there until things improve a bit here.

Lots of new stories are great, but instead of posting five new stories every day, I think it would be more helpful to also provide feedback.

My conclusion: As of now, I would also consider the forum a failure, since we said from the beginning that it wasn't worth the effort. Above all, it's a problem that isn't difficult to solve and where everyone has some influence.

[AdmiralPiet]

Is there a certain threshold you want to reach?

The problem I see is:
The forum has now about 200 Users.
Some will always be lurkers, some wont read certain stories based on the tags or topic or some othe reason.
That means the audience every story in particular has is not that big.

For myself: I know I would like more engagement, and it would only be fair to comment myself in return.
But:
I start reading a story, and enter the statistics as a reader, but might notice after a short while that I don't like the story.
Sometimes because of the writing style, or the setting. I don't want to leave meaningless comment like "I don't like your style", "I can't relate to this setting".
Especially if I lack the full picture because I didin't read the whole thing.

And if it has problems that I can comment on, like: "Hey, this and that is the reason why I stopped reading after half a page. Maybe you can fix that"
That would be legitimate, but to me it feels awkward leaving negative reviews (Yes, I know that is dumb)

[Shocker]

…
But:
I start reading a story, and enter the statistics as a reader, but might notice after a short while that I don't like the story.
Sometimes because of the writing style, or the setting. I don't want to leave meaningless comment like "I don't like your style", "I can't relate to this setting".
Especially if I lack the full picture because I didin't read the whole thing.

And if it has problems that I can comment on, like: "Hey, this and that is the reason why I stopped reading after half a page. Maybe you can fix that"
That would be legitimate, but to me it feels awkward leaving negative reviews (Yes, I know that is dumb)

Hi just my two cents here, as an author negative feedback stings almost as bad as no feedback at all. So I can understand your reluctance of not wanting to post something like that. Some comments like „this was complete garbage“ we certainly can do without, but something “I’ll have to take others word for it, but couldn’t get past the dreaded wall of text” is a useful feedback. The latter actually was posted under more than one of my stories. Did I reedit that specific story, hell no but I did pay more attention to that when writing stories, because that complaint was valid. I could have done a full post as @RapeU, who actually was making sure he could transfer all of his stories before TBV fully shut down service on 6/1, but I chose to actually for the first time ever reedit my stories for publication here.

I might be in a minority, but constructive feedback is always welcome, it will never change what I’m doing with the current story, but it gets me to think about what I could do differently, to improve the story with my own tastes in mind. So don’t be shy, if you don’t like something in my stories, tell me it might be a new insight for me. If you don’t like a story stop reading it, you’ll know best which authors style you like after reading a few of their stories. There are excellent authors, whose stories I don’t read because the style doesn’t gel with me. I don’t like most of Stephen King’s books either.

[RapeU]

Let’s not do what The Black Van did and suspend all posting if this site doesn’t work out. Someone will likely try to restart and when they do communication will be necessary to get things going.

[RSlice]

Yea I never really commented alot back on RU as is. It's just not my nature. And if I dont get comments on my posts its whatever. I've been slowly working to add on to my current story. And RapeU might have a bonus story to work on if he gets back with me. Plus Bob202 still has his 2 storys + continuations he's told me that he is working on.

[Vela Nanashi]

Those of you who were or are lurkers or never comment, please try, think of one or two things that stood out or you liked or something, every little bit helps. Also if you want to not reveal your real name etc, then don't register with your real name, get a free proton.me email account and register with a pseudonym, then you can safely say anything with no trace to your real life (you can also use the free vpn to browse the site and post, that way even your ip will be hidden)

Those of you already having set up a pseudonym though, there is no reason to be scared to say you like something, or don't like something, just feed us authors who are driven by comments, and help motivate us admins who are such authors to feel like spending time maintaining the site.

Personally I always comment on stories I read these days, I go a bit extreme having a document handy next to me to write my thoughts as I read, while others are more able to comment on the story as a whole by reading it first and then saying things about it.

[KittyUmbrass]

I am not reading a lot of stories currently: I avoid anything that's unfinished, because if I start a story, I want to be able to read through to the end. I also don't bother with anything "long", because I have limited time and executive dysfunction. And right now, "long" and "unfinished" seems to be the vast majority of stories here.

If I remember the story from elsewhere (TBV, RC, etc) then the chances that I'll comment again is low, because I already said what I wanted to communicate to the writer back on those sites. And yes, they're gone now, but trying to reproduc those remarks as a performance for other people has no attraction for me. (If I remember liking them, I will drop a rating, though.)

And then there's the stories that are just not for me, because the kinks at the core of the story don't work for me.

However, I'm looking forwards to reading the new story contest entries, just as soon as I've finished mine. And if I have anything to say, I'll drop a comment for sure. Same for if there's stories I haven't seen before that don't demand too much time from me. I just don't want to feel harangued and cajoled about doing so.

My favourite parts of this site are the parts where actual conversations and discussions happen: Chat, and the boards generally. I firmly believe that the way to get more comments on stories is to build the community first and encourage roleplays, discussions and the like. And I like to think I've done a few things to help on that score.

[troubled girl]

Im not good myself at public posting, but I like that site like this exists so will try to give some thoughts

I like sometimes to read stories, but for me what I like best is writing with someone about fantasy and maybe roleplay if inspired, but even I have not made profile in roleplay yet as it is a block that there are noone else doing this, so if everyone had to make some introduction post its would also make it easier atleast for me.

Why not do what other forums do ? Hide some part of forum unless you registrer and maybe create Introduction and "looking for" roleplay or story and comment on 3-5 other posts

Also if people, like me feel shy to comment on stories .. maybe instead have mini poll so readers can vote on style / length / characters or so ?