I have noticed a trend that my R-18 chapters get double to five times the views as my normal chapters. The thing is one of them is chapter 23, 500 views. But the previous chapter had 100. So it got my brain wondering, do people just read R-18 chapters without caring about the story or is one person going blind soon?
Also can I just tag everything R-18 and get double the views.
Send them my way, my story is an R-18 Fantasy
starring a mischievous gullible cat girl.
Don't get use to it though. A lot of users say that the R-18 is an easy route to get views. There's some truth to it, but because of the abundance of novels in that category, you'll soon realize that the same rules apply to getting views in your story if it were any other genre.
My novel has smut, no secret about it. But the smut isn't the main focus, it's the characters and story. Even though my story is an NSFW novel with over 170 chapters, I usually get 500 views when I upload a new chapter, and 2 likes on said new chapters.
That is to say, my smut story pails in statistics when compared to more smut-heavy content where the NSFW is the main focus, like a harem genre, often paired with Isekai and sometimes LitRPG. Which btw, those tags are also very popular in this site. So even though I'm attempting to write a fleshed out adventure with character growth, action, and narrative, it might not gain the same traction as an NSFW Smut story who's focus is on the smut content it provides. (Which is fine btw, not a critique. Every genre has their usual popcorn flavor that gains attention, likes, and readers.)
In short, enjoy the R-18 view traction for now, but unless your story is focused on what makes that genre popular, those boosts might not last over time. Focus on writing the story you want to tell. Even if it doesn't get as many views as a generic story, it will still be the story you envisioned
