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@Im_dreadful No this is literally the hardest part of writing, hands down. I feel like I'm tweaking in an alley trying to refuse the ever-existing addiction to begin a new story. I have 5 completely thought-out books that've lived inside me for YEARS that I cannot start until I finish the project I'm on. Don't let the voices win, I believe in you T.T

@Haiiso Thank you! This is definitely an insight. I never thought of the niche tags

In my case, I think it was the case of ridiculous luck (sorry). Others will tell you its important that it's well written etc etc which is true, although obvious, advice. But, ngl, the first draft of R&R was RUBBISH. I was a teen who read but never wrote. Well-written *really* helps but doesn't necessarily reward inherently. The best book in the world is probably sitting on wattpad with 11 views and a single vote. Covid lockdown drove my engagement up stupidly when it happened.
            
            Tropes matter, unfortunately. Contemporary school-set stories do better than more unique ones as a unfortunate truth. Some make their stories like this to appeal to larger readerbases, some don't. Just is what it is.
            
            Anyway, I hope this helps in some way!

You didn't, absolutely not haha. So, I'll be real with you that I didn't deliberately set out for views-- so I never did R4Rs or advertise but I think I happened to have done some things right in retrospect.
            
            1. User engagement. You're already strong on this front for instance. Commenting and engaging with other people's stories and users. Your profile is more likely to get noticed by random people.
            
            2. Tags. When writing R&R I used the main big tags for the genre but also used smaller ones. It means that even when my story isn't massively popular, it remains highly ranked in nicher tags. #expelled and #britain are the ones it's consistently high ranked in even when going through a reader slump. Although these tags are less likely to be searched, when they *are* searched you're significantly more likely to be at the top of them. R&R has only been high in #bxb, for instance, on one or two occasions for the years that it'd been up; whilst for #expelled it often hit top 10, even when it was small.
            
            3. Patience. (Obviously but bear with me). R&R had basically had no readers until I'd posted up to 20 chapters. Readers are only interested in ongoing stories that have demostrated the writer will post regardless, and when it already provides 15/20 chapters or so to read up to already (this is especially true when the viewcount is low). If you think about from a reader's pov, going around reading 3 chapter ongoing books would be a thankless task.
            
            Part of point 3 is also mindset. I'd started R&R out of boredom and fully expected it to be lost in the wattpad void. It meant than when I did get no views, I was happy to keep writing regardless for my own amusement. That being said, there's nothing wrong with writing for validation--once I did have readers I loved reading the comments and found it helped me keep on. R&Rs, whilst I didn't do them, are great for boosting engagement and thus visibility--but I think can equally boosts expectation (which ends up being disheartening).