Anyone have any particular observations concerning optimal times to submit stories? And by optimal, I don't have any particular yardstick in mind.
It seems to me there's a balance between how long a story can remain on the front page vs how many people are visiting Lush at that time. It suggests to me that it's all a wash.
Any other perspectives?
I have noticed a distinct change in the time I have been a member of how long a story remains on the front page. When I first joined and posted it seemed like the story stayed on the front page significantly longer and you could expect many more reads. That time is significantly shorter now and initial reads are down. I am sure this must be because membership has greatly increased and many more people are posting stories. I have no advice, just that observation.
If you post it at peek times, it will get sweeped of homepage faster.
If you post it at low times, it will get fewer viewers.
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For the ones who prefer positive thinking.
If you post it at peek times, it will get viewers faster.
If you post it at low times, it will stay on the homepage longer.
That being said,if you want to be listed as story of the month. The beginning of the month would be best, since u have longer time to rack up views/votes.
As the membership increases, we get more submissions in of course.
On a typical day, we publish between 30-40 stories.
We have taken on a lot more story verifiers, because of the increased demand. They are spread across the globe, and stories get processed very quickly.
That means, your story has roughly the same amount of time on the front page, as any other.
Doing some approximate calculations, taking 36 stories for a day, each one would stay in the top spot 40 minutes. There are 15 story spots on the front page, so you're likely to stay on the front page until 15 new stories come in (x 40 minutes) = 10 hours.
With the structure of the site the way it is, there's not a lot we can do about that Sensei.
The best stories *should* end up in the Top 10 for the month, the most popular, and most viewed, but of course that also depends on how social you are on the site, and how proactive you are at promoting your story, both on lush and elsewhere.
We have many authors here with their own sites / blogs / facebook / twitter accounts etc, who post on their network, as soon as their story is published here. That helps their scores greatly, and they will get more attention on lush as a result.
Lush is a vehicle on which you can show off your work, it's up to you to promote your stories.
