I've been posting chapters on Royal Road, Scribblehub, and HFY (Reddit).
I find the trickle of new readers to be good. But I was wondering if any other authors out there have tips for gaining readers? Like my mum told me my story was good. But I don't think WOM is going to snowball into a large reader base.
Writing online is difficult. If you enjoy reading sci fi and fantasy, when you are looking for a new novel to read, you're going to ask your friends or family. That means what stories get to you are more well known ones. Stories get well known through actually being formally published (doesn't matter whether people are reading it in print or digitally.)
What matters is traditional publishing is getting you actual advertising, its getting your story out into the real world where fans of those genres can find it. Thus, the majority of fans of sci fi and fantasy, and other more traditional works, are not going to be searching online, especially when there is not a quality filter.
So what do we find online then? What we find online is an audience of people who wants nontraditional kinds of stories that are not published as often. They are not looking for sci fi and fantasy usually. It fluctuates depending on the site. Wattpad has a lot of romance fiction - this is still published IRL, but the genre has always had a bit of a pulpy nature, so readers are willing to look at the stuff online, especially if it is LGBTQ fiction, or more... well, weird fanfiction stuff.
Royal Road is the closest of the sites to more traditional genres, though I found no success there, and can't say much.
Scribblehub is largely focused on anime inspired stories, and most of the successful works are catering to non-western sensibilities in regards to narrative.
Thus that's why traditional speculative fiction writers are going to struggle online. Their main audience is not looking online, and the online audience is not as interested in what they are offering. This is of course, not to say we don't find typical stuff on these sites. You totally can release stuff here. If you are consistent in your upload schedule, have an engaging narrative with good quality, release it at decent times, advertise it to an appropriate degree, you can build an audience.
Growing an audience in this way can be tough. You need to be making a consistent quality output for a long period of time, to the point where you're stories have tens of thousands of views. That's the point where you can start thinking about stuff like patreon, or releasing your stories in full as ebooks on Amazon.
Self publishing is difficult, whatever route you take, but it is possible. A word of caution though. If you have any desire to pursue traditional publishing, do not publish said manuscripts online. Traditional publishers want something called "first publishing rights" - basically, they want to be the first to show your story to the world, they want exclusivity. If your story has been online, they don't want it anymore. Online writing could perhaps help you - if you have stories that you have released online, and then show them as example that you can gain an audience, then show the publisher an unreleased story.
Personally I am choosing not to pursue self publishing. I'm saving my stories for showing to publishers. What I'm writing here is just a little furry sci fi story that I'm not as invested in that I'm using to improve my writing skills. It's a story that probably wouldn't be published traditionally, and so I'm not too sad to see the first publishing rights evaporate.
I hope I haven't overwhelmed you. Being a writer can be difficult. Whether you want to pursue it as a career, for fun, or somewhere inbetween, I encourage you to not give up on it, and to just practice your heart out. Write tons of stories, do all you can to improve.
Best of luck to you fellow sci fi author.
