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[SailusGebel]

I'm all for avoiding RR because their regulations and community are pretty bad. Scribblehubs lack of overbearing rules is part of the reason I came here. People should have the freedom to write what they want to write rather than it be confined. The community is also super nice and helpful to the point that I can't compare any writing community to it. However, if there's so much smut that people coming here have to ask if there is anything but smut. It just seems excessive.

Paul, this has already been talked about a lot. There isn't as much smut. People who say, 'Uuuu, there is too much smut!!!' are a part of a majority of readers who avoid smut. The reason they start threads like this is that they are writers themselves and think smut is easy money and views(which isn't true) or readers who happened to look at trending in time that has a lot of smut in it.

There were multiple threads that debunked these 'facts' already. Novels without smut earn A LOT more. There aren't as many smut novels on SH that you won't be able to find a non-smut novel. Smut doesn't get all places in trending and so on.

 

[RebelLion]

I'm all for avoiding RR because their regulations and community are pretty bad. Scribblehubs lack of overbearing rules is part of the reason I came here.

Scribble Hub's rules are less overbearing because the site only has a few mods to enforce them. More rules to break equals more moderations to do.

 

[Paul_Tromba]

Paul, this has already been talked about a lot. There isn't as much smut. People who say, 'Uuuu, there is too much smut!!!' are a part of a majority of readers who avoid smut. The reason they start threads like this is that they are writers themselves and think smut is easy money and views(which isn't true) or readers who happened to look at trending in time that has a lot of smut in it.

There were multiple threads that debunked these 'facts' already. Novels without smut earn A LOT more. There aren't as many smut novels on SH that you won't be able to find a non-smut novel. Smut doesn't get all places in trending and so on.

There is no lie here. It just feels like there are a lot of smut stories here. Like I said before, people should be free to write whatever they want.

Scribble Hub's rules are less overbearing because the site only has a few mods to enforce them. More rules to break equals more moderations to do.

I know... That's why I've been here so long.

 

[Tsuru]

Yes, faloo website for chinese authors
Since early on authors wrote on qidian with pay-wall, but pirating was too intense so it was pointless. But faloo solved it by making chapters (after the free 50 early chaps) turn into "images" so bots can't easily steal them
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Syosetu for jp web novels (SFW version)
Before you needed masterpieces of the quality of "mushoku tensei" the ancestor that brought the trend of "isekai" but now it's more focused on vanilla trend. There is this manga where shota MC summon the devil, and she fell for him. WELP it was webnovel of not so high quality there.
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Not novel but the popular "baalbuddy" english artist (jp style)
somehow is more popular for his comics (quite troll like Konosuba, especially his originalverse of thirsty female elves trying to get sex and being hated by all races, included the "sigma" orcs) vs his ero art
= there was a recent 5 pages porn Arknights, and people joked that they forgot baalbuddy main vocation was "ero drawings" because people kept "requesting" his comedy
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jp pixiv (if people request you)
There are authors there that accept requests for X000 yens to write novel chapters
Also there are even AI websites to ghost-write chapters for free, can be hit-miss quality
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For english, you are quite fcked because english users are not massively readers of webnovels (most are gamers, lot are anime watchers or manga readers, THEN there are readers of jp/KR/chinese novels, THEN scribblehub is among many websites for english novels)
unless you are doing a masterpiece with ton of fans supporting your patreons

 

[Lloyd]

Smut gets views, regular shit gets money.

 

[DiscoDream]

I'm all for avoiding RR because their regulations and community are pretty bad. Scribblehubs lack of overbearing rules is part of the reason I came here. People should have the freedom to write what they want to write rather than it be confined. The community is also super nice and helpful to the point that I can't compare any writing community to it. However, if there's so much smut that people coming here have to ask if there is anything but smut. It just seems excessive.

People just focus on the smut too much. Maybe 3/10 of the stories in the updates actually have smut in them. The category may be large, but it's also one of the most heavily abandoned categories as well.

 

[Auratic]

Take commissions from suspiciously wealthy furries.

 

[WeissBlatt]

I thought money was a myth...

 

[IanWhite2105]

Most definitely. You have to do about 5 things to get a good audience to make a side hustle (a way to make pocket change).
1. You have to write in a coherent way. This is having understandable language, story, character interaction, etc....
2. Write on a schedule. Something like 1 chapter a week is a very reachable goal.
3. Have at least 20 chapters written before posting. It helps to make sure you will write the story without dropping it.
4. Set up a donation page. Using things like Patreon, ByMeACoffee, etc... you can set up pay to read chapter backlog that gets uploaded to free sites after a new chapter has been updated for paying readers.
5. This is probably the most important. You will not be able to make a living within a year. This is, at the end of the day, a hobby that you choose to do. If you don’t have another way to keep the water running then focus on that more than the writing.

 

[RockiesRetriever]

Most definitely. You have to do about 5 things to get a good audience to make a side hustle (a way to make pocket change).
1. You have to write in a coherent way. This is having understandable language, story, character interaction, etc....
2. Write on a schedule. Something like 1 chapter a week is a very reachable goal.
3. Have at least 20 chapters written before posting. It helps to make sure you will write the story without dropping it.
4. Set up a donation page. Using things like Patreon, ByMeACoffee, etc... you can set up pay to read chapter backlog that gets uploaded to free sites after a new chapter has been updated for paying readers.
5. This is probably the most important. You will not be able to make a living within a year. This is, at the end of the day, a hobby that you choose to do. If you don’t have another way to keep the water running then focus on that more than the writing.

The unfortunate thing absent from this list I think though is that on this site, you need to write in the popular genres. If you want to write something like traditional fantasy and sci fi on the site, there's not much likelihood you'll be noticed, no matter how good your writing is or how consistent your schedule.

 

[SailusGebel]

on this site

on every site*

 

[BenJepheneT]

I don't write smut and I'm doing pretty well. You don't have to sell your soul to the demands of others.

i dislike the notion that someone who writes smut also sold their soul to the profit devil. i never sold my soul, it's always been my soul. i sleep tighter than a baby at night knowing my FBI agent watched in horror as i described in vivid vocabulary how an nun elf whore had her anus impaled by a halberd of a horse cock. the devil dreads the day i come down to hell, and I'll be arriving with a fiddle in one hand and all three of my legs.

 

[greyblob]

Not on this website. I am starting to question if the minute effort it takes to copy and paste my docs onto scribblehub is even worth it when even Wattpad is getting more than double the views and like ten times the engagement.

My opinion of scribblehub has diminished significantly since I found it several years ago, as it has pigeonholed itself into some really specific niches of content. Wattpad and Royalroad, and really just online writing sites in general are not terribly good if you want people to read your stuff, but if you want to write something that isn't smut or isekai, I wouldn't invest much energy here.

wattpad is for teenage fanfics, rr is for litrpgs. every site has an audience. every audience has a preference. if you write a genre that's unpopular you'll get less views than average. I don't know how that's difficult to comprehend.
There are more factors involved: cover, synopsis, writing style, tags, etc. there is also the site's algorithm and how well you play into it. SH has one of the best early novel publicity; however, if you fail to get recognition early on, you'll gradually fall into obscurity. There's alot you can do to get yourself out there. That's true and different for every site. What's for certain though is that if your writing is engaging, you will be noticed.

 

[SailusGebel]

SH has one of the best early novel publicity; however, if you fail to get recognition early on, you'll gradually fall into obscurity.

Even if you fail, there is a chance that you will make it big if you are consistent. However, I don't remember the names of the novels that did it. I do remember that the stories were not smut and were updated every day, and they managed to get to 130k+ views. Initially, they had like 1-7k views.

 

[greyblob]

Even if you fail, there is a chance that you will make it big if you are consistent. However, I don't remember the names of the novels that did it. I do remember that the stories were not smut and were updated every day, and they managed to get to 130k+ views. Initially, they had like 1-7k views.

failing is not managing to get 10ish readers during your time on latest series. its usually because the writing itself is bad. though consistency definitely helps. if you can manage it.

 

[Paul_Tromba]

i dislike the notion that someone who writes smut also sold their soul to the profit devil. i never sold my soul, it's always been my soul. i sleep tighter than a baby at night knowing my FBI agent watched in horror as i described in vivid vocabulary how an nun elf whore had her anus impaled by a halberd of a horse cock. the devil dreads the day i come down to hell, and I'll be arriving with a fiddle in one hand and all three of my legs.

Think that there is a difference between writing smut because it's trendy and writing smut because you want to.

 

[SailusGebel]

failing is not managing to get 10ish readers during your time on latest series. its usually because the writing itself is bad. though consistency definitely helps. if you can manage it.

We have different definitions of failing. What I consider to fail in getting recognition is stagnating for months at 1-9k views with 10-90 readers. I should've explained it better in a previous message.

 

[Zirrboy]

Monetization is (somewhat obviously) about the question of "Why would someone pay money for this (over other options)?"
Something similar applies to the popularity of free content.
So the question is what you offer and what you are competing against.

The web novel format rarely deals with completed works. The readers - and often the authors themselves - don't know how the story will continue or if at all. As such I don't find it that surprising that short cycle fulfillment novels, smut and otherwise, thrive in a market that's about selling the next tiny piece. Plots with larger scale structure just don't work as well with the same method of sale, niche horndogs or not.

Furthermore, if I have a traditional story written, reviewed and evaluated in its entirety before being brought to me at a one time price, why would I go for the same topic in a book that might collapse from on-the-fly planning or be abandoned at any moment instead?
In my opinion, the answers to that are variety and specificity. A web novel might not be as sure a worthwhile read, but if it scratches a certain itch that I couldn't get any/enough of elsewhere, perhaps I decide not to care.

Depending on what topics you compare it against, smut might make this easier to achieve intuitively, but far from impossible.

 

[AliceShiki]

Here is a screenshot of the top 25 novels of Scribblehub.

And here are some numbers taken from quickly looking at it:

• 9 have Smut
• 6 of the non-smut have Ecchi

So, we have 10/25 that are non-ecchi/non-smut, therefore...

• 40% of the top 25 novels are not Ecchi/Smut.
• 64% of the top 25 novels are not Smut.

Now here is a much more interesting datapoint for you.

• 24/25 of the top 25 novels have either Action or Adventure genres.
• 10/25 have Action AND Adventure Genres.
• 7/25 have Adventure and don't have Action
• 7/25 have Action and don't have Adventure

So... Instead of worrying about whether or not you need Smut to be popular (you don't), why don't you instead worry about whether or not you can be popular without Action/Adventure?

You wanna make money? Action/Adventure are the real popular genres. Go for those.

Edit many months later: Somehow I miscounted the number of Action without Adventure. It's 7/25, not 8/25 like I had originally posted. The math didn't work out with the original numbers, so I counted it again today.

 

[Fritzer]

Here is a screenshot of the top 25 novels of Scribblehub.

And here are some numbers taken from quickly looking at it:

• 9 have Smut
• 6 of the non-smut have Ecchi

So, we have 10/25 that are non-ecchi/non-smut, therefore...

• 40% of the top 25 novels are not Ecchi/Smut.
• 64% of the top 25 novels are not Smut.

Now here is a much more interesting datapoint for you.

• 24/25 of the top 25 novels have either Action or Adventure genres.
• 10/25 have Action AND Adventure Genres.
• 7/25 have Adventure and don't have Action
• 8/25 have Action and don't have Adventure

So... Instead of worrying about whether or not you need Smut to be popular (you don't), why don't you instead worry about whether or not you can be popular without Action/Adventure?

You wanna make money? Action/Adventure are the real popular genres. Go for those.

You forgot the Harem tag and gender bender, which are deemed just as bad as Ecchi and Smut.

So you got 6/25 that do not have Harem/Ecchi/Smut/Gender Bender. [Blue core does not have the smut tag, but it has smut in the synopsis.]

However, OP wanted to know if stories without Smut made money. The answer is no.
None of the stories you listed without smut make any money from SH. They make their money from RR.

Now, if you go from views as a metric of popularity, and instead move to "Readers", the number drops further from 6/25 to 4/25.
Kek

Is it possible to earn money without writing smut?

In this forum you will only find intellectually dishonest people that will laugh as they give you wrong, fallacious or malicious advice.

The real answer is that if you aren't sexualizing something in any way or form within your story, you will never make any money in scribble hub. And you will never be popular unless you are some monster who writes like fifty thousand words a week, and even then you might still fail.

If you refuse to add sexual undertones to your work, the only place you will ever make money writing in a web serial format will be in Royal Road and it will still be hard. There is no such thing as an easy way to become successful. But at least there it might be possible.


Here in SH, you will either write smut/harem/ecchi/gender-bender or you will cope. Do I have any issues with the taste of readers in Scribble Hub? No, I too like my big booba demon waifus and 300 year old lolis. That is why I write here. My views align with that of the readers.

But if that is not for you, forget making a single cent here. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just giving you false hope. Ask them how many readers they got, or how much money they make. When was the last time they updated? then you will soon find out that most of the people giving you advice spend more time in this forum than actually writing.

Smut gets views, regular shit gets money.

How much money are u making, chief
And let me guess, you are crossposting into RR