How do your readers find you?

I like http://free-online-novels.com - and it worked fine for me, because I split my work up into books, and I've got three complete novels already. (I also get a ton of clicks from them, which is great ^_^).

Honestly, a lot of my readers find my site because of the offline relationships I develop with them. I meet people in coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, libraries, poetry events, dating websites, and more, and every time, I try to mention my site. A lot of them are interested enough to check it out at least once, and a good portion of them become regular or semi-regular readers.

My biggest referrers are StumbleUpon and Facebook. Some of my poems regularly get big bursts of several thousand views a day from StumbleUpon, and usually when that happens, I see a boost in traffic from Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Tumblr), where people want to share the poem they've found on StumbleUpon.

My third largest referrer is a combination of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, most of which find my site by searching for "Gabriel Gadfly" or "How To Greet Death." I'd guess that the direct traffic from real-world contacts is about the same level as the search engine traffic.

I get something similar to Gabriel, having a good number of friends and family that frequent the site. Which is nice, but I'd like more. Most of the referers that hit my site are Facebook and Twitter, and some coming in from SaskForums (a forum board for all things Saskatchewan).

After that, Google happens to be a big hit, as I get a lot of hits still from last October's 31 Days of Ghosts.

Black Mask & Pale Rider had a pretty big following, and while Blood of the Moon does okay, it's not near what BM&PR had. I'm hoping Flag on my Backpack will attract more (particularily Canadian readers).

I get most of my hits from a site called Online Lesbian Fiction (http://www.onlinelesbianfiction.com/), not everyone can submit here, clearly, but if you're like me and have lesbians as main characters in your story then it's a good place to list with. I submitted to them a while ago and I'm getting new visitors from them every day. Atleast 10-15 which is phenomenal compared to my other referrals. Besides them, I get a handful of clicks from the Web Fiction Guide, and a bunch of random hits from google users trying to find info about Plato's concept of eikasia.

My top referrer is one of the places I advertise (often the only place I'm actually advertising, because somehow I continue to get plenty of good hits from there--in fact I wonder if there are readers who rely on that ad as their link to my site): the webcomic Phoenix Requiem. After that it's Google, WFG, and Digital Novelists. I also get quite a few hits from http://online-novels.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for mentioning Online Lesbian Fiction, Illise--I'm not certain my story qualifies, as only one of my three main characters is a lesbian, but I decided to submit anyway and see what they think.

I also get a lot of hits from Top Web Fiction, anyone else?

The hits I get from TWF are mostly (but not entirely) peeps who vote for me. (I have an incentive running, so they loop into the incentive page).

Most of my hits come from PW sites.

At the risk of sounding silly, what's PW?

PW = Project Wonderful. It's an auction-based ad network (highest bid gets the spot). It's useful for writers because a lot of the sites that have spots are other weblit writers and/or webcomics.

Ah okay! Thanks. Yes, I'm familiar with Project Wonderful. I advertise through them and have some ads on my site, I was just unfamiliar with the acronym.