Shadowbans, Dungeons, and $-3.00: What Really Happens When You Launch an Erotica Blog

Setting the Frame

Two months in, this isn’t a success story or a guide. It’s an experiment log. I’m treating this like a marketing lab: testing, breaking, measuring, and adjusting while keeping every number on record. What actually happens when you launch an erotica blog, publish a handful of books, and start testing channels from scratch? It’s the kind of thing not many authors show, because the numbers are small, the graphs look flat, and it doesn’t make for a shiny headline.

I’ve seen the success stories — the “How I made 100K in three months writing erotica” kind. Those are inspiring. Some offer genuine insight and strategy; others guard their niches and processes so tightly they read more like gloat-mashes than guides with real takeaways.

So get ready to be blown away. I’ve made a whopping –$3.00 this past month.

But I want to put it here anyway. Because in erotica especially, people don’t share raw early data. You see polished platforms, curated feeds, finished books. Not the wonky stretch in between.

So this is Month 2: what’s working, what isn’t, and the key takeaways after a full two months of data.

1) Traffic and SEO: the slow thaw

Let’s start with the numbers. I’m looking at the period from August 11 to October 11, splitting it into Month 1 and Month 2 for comparison.

Total website traffic estimates: 180–200

These estimates combine GA4, Search Console, and manual source tracking. Because of cookie denials and privacy filters, the real numbers are likely 20-25% higher than what analytics reports. I’m tracking patterns and factoring that in.

Organic traffic

• Aug 11 – Sept 11: 12
• Sept 11 – Oct 11: 37

My main traffic source during the first period was Instagram — about 50% of visits came through it. That changed drastically in the second period, but I’ll get to that below so you don’t make the same mistake.

Interestingly, I’ve also had a few sessions coming in from ChatGPT. Visitors landing either on the homepage or After Dark, sticking around to read several stories and posts, and even returning later.

Organic traffic during month 1 was mostly flukes or hyper targeted long tail keywords (naughty trope + erotic story) that landed on some short stories on the site. So I took that data and ran with it, and made a whole lot of SEO tweaks on every piece of content published on the site… and I started showing up for more generic erotica terms. Which is a huge win.

By Month 2, organic traffic had tripled, and my stories were appearing on page one of search results regularly — well, as regularly as 33 hits in 30 days.

Bounce rate: 32%
(I like to think that’s because there’s zero NSFW content on the site. No explicit images. Story cards are suggestive, not overt. And obviously, there’s high search intent behind “naughty trope + erotic story.” For those coming from socials or direct links, they know what to expect.)

Engagement rate: 67%
Average time on site: 4m 38s

The numbers aren’t explosive, but they’re solid. A 32% bounce rate paired with an average session length of more than four minutes means visitors are reading. That’s unusually high engagement for a new erotica domain, and it suggests the site layout and story flow are doing their job — with more tweaks still to come.

2) Instagram: when your best post gets you punished

So here we are: the culprit.

I honestly think if I hadn’t gotten a soft shadow ban, my numbers would be a lot higher. But alas, I played and I got burned. There’s a wonderful community on Instagram, and I feel like I’m finding my people as I go. I haven’t interacted as much as I would’ve liked this past month, but that’s partly because I had to shift gears when my reach tanked.

Here’s what happened: I was gaining great traction, getting solid engagement and followers, discovering new accounts to connect with… then I got invited to an engagement/follow booster group chat. First mistake: not leaving when I realized what it was. I got mass-followed overnight and gained 200+ new followers. Add that to the post I’d shared earlier, which hit 3.5K views with high engagement… and everything after that has barely hit 100–200 views, where I’d been climbing steadily to 2–3.5K.

That was end of August. Since then, no matter what I post — stories, reels, anything — Instagram isn’t having it. Reach is down, discovery is off, and despite what my account status says, I’m out. So I guess it was a fun run.

I haven’t decided yet what the next strategy for Insta will be. At the time, I had to pivot quickly because I was also publishing my first short story on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, and I’d suddenly lost my main marketing channel.

There’s no clear rule on what gets you shadowbanned. I’ve seen outrageous content from small accounts get massive reach, and verified accounts with high follower counts and perfectly vanilla posts barely getting any engagement.

The takeaway: play and test, but don’t rely on social platforms for traffic or discoverability. They can and will take it away, for any reason or none at all.

I knew the rules and wanted to see where they stretched — something I’d never risk with client accounts. But this time, if I fucked up and got in trouble with the boss, it’d just be a stern talk with myself.

3) KDP: positioning over payout

When the algorithm shut me out, I turned to something I could control: output.

KDP was the big beast to tackle this past month. I published my first short story exactly one month ago and have since released four more. Four shorts (5.5–7K words) and one novelette (16.5K).

The first two took everything out of me. Between trying to become more efficient in my writing and learning the platform — TOCs, keywords, categories, descriptions, front and back matter — plus diving deeper into EPUB formatting, it was a lot.

The Taste of Light

The Touch of Night

The Rise of Fire

The Sapphic Touch

The Moan of Hallows’ Eve

After the first two shorts, I realized I was heading straight for burnout if I kept working the way I was. So instead of pantsing my way through storylines, I started plotting hard — down to the word count per beat.

Once I did that, I could write about 7K in three days, take one day to rest, and another to review and edit.

This new process gave me time to create front and back matter templates that were easy to adapt for each pen name and helped streamline output. I’m getting more efficient and still learning to craft stories that balance plot and heat.

I’m also still refining keywords and descriptions, but I know that will fall into place with more releases and practice.

Everything was going relatively well. I was getting found-ish. I tried a few free book promos and got some downloads — which, according to most advice online, isn’t the way to go since they rarely translate to page reads. I knew that going in after all the research, but I’m apparently a stubborn determined little muffin. So I had to find out on my own. And find out I did.

On the upside, since restarting Play With Me, I’ve gained a lot more confidence in my writing. I can see where it’s improving. I’m still developing my toolbox and experimenting, but in hindsight, I used to feel most comfortable writing around 2K shorts. Expanding that through a series — the four published shorts — gave me a better grasp of character development, plot continuity, and story arc. I can see where the weaknesses are and where to focus next.

Plotting and writing a 16.5K novella in a single file was incredibly satisfying.

Moving forward, I’ve expanded my writing schedule to build in breathing room and allow for life’s mishaps. Because, let’s face it, that was a lot.

I’m proud of the output. These stories helped me understand both my own process and Amazon’s system. The urge to go back and edit all of them is strong, but realistically, I could spend an eternity, and then some, tweaking published work. The smarter move is to take what I’ve learned and apply it to the next round.

And, of course, no experiment would be complete without running into another classic erotica author’s rite of passage — the ‘Zon prison.

4) The Dreaded Amazon Dungeon

Which leads me directly here — the dungeon.

At first, it was all rainbows and butterflies. My covers are suggestive but not overtly sexual. So are my titles. I wanted to be clear in the book descriptions so readers knew what to expect — the kinds of acts and tones they might encounter — but I was perhaps a little too descriptive in both keywords and blurbs. Everything went smoothly for the first four shorts, and even the novella stayed out of trouble for its first two days after publication.

I ran an Excite Spice promo (hence the –$3.00), got orders and downloads… and then crickets. I checked, and sure enough, The Moan of Hallows’ Eve was in the dungeon — undiscoverable unless through direct link.

It was something I knew could happen, but when I saw far more explicit titles still ranking openly on Amazon, I naively figured I’d be safe. I wasn’t.

Then, against all advice (surprise, surprise), I went in and tinkered. Then I waited…

It’s hard to explain how happy I was when it reappeared in search. I’d done it — cracked the code. And then I realized I hadn’t changed the price back after the Excite Spice promo. So I defied the gods and went back in to tinker again. *facepalm*

I shouldn’t have.

Now three of my books were in the dungeon, two of which I hadn’t touched.

The lesson: don’t depend on Instagram, and don’t poke Amazon. I want to keep could keep tinkering, but that would be plain stupid. So I’ll eat the shit sandwich with a smile and move on to the next story.

5) Adding an Ebooks Page Early on Site

After the dungeon episode, I had the sudden realization that I hadn’t bothered creating an eBooks page for the site. That was 7 p.m last night. I threw together a quick, dinky version and worked on it until about 1:30 a.m., finally going to bed feeling like I’d just been nudged into fixing something I’d been putting off for a month… the site itself!

This should go without saying: you need a website that’s pleasant and intuitive to navigate, structured with common sense and the user in mind. And you need to make it easy for readers to find your work if they like what they see.

I’d been focused on writing. After spending over two months building the site, I needed that creative break. So now I have a temporary eBooks page up, and I’m working on a better design to make it easier on the eye and better organized.

Don’t be like me. Don’t put it off.

6) D2D: wide with loss leader

Since early August, I’d had a free story up on Smashwords and Kobo. I wanted to see if it would draw any curious readers to the site. It didn’t. I had about 80 downloads, zero sign-ups, and no website visits I could track. So I delisted it, fixed up the front and back matter, and added it to my own sign-up list.

This was actually something I’d started last month and then completely forgotten about. I was fine with the story being free, but at this stage it was just a loss — not a loss leader.

Because this is brand new (I just finished setting up the new MailerLite automation and website pop-up this past weekend), I have no data yet. But I feel like this might be the one right move I made this month. Yay, me.

7) Literotica: high visibility, zero funnel

Literotica was a great way to test whether there’s a real market for what I write, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of those readers were men. However, I suspect my stories appeal more to women 35 and up, and that’s based on both instinct and the feedback I’ve received online.

I tend to be ‘realistic’ in how I write sexuality: lube is a friend, women aren’t speared by poles the size of a leg, there’s communication, and the clit plays a central role in female pleasure. I don’t write degradation or humiliation. I respect those kinks, but they’re not mine, and I couldn’t write them honestly. In fact, those are things that make me uncomfortable.

Literotica is proof of concept. The site engagement is proof of concept. The KU page reads are proof of concept. Overall, I’m happy.

That said, while Literotica is an invaluable testing ground, I haven’t been able to trace any website visitors back to it — mostly because the link they allow in profiles is marked ‘nofollow’.

Will I keep using it? Absolutely. Will I know its exact value? Beyond validating concepts and storylines, probably not anytime soon.

8) Patreon: too soon

This one is set up, and while I see it working for other creators, I just don’t have the bandwidth to dive in at this stage. I do think Patreon has the potential to become a great tool for connecting with other authors and readers.

Getting soft-banned by Instagram and Amazon taught me a useful lesson: don’t go all in on any single channel. Manage effort, diversify reach, and keep creative energy where it counts.

9) Testing Bluesky

I did, however, create an account on Bluesky. From what I’ve seen and heard, they’re a little more lenient, more accepting of adult content. Ultimately, I do want to keep using social media; it’s where people find community.

For now, I’m dialing things back. I need to sit and rethink my content strategy — how to keep showing up, give back what I receive, and still fly safely under the ban radar.

10) The patience factor

Month 2 is the invisible stage. The numbers look small. Google is surfacing pages. Instagram, when it behaves, can nudge real humans to the site. A small email list is clicking at rates you don’t get later at scale. KU is proving discoverability, when it wants. The system works, just slowly.

What matters to me about these numbers isn’t their size, but what they signal. They point to the kind of foundation I actually want to build: a newsletter list that may only have a dozen names, but every single one opens, reads, and clicks. Stories that don’t just get downloaded, but get read all the way through. A search impression for “flash erotica” that leads one curious stranger here instead of to the usual big names.

That feels aligned with what I wrote earlier — erotica that makes space for care, realism, and consent. If the point of Play With Me is to write from that place, then it makes sense that growth should look different too: slower, built on connection rather than churn.

I’m not chasing a success story. I’m chasing a body of work that holds up on its own terms. Month 2 is the reminder that it doesn’t have to look explosive to be worthwhile. These early signals are enough. They tell me someone’s reading, someone’s staying, someone’s coming back. And that’s worth documenting.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. I’ll see you again mid-November for more shenanigans.

And if you’re an author in this space, I’m curious — what were your biggest hurdles at the start of your journey?

Stay curious. Stay playful. ♥