I was reading a few posts about publishing and marketing erotica novels on this subreddit. I'm going to write a couple of hypothetical questions and an answer that summarize my understanding of what I've read so far:

"Where do I publish a taboo erotica short story or novel and how do I promote it?" "Amazon might ban your content, so you should publish on Smashwords. You can also make a few posts on social networks to promote your work. Once you've built an audience, you can create your own website and make a newsletter."

Let's section the answer in three parts, as if it was a guide: 1. Self-publish your work 2. Make posts on social networks 3. Build a website and make a newsletter for your audience

Now... How do you build an audience with these three steps? To me, the "building an audience" part seems completely missing. Or am I doing something wrong? Let me tell you my one-year-lasting experience:

1. I've self-published two fanfictions, an original novel and a short story. I've been using platforms like Amazon, Smashwords, AO3, Wattpad, and more.
2. I wrote/created special contents to post on my new social pages. I've created an author page and a book page on the following websites: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr.
3. I've never got to build a website or make a newsletter because my audience was inexistent.

Now, the obvious answer could be: you wrote a terrible book and that's why you haven't built an audience. But, plot twist, I couldn't build an audience because nobody has seen my posts nor my books among the billions available on the internet. The results of my self-publishing experience were a couple of hundreds views on my fanfictions and 5/10 likes on my social network posts. The analytics shows my posts haven't been seen by more than a hundred of people and the links to my books have been clicked a couple of times on each post.

What's your secret, erotica writers? What kind of magic spells do you use to make people find your 0 views/sales stories and novels? Please, tell me!

EDIT: Thank you for all of your advice! To everyone who stumbles upon this post, I'd suggest to read through all of the replies as each one of them were giving out really important tips to get discovered and fix your work. I'm sure you'll find your solution down here.