I don't care if you have published your stories before. At another site, I had published (made available) 12 or my 14 books and I had about 740 readers. I enjoyed it, but I did not make one cent and never received any constructive criticism, which I really wanted.
As for building your following, if you do not mind, I will paste here a comment I made for another author I liked, who asked how he should go about it. It may not all be relevant, but if any of it sparks off an idea or two, it will be worth it.
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Obviously you would like to contact people who are interested in the kind of stories you write. That is fairly easy to achieve.
For instance, if you categorise your novel as being a fantasy story, then right click on the tag 'fantasy' and click on 'open in new tag'. Voila! you now have a page (or many pages) of posts made that used that category. Look through the authors and find a few whose writing you like.
In each one, make an interesting comment about the story, adding into it by insinuation that you also write similar kinds of stories. If you tell them you write, often they will ignore you. But if, for instance, you say, "the way you handled the meeting of Delilah with that alien Sampson, was brilliant; if I had written of that meeting, it would not have occurred to me that I should have him throw up all over her because of tasting a date, and thus having her fall in love with him because of some weird alien chemical in his green vomit." Okay, that was fun to write, but I hope it illustrates what I am trying to suggest? Make them feel curious so that they check out your blog (home page). Also, resteem a few good posts from them, so that they resteem some of yours.
If you have chosen authors with a decent following, their readers will also become curious and check your posts - hey, it is how I ended up here.
Please keep in mind that you could have 20,000 followers and have no readers. Most who follow, do so in the hope you will follow them, not because they ever intend visiting your posts. It is better to have a few hundred real followers. Also, I might be wrong, but if I see someone has 500 followers, but only follows 30, I skip following them. It is a fairly good indication that they will not be interested in reciprocating...
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Just so that I am clear about what I am hoping for: I do not want you, or anyone else to read my posts. I am not posting them for anyone to read (this applies to my stories, posts about videos, music, my 'Enjoy & Learn' series, my rare poems, I do not mind anyone reading. My stories are here only for me and the future).