I'm considering writing a web serial like John McCrae's Worm. There are two advantages I perceive in this: 1. Getting immediate feedback about my writing and what sort of attention it draws. 2. Developing writing experience without taking risks. I am not going to sink huge amounts of time into writing and publishing a novel on the off-chance that it will be the one that succeeds. That's a sucker's game if one ever existed. Of course I will use Wordpress, unless there's a better site I haven't heard about. Is this a reasonable strategy? I can always try publishing traditionally if I manage to make a name for myself. But McCrae is a lone success story, and I have no way of gauging how much attention a web serial should get (most of them listed here are terrible, so it's hard to draw conclusions).
I am planning on doing the same. The only risks I can see are theft and reuse of your work. To me it presents a ready made portfolio for any publishers if you decide to traditionally publish at a later date. I'll be watching this thread with interest.
I posted my first novel as a WIP on LiveJournal for about a year. I don't know that it made any different in publisher acceptance (because I did mention in my query that it had a small but loyal following online), but the critiques and feedback I got on the first draft absolutely made editing it to a second, submittable draft much easier. It was like having a whole bunch of betas in real time, and it worked fantastic for me.
I share chunks of my second (sequel) WIP on my blog, but they are very rough and are refined as I go. Though I would not post an entire work of such a large scale to the masses. A short here or there sure. I have shared a complete short on another site with a subforums for that type of story. Though I am using my profile page to advertise my first novel, and my blog in addition too. Granted the theme for such a place is more Adult in nature, on cannot pass up an opportunity for free advertising.
I think it’s a good idea, provided you can attract readers to your site. Publicity is what determines whether you are successful or not.