I can't help with increasing readership on Wattpad or getting people to comment, but I can tell you that you can design your own book covers for free at Canva.com. They have features that cost $1, but I design my Twitter posts on there using only free features.
My sister sometimes designs covers for free for me, but the problem is she doesn't have much time, so if I can do it myself, it would save a lot of time. :)
My experience at Wattpad vary. A couple of my stories collected about 40 reads each, and then they stopped accumulating them, but my translation of the Russian classic Scarlet Sails has over 1.3K reads, and the number keeps growing. The same about my regency romance - it's already over 400 reads, and I don't do anything about it. I don't know what contributes to the numbers. Maybe it's the fact that some genres are more popular than others. Maybe it's that I posted the romance by installments, unlike the short stories I posted all in one session.
As for the covers - I love making them myself. The problem is to select the right image. When you have an image, it's easy. I do all my image manipulations in paint.net. It's a free software I downloaded, very simple, and it only has basic capabilities, but it does the job.
As for the covers - I love making them myself. The problem is to select the right image. When you have an image, it's easy. I do all my image manipulations in paint.net. It's a free software I downloaded, very simple, and it only has basic capabilities, but it does the job.