always have a buffer

Never neglect social media. You could have the best webcomic in the world, it doesn't mean a thing if people don't know it doesn't exist.

• Numbers are important but don't grow too attached to them, or you'll just stress more than necessary.

• Organizing yoruself is important.

• Quality over quantity

Yep, have a buffer. You'll need it.
Another big advice, don't expect a big success overnight. No one, well, at least not many people gets 100+ subs and likes in their first week. Making comics and publishing them is a long run that will definitely have its reward, but not at the beginning.
Best of luck!

Some life lessons from your boi:

1. This has already been said, but build up a buffer before you start posting. A good friend of mine said to have atleast a month worth of content to post if you start (granted that you post once a week, or your buffer should be even bigger)
2. Be patient! When I started, It took me forever to get to 10 subs! (Talking about webtoon here which is where I posted first). Don't rush episodes because you want more subs!
3. Promote your comic, but don't spam it everywhere! You will need some promotion or else people won't really know you exist. But I wouldn't spam your comic either. Personally I don't really like it when someone shoves their stuff in my face all the time. So promoting here on the forums or social media is fine but keep it normal!
4. Always be kind to your readers. Don't take them for granted. If they leave a nice comment, reply! Don't burn criticism and the commenter to a crisp!
   There is an exception though, comments that are pure hate or trashing your work do you no good and you can ignore them.

I haven't been on Tapas a year, but I have been making webcomics over a decade, so hopefully I can give some pointers...

Work or Scan at Print Resolution
You might want to print later, so do your art at 300dpi or higher if it's colour or greyscale, and 600dpi or higher if you're working in pure black and white (like screentoned manga). This has the additional benefit that drawing big and sizing down pretty much always looks better, ironing out little wobbles and the like.

Speech bubbles matter:
Neat speech bubbles with good contrast (seriously, if you don't have a good reason to make your speech bubbles anything other than black on white or white on black... just do one of those) that leave space for the text to breathe and are a nice inflated oval shape rather than "default shape tool oval", with nice curved tails that aren't too thick and elegantly point to the speaker's mouth, please. Personally I like to apply a stroke blending mode to a folder of layers of elipses and tails. Pretty quick and efficient.

Use a dang comic font, dangit!
A font that looks like it belongs in a comic rather than a school report or somebody's clip art filled church fete flyer goes a long way towards adding polish. People expect comics to have a handwritten look to the fonts to the point that it feels unfinished and jarring if they don't, like how a book written in something other than a serif font just feels... off.
Did you know that your adobe subscription for Photoshop ALSO gives you access to a bunch of fonts from comicraft AND Blambot!? You're paying through the nose for that sub, might as well, right?
OR if you're not using Adobe, The Handwritten section of Google Fonts3 is a good place to look for free, quality fonts. Try to pick one that matches the feel of your drawings well. If your lines are heavy, choose a heavy font, if it's angular, choose something with crisp edges etc. But never pick anything with curly flourishes or written in cursive. Go for plain and readable above everything else. Look at other comics with similar styles to yours, and think carefully about whether DC style all caps or Marvel style Caps and lowercase fits your comic better (generally wordier comics with a more conversational tone work better with Marvel style. DC style feels quite grand).

Think of the mobile readers!
This is something I had to get the hang of because back in my day, webcomics were read pretty much exclusively on computers. Check what your pages look like on a mobile and that the art still reads clearly and the text is big enough that you're not straining to read it. You may need to look at the size AND spacing of your text. This has the additional benefit of forcing you to rely less on large blocks of text for storytelling.

You're gonna feel like quitting at some point. Maybe soon, maybe a few years from now. It happens, and it's natural.

However, it DOESN'T automatically mean that you SHOULD quit. Having negative feelings about your comic doesn't mean there's something wrong with you or that there's something wrong with your comic. Every parent gets fed up with their kids from time to time; that doesn't mean they disown them right then and there.

When it does happen, take a pause and think about things for a bit. Maybe run back here to the forum for more advice (lots of people do it ^^). Just don't make any rash decisions right away.

Sure. I feel like the trick is to network. On twitter I chat with other webcomic makers and comic fans in general. I post to 4chan's how's your webcomic thread. I post on webcomic discords. I mirror on comifury (and smackjeeves, but smackjeeves is pretty dead). And I post on these forums.

Talk to people. Talk to lots of people.

I can only speak to writing and drawing comics. Some background so you know where I'm coming from:
+ I'm a freelance Artist, currently assisting two comics on Tapas as Line artist and Color renderer.
+ last year I was selected for Incubator and created Swaha within one year and change.
+ I'm also working on client commissions as well.

0/ Be consistent. be persistent. Being consistent in your daily work will eventually outpace ALL the competition. It will outpace the fast, talented, and more skilled. Being persistent will make your keep going long after you think you can't for love of the process.

1/ The Buffer: I've decided to keep track of how long it take me to make a story segment and then I make an upload schedule that's a day or two LONGER than how long it take me to make so I have a buffer-zone to keep up the upload schedule. Also yeah have a month or three worth of episodes before beginning.

2/ This is more specific to those not making a really long ongoing series or a gag-a-day: Know the whole plot you're trying to tell; beginning, middle, and end. No need to know rote detail but knowing the internal Lore and Logic germane to the story is vital to your authority as the author.

3/ if you want a print version, design the comic as pages first and THEN make it into a scrolling version for web and mobile. Trying to format it the other way around is tedious.

4/ You will lose interest. You will get tired. Take care of yourself, only you can make this story that you're making so be good to your mind and body. They're working hard.

5/ Be sure you know what about making comics is important to you ; make it something that's in your control (not stats or money; that's letting external forces dictate your mood) and let that carry your motivation. (For me making stories in the form of comics is important because I enjoy entertaining people through storytelling; it's the process I enjoy not the necessarily the feedback, which I have no control over.)

6/ organize your process so you know what steps you have to take and can calculate how long it take to make. For my next comic I've got this:
About 30-40 episodes ; Each episode approx. 45 panels; Per episode :

Script + Thumbnail : 1 day (work session: 2-4hr)
Pencils/Sketches: 1-2 days
Lines/Inking: 2-3 days
Flats : 2-3 days
render +upload : 2-3 days.
So the cycle is 8 to 12 days (Each ep taking 16 to 48 hours to make). This means I could feasibly do a 45 panel update every two weeks cause I can only work so long on this new comic daily.

7/ You can document your process and share that in social after you upload your final product i.e. An episode. To keep track of what your doing and you can share those steps on Social to give people a peek backstage. People love to see how you make a thing as much if not more than the thing. Get a free streaming software to record your screen.

8/ Have an external hard drive and backup your important files daily.

9/ Respect the audience. As a whole they are smarter than you, and will figure out the plot. This doesn't mean you have a bad plot. Your job is to entertain/tell a story that carries them emotionally, not show off how witty your are as an author. (eg. Everyone knew by the end of Swaha, a character was going to die. They KNEW it, but I dramatized it in a way that made them FEEL it even though they knew it was coming.)

10/ Having an audience is not guaranteed. Focus on mastering your craft and process. Love the process more than the results. Every cause has an effect, so you'll get some kind of feedback regardless; it's just not in your control. Just focus on being the best possible cause, cause that will increase chances of positive effects.

11/ Study and Train in your craft. For me it's Drawing (Anatomy and architecture) and Writing ( Screenplay is useful to comics). Watch and read content that fills your creative well. Live life. Because life is the wellspring of Story, which is but a reflection of it.

1. Like people mentioned before me, Build That Buffer. As much as your subscribers may wish for it, you won't always be able to work on The Thing that you're doing, so always make sure you work ahead and have some content available when you can't work on The Thing for whatever reason.

2. Scheduling is your best friend to keep episodes coming out consistently. Kind of in the same vein as point 1, but you might not always be around a computer to post the latest episode of The Thing on time! Scheduling your work means Tapas will post it for you at a predetermined moment, so that's one less thing for you to worry about!

3. Take a break when you need to. I'm "only" a novelist and stressing over hobbies/extracurricular activities is generally not in my nature, but I have friends who make comics here and are stressed by the workload and feel pressured to keep on satisfying their audience week after week and that's, you know, Pretty Unhealthy Behavior. So if you feel yourself burning out, if you feel a nagging feeling in your hand or wrist or elbow or shoulder, or if school/work/life stuff comes in between you and The Thing you're working on, don't be afraid to announce that you're taking a break. It'll be better for you (and your content) in the long run.

My words of advice from someone who has been doing this for over 5 years:

• Spend some time with your characters. And by that I mean, make sure you know how draw every inch of them before you even begin drawing panels. You should be able to draw their toenails if need be. You should know every birthmark, scar, mole, crooked nostril, etc. before you even begin the comic. Why? It won't do you any good if halfway through the first chapter, your Jane Doe looks like Janice Doe, related but not the same. You can go about this by creating character sheets where you draw the character from every angle a number of times, with their clothing/hairstyles slightly different to explore the possibility of their appearance changing later in the story. This will also help you keep track of scars and the like if you make note of them. Either way, it is important to have the characters' designs established beforehand.

• Have a mood board. What I mean by this is that you should look at photos and images of things you're currently drawing to help you formulate ideas. You can have some photos from the web pulled up on another monitor, color palettes, poses, other references, or so on. As an example, in the first chapter of my comic, it takes place at a beach during sunset, so when I drew the pages, I'd pull up pictures of beaches, boating docks, sunset skies, and rocks/foliage.

Unpolished art will drag you down no matter how good you THINK your writing is. This is a bloated marketplace, so readers have the luxury of letting first impressions dictate their long term decisions. Nobody is intrigued by unpolished art.

As for writing, you will want to write a lot of dialogue. Don’t. Keep it as tight lipped as possible—your natural inclination will be to have a lot of talking, which is an insidious turn off.

Remember your ABCs!
Always Be Cutting!

Last year I made a pretty lengthy post on my Patreon about everything I learned. (It's free to read, no pledging required.)

My second year didn't go nearly as smoothly, due do mental health issues and burnout. So I guess I learned a lesson about how not properly dealing with your personal life problems can negatively impact your creative work. Who knew!

1. Edit liberally: Cut half of your dialogue. If a chapter is only exposition, maybe it shouldn't be there at all and should be slipped in either as an authors note in the page description or as something a character might say or show at another time. If you want your comic to be in color, then do a (very) limited palate. There is no reason to add color if you don't think about contrast first and foremost. If you can simplify a character design without sacrificing aesthetics, do it. If you can simplify a page by drawing less backgrounds but still clearly tell where everything is, do it. Always try to find the best way to tell a page in the least amount of panels.

2. Do a very large buffer before you ever start posting. I was told to do a years worth of buffer once, I ignored that advice until this comic--did a years worth, understood my characters and how to draw them really well after 50 pages or so, knew exactly how long it took to make a page so I could schedule myself once I started posting, and it gave me time to live my life. That year I posted I got overwhelmed with just--life stuff, and used up most of that buffer, yet, I was able to stay consistent and work on other projects although I had a webcomic running the entire time.

3. Be consistent. My opinion is (super my opinion, btw) Whatever your upload schedule is, plan your updates to take about 2x the time it takes you to make a page. So if it takes you an entire week to make a single page--then don't upload every week. Do 2x a month. You decide your own schedule, not other people who might upload every day. You will get sick. You will need to do other work. Life happens.

4. Read what other people are doing, watch how they promote, learn from them, but don't compare yourself to them in a negative, self-depricating way. You are running a marathon, and this won't be the only comic you'll ever do. If it isn't picking up success right away, it's pretty discouraging and it's OK to be sad, but it's something that is normal. It might never pick up for this particular series--and your first several comics probably won't, why would they? No one knows who you are, and you're new to this. And that's OK. You don't have to have the same pace and skill as the professional marathoners yet. And, you may not realize this, but a lot of webcomic artists have colorists and inkers and editors even that they've hired to help them finish everything in time. You are one person. That's OK. Every project you do will be better managed than the last, just try and finish each marathon you start. A finished webcomic is a rare thing and an incredible feat.

5. make a pipeline: Make a pipeline of how you finish a page and follow that pipeline. Once you know your process and can stick to it every page, then you can streamline your process to finish pages much faster.

MAKE A BUFFER. I have spent too many months not uploading content and missing out on viewership because I didn't know how to organize myself.
Back up your files. Outline your entire story, or at least 5 chapters in advance.
Always keep in mind ways to market your comic. Be ready to change designs and plot points for the sake of a better story. Don't be afraid to change the style of your comic.
Don't spend to much time on the numbers. I check mine regularly but I don't put much importance into them.

• 4 updates worth of buffer. (assuming you wanna upload once a week, or twice a month)
• Plan your middle and ending before you draw anything.
• First impressions matter, and your first impression is: Thumbnail > Title (mayyybe summery if they could be bothered?) > Episode 1 (art, then hook) so make it the best you can!
• Unless you're making a short story that'll be over in like less than a year, don't be afraid or ashamed of cutting corners (ex: you know you're so good at shading, but it takes too long to get done so you shade more simple or don't shade at all. And quite frankly, you don't need to prove to anyone what you're good at.) You have a story to tell. Sometimes sacrifices just have to be made to meet deadlines and see the end of it in your own lifetime ; (
• Your audience is more forgiving than you think they are.
• Setup your Patreon asap (you can pause charging your Patrons anytime you like, so no need to stress over the commitment!)
• Organize. Your. Files.
• Setup your inking pen to the lowest pressure you can. Thank me later.
• Not every single panel needs a background. Blurry backgrounds are good too.
• Never post anything in the Romance/Drama/Comedy/SOL genre in Webtoons unless you wanna compete with a single creator dominating the top ranks all year round lol XD (half joking. But really, it'll be an uphill battle if all you want is some attention to your work-- unless you're extremely lucky and get noticed early on!) See if your work can fit into the less popular genres instead. You'll have a better chance to get noticed this way.
• Networking/Small Discord communities of similar interests can keep you motivated : >
• Stretch and stay hydrated please.

• Develop the entire story from beginning to end and write it down, makes it easier to plan ahead
• Working on 3-4 pages at once actually speeds up the process
• Don't post your comic online until you have enough pages you're comfortable you can take a vacation inbetween and have enough free time to work on more pages.