A theory on Line Webtoon

[PervertOldMan]

Sounds totally normal to me.

It's normal for you to get around 1000-2000 subs a day when you are on featured sections, when they take you down, you come back to your normal pace.

Genres' top 6 to 30 dont actually give you many view/sub, not many readers open that list to check it out, even if they do, it's a small chance that they will tap on your comic. What valuable is top 5, which can give you 500-1000subs a day, since there's a top 5 list appear on the front page and everytime you finish reading an random comic episode.

About the reader interaction, most of the readers only read and go, it's like that everywhere, even here on tapas, if 100 subs can give you 5 comments and 20 likes, you can thanks god for it already.

WT audience's size can be seen by how much money they're throwing out for pledge program, that program is mainly for advertisment, yes, but do you really think they're giving it out totally for free ? No, they are getting money back from that huge traffic of wt discover itself.

[NanettesClouds]

No, they are getting money back from that huge traffic of wt discover itself.

How are the turning that traffic into money though? They don't run advertisements on the site do they? Otherwise they're selling users information, which, okay that's just a fact of life nowadays, but they spend a lot of money, can selling user data really pay those bills? (I know that Naever also has money coming in from its other platforms that it's putting towards webtoons, but again, why are they putting money into something that's not generating much back?)

[beta1042]

I see ads on Mobile, so that's my guess.

[ghostmaya]

Yeah I Dunno why they comment with nice comment then delete it after many months

[scythe]

A lot of theories being bounced around in here, with not much to back them up.

I've had this happen to me a bunch of times, but never which such incredible results, so well done for having such an engaging comic OP.

When you get a spot at the bottom of the homepage, you actually come up at the bottom of comic episodes in the app, featured and discover, which explains the insane number of new views and subs. But I don't think you should expect these subs to be as engaged in the future as the ones who found your comic more organically. In fact, a decent number of them will unsub now that the tap's turned off.

It's plausible that some editor at Line just likes your comic and was able to slot it in to whatever theme they were going with at the time. It looks like it's cats this week. Maybe if they see you've gained enough new subs they take you off, or maybe they were going to take you off anyway, I don't think there's a way we can know how that process works as it doesn't appear to be regular.

As for how Line Wetbtoon makes it's money, this isn't a secret, and it's nothing shady. It's a subsidiary of the monolithic Naver corporation, and LW is just one of a few platforms it's investing in. They've openly stated that their goal is to tap into the US market and build a large database of users there. Clearly, they see webcomics as a way to do that, and if you can't figure out how Naver might be able to make money from building a large database of (comparatively rich) US users, then you're probably just not using your imagination.

[scythe]

YouTube doesn't make a profit. Ditto Twitter. The only conclusion to draw is that like many other companies before them, they're playing a long game with hopes of future dividends, even if they wind up coming from tangential sources.

[abn5x]

hey there idk what happened but suddenly i got 300+ subs and still growing right now, even got to first page on Action genre Populrity, but for gods sake i cant find where on the page I'm being featured, or is it all from being in the first sort by popularity page? :shrug:

[PervertOldMan]

You are on WT mobile app > For You > Brand New World collection.

[abn5x]

oooh, didnt saw that, thankyou very much 🏻

[lunchtiiime12]

Thanks guys, appreciate all the feedback. Certainly is interesting.

[UrMom]

Pff I had a similar experience a while back. My comic made it on the Discover front page thing until I reached 6k subs, then got booted off. Although right after it was booted the comic hemorrhaged almost 1k subs, so I got 5200 or so now which goes down by about 50 when I update. Of that number updates get 130-200 likes and 6-20 comments depending on if I'm promoting something. (readers really hate when you promote stuff)

I don't think any fancy stuff is going on, even on here comics with hundreds of thousands of subs get a fraction of that interacting with their work. My comic has around 1200 subs here, but updates get 50-70 likes and 2-10 comments, which is admittedly a little better but still not a whole lot compared to the sub count.
It might also depend on the community as well. The majority of Webtoons' reader base consists of kids/teens, while Tapas has an older audience given the site's 17+ age rating.

All sites probably have some bot activity but a lot of them are either lurkers or people who've subbed to read the comic later. I do the latter sometimes if a comic looks interesting but I don't have the time to read it right away. Webtoons staff probably thought you comic had some potential, and wanted to test it out. If a comic gets mega popular right away (like double digit thousands) I think they're more likely to keep it on the front page longer... at least from what I've seen.
It took my comic 2-3... maybe 4? months to get to 6k, and got some low ratings from the community during that time, so I can see why they'd drop it as soon as it was eligible for monetization.

[akiocha]

I may actually agree with you on the theory of if you get popular fast, they're more likely to continue supporting you. I keep a really close eye out on the discover page recommendations after I got featured there and I found that the comics that did well very quickly stayed for longer.

[UrMom]

It makes sense. Throwing different comics out there to see what sticks, then discontinuing support for ones that don't work out. I remember some of the comics that went up on the front page with mine stayed looong after it was taken down, but those comics had twice the subs and higher ratings. Some of the same comics that stuck also made their way on the Recommended Titles list under the Discover tab.

[soapcahtoa]

I don't think Webtoon is scheming... Naver is a mega rich company investing its wealth into a platform that has skyrocketed in Asia. They don't need profit right now, they're still trying to grow into something that will dominate. Massive audience is because they've been advertising everywhere for the past several years, reader engagement has always been a tiny, tiny fraction of views, drop in engagement is due to the mobile discover interface change, and you might get sudden sparks of readership because they select random comics to promote without notification. And the longer you are on front page, the less effective it becomes because most readers will have already seen your comic.

TLDR everything u guys r saying just seems pretty normal to me

[Hecarim]

I absolutely agree with this! I'm one of those readers who rarely EVER leave a comment, mostly because I have nothing to contribute/shy/bad at wording compliments. I try my best to leave a like on the episode, but I often forget because the like button is so small and forgettable.

I've noticed that there's a trend with people adding "Don't forget to like the episode!" to their comment, which is lovely, but supports the idea that people just forget to like the episode/ can't be bothered to.

After observing my own stats, I've noticed that even the silent readers like me would leave a comment if there is something that "directly" addresses them, or prompts them to speak out. I asked people to submit questions for a Q&A for my comic recently, and the comments went from ~200ish in previous story updates to 1,400- on an update with only one panel- which is why I support the theory that the majority of readers are "silent", and that it's totally normal.

The next update I did answering the Q&A asked people to leave a donut emoji in the comments if they would be interested in a part 2! I think I got a lot of comments again because it gives the readers some influence and something to comment even if they didn't have anything to say.

And what I got was:

1. A lot of donuts
2. A generous amount of comments saying "I never comment, but here I am [insert donut emoji]"

Apologies if I went completely off topic/rambled! I just thought this was interesting, and I haven't had my coffee yet..

[Zugaikotsu]

I have to say that this donut idea was a genius move! may I copy you?

[Hecarim]

Ayy be my guest! It would make a cute trend XD

[Zugaikotsu]

Yaaayy! \o/ Loved it! xD

[scythe]

Yep, I've had the same experience. Back when you could get into the Patreon program with 7k subs, I got promoted until I was at nearly 8k, then when I was removed I lost about 300 in a week, which slowly dripped away back down to about 7.1k. But even after the loss it was still great for me at the time because it meant I was getting $200 a month!

It just happened to me again just recently and now I'm closing in on 8.8k and a couple of weeks later it looks like it's stabilising at around 8.75k, which is only a loss of about 50, which is great compared to last time.

But even though I've just experienced a spike of 1500 new subs, my new updates aren't getting any more engagement than they were before, so I think people need to temper their expectations on that front, like others have pointed out, a whole lot of views and subs doesn't necessarily mean you'll get an equivalent number of likes and comments. Those two things in particular depend much more on the content itself.

[NanettesClouds]

takes off tinfoil hat

I may have been a bit reactionary.
I still don't like webtoons very much but for reasons that are completely separate from this discussion.