I think the most important thing Webtoon is doing now is setting a precedent. Even if it goes toxic sometime in the future, it will still have (a) brought webcomics to a level of public consciousness that they haven't seen before, and (b) shown other companies that it can be profitable to do this, and just to invest in indie projects in general. That's a great thing!

I don't understand why that's a problem; don't you have a choice in the matter? Like, if Webtoon came to me and wanted to hire me to work on my series full-time and I didn't want to do that, couldn't I just say no...?

Back in the day with webcomics, your readers were all on desktop, so you had to generally build a site to get anywhere, set up ads on project Wonderful and produce a lot of merch. Then the bubble burst and ads and merch stopped being particularly profitable, and the readerbase all moved to mobile, so these days, unless you can make a mobile site or similar, or even if you can, for visibility being on a site like Tapas or Webtoon is often your best chance at making money from comics. It's still hard work to make money nowadays but in a different way; there are more readers, but you need more readers to make a living (it used to be the case that a few thousand readers could allow you to make a living, now that's nowhere near enough and you'd need tens of thousands).

Ultimately Tapas offers a service, same as places like Youtube, and does have a pretty creator-friendly contract for monetisation. Like any platform, it's best to view it as a business rather than like family, but there's no reason it can't potentially be a friendly and productive business relationship.

I really think their intention is good, (at least from a lot of the company--there's many people that work in a company) but there's gotta be some union at some point of the artists involved. The demand to do so many panels that are 800px wide is...SO MUCH. To do that on top of your own social media, on top of any other work you might also have to do because your pay is only 2K...

Like...It's hard to be super positive when I've seen the expectation of webcomics rise from one page a week (which was a nice side job that a lot of artists had, which generated revenue despite being small) to about the equivalent of 4-5 full color, glossy pages a week in just 10 years. Where does it stop? Until we can't physically work faster?

There's also the problem where we have a very disproportionate pay gap. Most people--even people who look like they're doing really, really well and have 10K+ followers just can't make a living without their Patreons. This is in part because the way we do ad revenue and the way we consume comics has changed but like...it is kind of like a gig economy.

Again, I'm happy for the artists that see fame and are doing well, but like...I feel like a lot of artists are getting swindled with a pipe dream and working their hands to death to fit this very difficult professional bar and that's really hard to see.

It's all well and good that companies like webtoon do these net positive actions and I'm glad you acknowledge that they are still subject to criticism but these positive things are not for the good of the community. They only seem that way because for now their desires and ours are lining up and much like other companies in similarly user-driven industries, the moment our desires aren't the same, they won't hesitate to stab us in the back.

It's true a lot of creators just whine about webtoon with no rhyme or reason because they feel owed some level of success, but the good of webtoon isn't being done for anyone but themselves and usually it's the bare minumum.

They won't all of a sudden stop because we "bully" them or anything, they'll continue to do what makes them money, especially in an emerging and highly profitable market as webcomics currently are. The fact that before this, we never got paid or were given proper acknowledgement by other webcomic platforms, is both a testament to how niche this used to be and evidence that some of them were just shitty, it's not a positive for webtoon. Them "paying" for the services they require to exist doesn't warrant some kind of praise, idk.

I wanted to talk about this, but i will divide in points:

My general view of webcomic hosting places, like webtoons:

The money Webtoons pays.

The future of small webcomic creators is not looking positive.

From a reader standpoint, Webtoons and Tapas (and Hiveworks for that matter) do a great service for bringing so many more comics to the forefront than ever before. When I was younger, TVTropes and Top Web Comics were the only places I could ever find new comics to read and a lot of the results were sketchy. There was also always the threat of comics being dropped at a moment's notice; countless series I loved just sort of stopped updating one day and never came back.

The community-posted work on Tapas/Webtoons obviously still has that issue just like all web media but these sites give creators the tools to tell their stories and gain an audience without some of the very intense hassle that might otherwise be required. Setting up your own site, managing it, marketing and dealing with SEO, paying for hosting, trying to create merch... it's a bunch of work that doesn't have anything to do with the comic directly and I wonder if a lot of comics halted at least partially due to those sorts of factors. At the very least, comics that are abandoned here usually don't disappear due to server hosting expiring, but countless of my old favorites (RIP Kiwis By Beat) have mostly vanished.

The way I think of the income stream from places like WEBTOON is that it's not meant to be a standalone income. (Nor would I recommend that even if it WERE high enough to live off, for reasons I'll detail below.)

I couldn't survive on $2000AUD a month where I live. Even $2000USD would be a stretch. But if you treat it like a single stream flowing into a pool, it becomes far more useful. Patreon would be another stream. Merchandise sales are a stream. Conventions, when they return, are a stream. Commissions are a stream. Hell, teaching comic drawing in an after-school activity centre a couple of days a week is a stream. Combine them all together, and you potentially have a much more reliable income pool.

I say 'reliable' deliberately. It would be awesome to be able to make 100% of your living from a passion project, but eventually that project will end, or the website it's published on will decline in popularity, or the current explosion of interest in webcomics themselves may decline. If all your income is tied up in that one project and the environment it exists in turns sour, there goes a BIG chunk of income. By maintaining diverse income streams, you can weather shocks and changes much easier. And if one thing is certain in the 21st century, it's uncertainty.

I know I sound like a stale old economist, but diversify, diversify, diversify! Build yourself a big ol' safety net in whatever way you can. (And honestly, having that takes away a LOT of stress and anxiety because you worry less about what will happen if your One Big Thing falls apart.)

All that said, I do wish WEBTOON would make the pay cap higher. There are series on that site which must be making it a FORTUNE, and it sucks that the creator only gets a small slice. I don't think there should be a cap at all; just give the creator a fixed percentage regardless of how high the revenue becomes. That's much more fair.

I actually really like Webtoons. For one, it seems like it's easier for people to find my comic even as an indie artist/comic writer. I did no advertising and got lots of engagement on Webtoons.
As opposed to here, hardly anyone sees my comic. Not sure why that is.
Perhaps there are more readers as opposed to artists on webtoons? I've noticed artists really only care about people reading their stuff and not many give the time of day to other artists. So it seems better to get your content out in front of non artists....
It's an artist eat artist world out there...

As much as I do like to rag on Webtoons (and seriously, it does have its own problems, haha), the people behind it seem to really care about their creators for both Canvas and Originals. Webtoon Originals creators seem to be pretty happy, and the social media for Webtoon Canvas regularly interacts with Canvas creators, and recently they've been promoting them a lot more through the banners and the recent event where if you read enough canvas comics you get a lot of coins.

If people are wondering, I think if you were a Webtoon Originals creator your salary raises up depending on how popular your series is, and that 2000USD is kind of just the starting point. You'd probably also get more money through fast pass and other places, like if you managed to put up a Patreon.

I think it's just a lot easier to talk about the weaknesses of the site than the strengths. Happens to other things too.

Webtoons is Webtoons. There isn't much more you can do about it than define it so people understand the nature of the site.

Like Tapas, it is a closed community at the top where the office folk decide what they like and promote. However, their CANVAS side does give budding artists a chance. Lots of people rise up in canvas, but man-many-many never ever ever get a chance. And it's kind of a shame, because sometimes excellent works slip through the cracks, but I'm not in their offices, so maybe they ignore some excellent comics, imo, to let them squander efforts.

Getting IN with the people running the site is difficult.

WEBTOONS has around 120,000 different comic titles in the canvas section!! Think about that. They only let people subscribe to 100 different titles. Chances of getting a large audience dwindle quickly.

You'll almost NEVER get noticed if you don't have a high quality of art. And if you are average, your only other chance of getting audience is to post-post-post-post entertaining stuff a LOT. That way you get a small exposure on the first page of canvas comics submitted, and one-by-one you'll get people subscribing. Hopefully, after a while, you get appreciated by people, linked, passed around, recommended, and eventually noticed by the people in charge.

If you are looking to make money over there, and you aren't getting featured, you have to create enough content to get creator credit and ad credits. Most people aren't up to making the effort to rise into that area. You need to progress, be fresh, keep people enthused, and find a good audience. THEN you can make money, but don't expect to be wealthy--you might make a mediocre income.

The creator credit program shows how many surfaced into the money-making world of Webtoons. There are maybe 300-400 comics making over $100/month. It's about 50 comics making over $800/month. Out of 120,000!!! So do the math: if you are making money of any sort over there, you are really really really lucky/gifted/blessed.

Web comics is a frustrating field. I recommend that if you don't have vision, and you don't have perseverance, your best option is to squarely consider yourself a hobbyist and not expect anything in return. That can be difficult for people that dream of success but don't put in the effort.

I still like Tapas more than Webtoons.

Tapas for the win

If a webcomic platforms like Webtoons/Tapas didn't exist then I wonder how many comics wouldn't exist in the first place? I feel like mine wouldn't since comic hosting websites make it so much easier to post online and where I'm from we don't have traditional comic publishers... like AT ALL...
Self-publishing would be super hard as well, as printing prices are way higher compared to the US and I know most of my readers are in the US so I can't imagine shipping prices. I would never be able to get my comic out there unless it's online.

I currently make an ok amount of money from webtoons + Patreon (Tapas not so much...) but it's nowhere near the living wage where I'm from. It would be nice to make enough to work on my comic/art full time but like... it's just so unrealistic for me, I also never ever want to burn myself out posting too many episodes to get ad revenue/more readers.
I'm currently much happier having a full time graphic design job and working on my comic on the side, it's honestly become my stress relief.