Question is in the title. So, it is no secret that once a creator reaches a certain milestone in their series, they become very focused on it. The forums becomes less of a promotional tool, and more of a leisure. So, for the veterans of this forum, based on what you have seen overtime, at what milestone (in terms of followers/subs/viewership), is this most likely to affect a creator. Just a genuine curiosity.
Sep '21
Sep '21
I think there's a few factors at play here, the first of which you described in the OP. But I genuinely don't think this is an issue of 'popularity.' Rather, it comes with just having been around for a while. I'm not a big creator, but I'm doing okay so far, so I'll speak from my own experience.
No need for promotion.
Once your series starts gaining momentum, promoting on a forum isn't really necessary. That said, this only means a creator who is doing well doesn't need the 'Promotions' section, of the forum and will probably mute it. That's what I did a while back. (Not that I promoted excessively, anyway.) But that alone doesn't mean I don't find the rest of the forum valuable.
Finding other communities.
My activity here on the forums didn't really start to dip until I found myself spending more and more time on Discord. I have a number of friends there now. I know their faces and their voices. And, because there's a finite amount of time in the day, I find myself sending my social time on Discord rather than here. That's the biggest reason, for me at least.
It has nothing to do with having an audience, though. Many of the creators I count as good friends have a smaller readership than I do, yet they've found themselves on Discord more and more as well.
Same topic, different author.
This is the other big one. After having been here for around nine months now, I'm definitely starting to notice that certain topics come up again and again. Having chimed in a few times in the past, there's just not much point is re-stating what I've already said for a third, a fourth, or a fifth time. So I don't respond, and those discussions carry on without me. This is becoming more and more common, to the point where I check in some days and there's nothing for me to actually say.
This would also be true regardless of whether my comic was doing well or not.
So, I don't really have an answer to your question specifically, as I don't think there's a particular 'popularity milestone' a creator reaches which causes them to engage here less. Rather, I think it's probably a question of time. For me, around nine months is when I noticed my activity here begin to taper off. I still check the forums frequently, but I engage far less, because I've already given my input on most of the topics which appear.
Thank you for sharing your experience, and in-depth opinion. I still am curious though about actual numbers here. More from a statistical standpoint, rather than multiple other factors, and heavy reasoning. I think it could give some people (the ones that create comics with strong ambitions and goals) a good idea on realising their achievements they have made.
If anyone else has some idea, even just a guess (or even conspiracy theory xD), then please comment!
Frankly, I don't think a lot of people keep track of this to have a strong answer.
Maybe when someone becomes featured, there's that chance. And maybe when someone has over 500 or 1000 readers, there's that chance. Overall, a lot of the promo threads are focused on the milestones: 25 readers, 100 readers, and 250 readers.
Arguably, you could say people who have reached those thresholds no longer stay around.
But...that's not true either.
A lot of people want to come back and contribute to the community. Just because you've become popular doesn't mean you stop helping others reach their goals all of a sudden. I'm well passed the thresholds, as our other regulars on here, but I still like to stop by and check on peeps when I can.
@Kaydreamer made a valid point -- it's mostly time and experience that deals the blow. Granted, popularity can be a part of that, but you have to consider several factors:
They may be popular on another site, and so focus on that site.
What's popular for someone else might not be popular to you. Someone might leave after 250 readers while another may leave after 125 readers or 500 readers.
The forums make up a small proportion of users - let alone creators - on the actual site. I don't think it even covers 1/10 of the users who visit. So even if you got a number, I dunno how accurate it would be.
Some people leave not because of popularity but because they just didn't get anything out of the forums.
If you want statistics, it would've been better to create a poll and see how many active users are still here and what their reader amount is. Then, you could probably get an answer. I dunno how true it would be, but it would be an idea.
That is an awesome comment and answers my question thoroughly, thank you 
. I do definitely understand there are various factors and reasons for this. I do still keep in mind of @Kaydreamer 's reasonings. My girlfriend is an economics major, so this kind of question and info has piqued my interest lately xD.
Just a bit of a digression , I actually found it kind of comical when you mentioned "another" site. It's like, aye, we know what that site is, but seeing that you are a mod, I figure that would be like the taboo of saying "Voldemort" in Harry Potter xD.
That's really not an appropriate example. Nor is it funny. Maybe a better one would be that it's like someone in Harry Potter saying Lord Voldemort?
As to your original question, it's not solely a numbers or popularity thing. At the risk of sounding redundant, there's no way of knowing what you define as popular or if those 'popular' creators are around, but simply chose to keep to themselves and not interact with the same old, same old.
Thank you for your suggestion. That is definitely a much better comparison, I shall change it to that. Sometimes my dark humour (no pun intend, oh god I'm digging my grave) gets the best of me.
Just to clarify -- I just meant another site in general. That could be Webtoons, ComicFury, Dillyhub, Webcomicsapp, or maybe their own site. 
A lot of people just branch out, and when they see results on another place, regardless of whether the site itself is popular, they just pay more attention to those results.
There's also another less fun side to it - some users do get side-eyed for being popular and participating anyway, even though the measure for popular (above 500, or sometimes even less) is actually very little compared to the actual amount for the series promotion to run on its own (3k or above). Even without direct harassment, if it feels like people ignore you because you're "sucessful" when you're just sharing exactly what helped, why bother when you can go to a place with more friends.
I think its a lot of things. By the time I realized Tapas had a forum I was already doing my comics full time. Before this I was on the smackjeeves forum on and off for years. And before that I've been on forums since I was 12 years old and have always ALWAYS been on forums (one forum I've been active on for almost 15 years!)
I don't pop in often here for several reasons and a lot of them have already been mentioned. This seems like a big Promo forum and I do NOT promo on here period. Even threads that are about something and then say "feel free to promo" kinda spur me off wanting to post. It does make it feel like even non-promo specific threads are promo threads.
There is a LOT of repetition in the forum as there would be in any comics-specific chat but it's a little extra intense here. I try to contribute little bits of what my experience has been if I feel like I can be helpful or offer a different perspective on an advice question. But I've essentially answered the same handful of questions over and over. In a way, I don't mind because it helps refresh these lessons for myself and I've noticed some of my opinions change over time and I think that's what the forum format is good for.
Discord is kind of a big one. I do not like it as much as forums in general but it's a bit easier to have conversations there that aren't just "How do I get more subs?" I've been in a few more professional-leaning discords with other full time folks and the conversations and problems are just a little bit more on par with the stuff I have to deal with at this point in time so my involvement in them is a bit higher.
TIME. I spend less time on forums and discords in general because I have a lot more deadlines to meet both self-imposed and otherwise.
ALSO THIS. One of the main reasons I don't share my links here all the time (when I do because its relevant to the thread and I'm using my links as the example), I try to delete them in a days time. I have made friends here and have found some really neat work though so I'm not just going to completely discount the forum even if I don't necessarily feel wanted. I'll just post less and be more secretive.
Even before I became a mod I still frequented the forums (since 2016!). I guess because I have the patience to sift through all the "newbie" threads to find ones with discussions of interest to me. I never felt side-eyed for the number of subs I have, and I never felt unwelcomed … but maybe that's because I didn't care and was perhaps oblivious to anything?
Over the years the only real change in my behavior really was not answering basic questions. I've already answered my share of those years ago and I'm a bit jaded. But thankfully there are plenty of helpful folks that still hang around here to take care of those topics!
I finished my comic and barely use the forums since they're a shell of their former self. I think big creators don't use the forum for other reasons lol maybe they respect their anonymity. I've seen fairly big creators chewed up and chased off the forums for the dumbest of stuff over the years.
Also like you can have numbers on one site and just not gaining traction here. Like I got under 100 subs here, but over 3K on Webtoon so like...which stats would even be the stats your looking at for this question?
So like every forum has ebbs and flow of activity. When it's in an ebb it's cuz nothing huge has happened, so there's not as many new topics, not as many oldtime visitors to make interesting topics that go with the flow of the forum--but once something wild happens, they'll be back. Like when Tapas got a new layout for their webpage, allllllll the old guard came out to talk about it, forums were hopping. But now that it's a calm...not much to say.
Also...from what I've heard the whole point of the forums has changed somewhat. There were a lot of disputes here to kind of guide the future of tapas, or bring up urgent complaints about things like contracts and ad revenue--like, serious business stuff. and lately, it's pivoted more of like a promo/how-to chill forum for beginners. So like...if you aren't beginner anymore you'll see your activity lesson even if you don't have many followers.
Because smaller and newer creators mostly use the forums to promote, I can see that being a main issue a more popular to veteran creator having little to no interest in the current state of the forums.
On the other hand, I have seen some creators use the forums to just brag about how popular they are. I notice that these people don't last long because a) no one cares or b) once they plateau they freaked out and no one here was going to give them the magic solution to fix it.
I really slowed down posting here after I got my 5th yacht.
I suspect maybe others are also getting too many yachts as well.
Honestly, I only recently came back after a few months away and it really feels like there's not a lot of point to the forums other than promotion these days. I don't want to shame anyone, if that's the point of the forums now, sure, that's fine. Purpose changes, we just have to be honest about it. And just looking at my current front page, it's promo, collab, show off your art (which in itself could be considered roundabout promotion depending on your view) and games.
That doesn't really scream useful for long term or more established creators. Annoying as the consistent Why Is BL and Romance Is Trash type discussions were, at least they could lead to some interesting discussions on the genres and why they are the way they are and what could make them popular. At least they were discussions about our craft (when they didn't devolve into name calling and yelling) and you don't see much of that anymore.
Plus yeah, it's not so common anymore but there were times when being popular meant your comic was sorta seen as the enemy. There was a sentiment of Tapas wasn't helping the little guys enough and this was the big popular comic's fault, that all premium comics were heartless and copies of each other chasing a trend for money and their artists didn't care about art or story, just being popular. Would you want to stay on a forum with that kind of attitude if you were a creator growing in popularity?
