Comic artist, what have you learned by publishing on Tapas?

[MaruExposito]

I'd love to hear from you, however long you¡ve been here!
Also, Senpais, feel free to prove me wrong if you have contradictory experiences

I've been publishing in Tapas for around 2.5 years.
Here's what I got:
- Engage with readers who comment! This is the fun part: to see others react to your stories. You can also learn a lot from them which will help your story.
- Depending on the time of the year, readership will drop naturally and come up again. Winter tends to be good.
- Hiatus, when announced, won't decrease much the readership since Tapas has notification systems for your subscribers. However, some people will leave the platform (for good) or lose interest overall.
- It seems natural that you have much more views in early episodes (especially the very first one). It is a natural filter: People may get interested in your title/thumbnail but then don't get attached to the actual comic.
- Do your own marketing. Don't rely only on tags and people sharing!
- Your content HAS to be good. Every time there was a drop in visuals or story, it showed in analytics. I don't recommend too many extra and guest ages that are unrelated to the main story. Readers want your comic.
- Keep enjoying making comics. It pays! ^-^

Note: Topic inspired by @JackOfArtAndProse

[LT1986]

This is a good forum thread subject for members that have been around for a while. I hope that more people respond, so that I can learn more from them.

I could list a bunch of things like engaging with readers and creators, too, or improving art skills by making banners, participating in contests, etc.

The main thing that I know is that usually if you don't have a story that is part of a popular trend, you better have an incredible story and use all of the marketing techniques to gain a lot of subscribers.

[BobbyjoeX]

what i have learned.... besides the notifications and the generally friendly environment (once ppl are off the site they can get rabid) there are possibly better places to post

[DeformedSunflower]

Use the forum to its limit!
It's always fun to talk to other creators, and whenever you have a question regarding your work, they'll be happy to help you. Sometimes these kind of helpful posts are also uploaded. You'll be surprised at how many tips you can gain from reading them.
There are also creator-centric events here, like the Secret Santa, or drawing challenges.

Basically, the forum is just a treasure chest full of gold.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[danitasibert]

what i learned while being on here for about 4 years, (even thought i still have a problem with it) is being consistent with your comic, engage and talk to your audience and show updates and stuff to keep them interested! :3

plus communicate to others on the forums get some what involved with the community!

[KoreanTacos]

Sometimes letting my audience/or colleagues get too close to me can be more destructive if I'm not careful. Also sometimes it's really not worth trying to appease everyone sometimes if it means having to act like a person I'm not.

[xabelmind]

• Your content HAS to be good. Every time there was a drop in visuals or story, it showed in analytics. I don't recommend too many extra and guest ages that are unrelated to the main story. Readers want your comic.

You've put in words my learning out of the chapter I'm currently in.

I excuse myself, I was really pleased for making friends with symilar interests after a long time, making fanart and guest comics was and continues to be surprising and I was worried about showing some pages that were a bit of a slow moment in the story (which trully shows in the analytics, but I expect this changes with the end of the chapter ), but that's a really good advice.

I'll try to keep it clear in the next chapter and work faster to those slow parts not to seem so long

By my part, I learned:

-This page a bit better than the last one and a bit worse than the next one.

-Leave time to create buffer between chapters works good and your readership will be there when you come back. You can also make a special post to remind them what was going on in the last chapter when you come back, in case they haven't been around in a long time. This is an example, be careful, it has some mature content panels: https://tapas.io/episode/1333684

-But the biggest lesson I needed to learn is how to end a conversation.

Sometimes appears people who wants to chat with you forever, who seems nice but makes you feel attacked, who wants to start an argue with you about your spiritual beliefs/life style/whatever despite you don't give a fuck.

It's cool to learn how to apply a "Well, it's been nice talking to you. Keep being around, I'll post a new page soon... blahblahblah maybe encourage them to show other ways of support the comic, liking, inking, sharing... or read other authors".

Around posting a novel:

-Keep the synopsis clear. We want to keep the magic even in the synopsis, but in huge sites like this, it's better one simple and direct that let's the reader know what's going on and start to read as soon as possible if they're interested.

-Shorter chapters, shorter sentences. It's a common mistake to try to put it all up in one row and write sentences that leave you without air in the lungs when you read'em out loud. "I should put it down and sleep... Just one more sentence/chapter!" can happen not only cause the story is engaging, but also cause it's easy to read and the next pause doesn't seem so far.

-Shorter chapter and shorter sentences are easier to put you to do a correction (cause writting is also correct a lot even after you post it).

That's what comes to my mind now in my... around a year of experience. Great topic!

[awesomefeelsman]

What I've learned from the 2 years of being here is to be more authentic and honest with myself.
Pretending to be someone I'm not was one of the roadblocks I faced a year ago which lead to me going on a hiatus because I had to focuse on some personal life stuff. Eventually when I came back I began started off with fresh ideas and also a new character.
And I'm also thankful the forums exsist. It gets kind of lonely when you're doing art alone, so it's such a good help to be able to converse with like minded and passionate people.