Comic page Uploading/Schedule

[Zak]

Hi, Im new here.
Ive decided to finally upload my comic soon that I have been working on and have also decided to have it be a page weekly uploads. My question to everyone is do you think I should upload chapter covers and the first page of said chapters on the same week? (same time or otherwise) or should that sort of thing be saved for the week after?
I don't want to kill the mood of people looking forward to content by just being bummed that its something along the lines of a cover art or anything.

Any opinions or experiences that people may have as Im sure everyone is more knowledgable than me would be very appretiated.

Thanks!

[nostalgicroxas]

Just some threads that will help you.

I upload on Sundays, simply because it's what clicks best with my work schedule. Since I pretty much always have either no buffer or very little, I structure my uploads this way so that I can do the less time-consuming stages during the week after work (pencils/inks) and then sit down and pour more time into the coloring and special effects/etc on the weekend. I'm interested in trying out some different days for season 2 though especially since I'm planning to draw most or all o…

To add onto that, I think there's something else to take into consideration: The number of chapters will be different with different upload schedules. Like the series that I update bi-weekly will gain 8-10 chapters a month (and 4-5 chapters for the weekly one) depending on how often the weekday rolls around while the stories that I upload daily will get 30-31 new chapters each month. So even if there was only one person reading it, there'd be a difference of at least 20 views between daily and…

I think the number of views depends on your uploading schedule too. If you upload once every month, you get less traffic than if you upload steadily once a week or once every 1.5 week. I started posting here on tapas some months ago and at first I think it's nice to publish often in order to win the loyalty of some reader base. Once you reach a number of subs/likes/views that seems a bit more consistent, you can slow down the uploading.

My schedule's real real loose: So firstly I work a full time job Mon-Fri, so everything's organized around that. I generally try to spend at least a little while most days after work working on my comic or side projects (~1-2 hours) but there are days where I don't feel like it and either just veg on video games or hang out with friends instead. My goals are usually getting up to or through the inking for the week's comic page(s) by Friday evening though. Then unless I have something going …

Personally, I'd release the shorter paged stories at once, but maybe split a longer story into 2-3 episodes labeled "story title - PART 1" or something. That way you can keep your uploading amount consistent so readers (at least on webtoons) don't bug you to make all updates that long. And it'll help space out your comic over a longer period, which tends to lead to more visibility in the long run. (Which, numbers aren't everything - but i assume if you're sharing it you want people to read it,…

Single pages. Tapas is a bite size snack to share with others. Plus, it helps your audience break up the monotony of scrolling down an entire page. If you want to upload multiple pages at once, you can probably release them in chapters, uploading multiple pages via scheduling.

[Buurd]

From a reader viewpoint I would be pretty bummed about waiting a week and only getting a cover tbh.
To space your uploads out more (aka more visibility in the new/fresh sections) you could maybe release the cover for a chapter midway through the week instead?

[Zak]

Thanks! Ill look into those links!

[nostalgicroxas]

They're all very recent threads with a lot of differing opinions on the kind of stuff you were asking about

[Zak]

So say, if I upload a page on a Sunday, I just upload the cover a couple days before hand like say on a Thursday? And then go from there that way then?

[Rhonder]

I have little personal experience with this (as so far I've only worked on 1 arc/season, so only a single cover so far) but I wound up posting the cover by itself the first day, and then the first real episode the following day (which was the day of the week I intended to make my usual upload day).

As a reader, I think it depends what the big picture upload schedule is like. For example, if a chapter ended and then the next one was going to start immediately afterwards, while I wouldn't necessarily mind just a chapter cover, I would appreciate there being a page or two as well.

However some authors will like, post a chapter and then take a break working on the next one and begin posting it a while later (let's say a month or more later). In that case, I do kind of like when an author comes back and leads the new chapter/season with a standalone cover, kind of as a promotion of sorts to get everyone's attention again, and then dives into the new chapter afterwards, the following week or whatever.

Posting a one or a few day ahead like I did is a middle of the road option and works too!

Overall, neither choice will have too big of an impact, so don't stress the decision too much ^^ A few weeks afterward, no matter how you do it, your current readers wont mind either way and any readers who are catching up/binging it wont affect. Maybe look to some webcomics you like for inspiration and how they do it

[Zak]

Ill defidently take that into consideration. Ive been researching ALOT about this and kinda want to make a good first impression if that makes sense? I just want to make sure Im not betraying anyone if for some reason somebody out there actually likes the stories I draw up.

So Ill defidently have a long think about what you said. Thanks!

[Rhonder]

Wanting to make a good first impression definitely makes sense xD Somewhat off topic but on that note- one thing that I would recommend that's (in my opinion) more important than where your first cover lands in relation to the other first pages (I realized my past post was more for like chapter 2 and beyond lmao) is:

If you're going to be doing a page-a-week type schedule, consider having the first episode be a little longer to lead things off~ Doing a page a week if a very sustainable schedule type for a lot of people who don't have a lot of time to dedicate to comics (like I say, that's my schedule as well xD) BUT that can be kinda slow when you're first first starting out. While grabbing people's attention/interest in only a page or 2 is a good skill to work on, a lot of stories take at least a few pages to really get going. I can't speak for your comic in particular but just think: if people were to read just the first page by itself would they subscribe to it? Or might they be more likely to after getting through page 5 or 6? Finding a good place to leave off on a hook for the first episode can leave a big impact and nice first impression, potentially

Just to use my comic as an example, I didn't feel like just the first page alone would be very likely to draw people in, so I decided to go with a larger 7 page episode (essentially the whole first scene) as my first update to give people a little substance to dig into. Then I dropped down to 1-2 page updates immediately afterwards. Definitely not necessary, but just more food for thought xD

This was that first update of mine that I settled on for reference: Page 2 or 3 might have been an okay stopping point, but I felt it was better to just do the whole lava cave scene in 1 go >: D

TreasureHUNT!! :: P1-7 | Tapas

[Zak]

I think I get at what you're getting at, I have a Train infiltration scene thats 3 pages in and goes for 14 pages for the first chapter. (Not to spoil too much of it lol). But would you think the best thing to do would be just for my first chapter, have the the cover, and then have those 3 pages, and then upload the page by page week for that particular scene?

Tell me if Im misunderstanding your intention or not lol

[Rhonder]

Yes exactly~ Like whatever page starts the infiltration sounds like a good hook point. So whether that's page 3 or 4, getting to that mini-cliffhanger sounds like it would be an enticing start :> Hypothetically people will want to know what happens next once they get to the train

[Zak]

Do you think an upload all in one day then start the next week will be too much? Or do you think it should be spaced out a bit more?

Sorry for asking too many questions. ^^'

[Rhonder]

No worries, questions are good! ^^

There are kind of two approaches to take if you go this route, keeping in mind how the fresh section on Tapas works (that is to say, a comic can only appear in fresh once per day, regardless of how many times you post. So it's rarely advantageous to post multiple times a day):

1.) You could post all of the pages at once (1-3 or 4, that is). The goal of this is if you're worrying like I did about leaving the strongest first impression possible, that people that see your new series the first day/week click on it and have a few pages worth of content to digest up front and hopefully get them interested enough to subscribe. The only real benefit to this is like... literally day 1 (or week 1, to an extent) because starting week 2 you'll have another page for new readers to look at, and week 3 another page, and so on. Soon new readers will get to read a whole chapter to decide their opinion~ So just like the cover thing, it doesn't matter too much in the long run... just upfront.

2.) An alternate strategy would be to have a week of uploads either every day or every other day. So like:

Cover: monday
Page 1: Tuesday
Page 2: wednesday
Page 3: thursday
Page 4: friday
Page 5: Saturday -and then start your weekly schedule or whatever)
Page 6: Saturday
Page 7: Saturday
etc.

The benefit to this is playing to Tapas' Trending and Popular sections: the algorithm's aren't completely transparent but in general you get onto the Trending list by having a burst of activity (views/subs/comments/likes) over a short time, and popular if you manage to have pretty good activity over a longer period of time. Regardless of if you just have a cover the first day, or 1 page up the 2nd day, posting several times in a single week like this is generally the best way to get a lot of activity. And that activity can potentially get you to popular for a short time, and being there is the best way to try and get new eyes on your stuff xD

Like to illustrate, regardless of what the actual numbers of views are, most people's activity log who do a weekly series will look something like this:

Where you have a spike of activity on your upload day (because you hit the fresh list where new people can more easily find your comic) and then have drop off the rest of the week when either people who are already subbed but don't read on release day will come to your comic, or like occasionally people will find you through the search bar, or on the forums, or wev.

Buuuut if you post several days in a single week you can get high views each of those days because you keep popping up on fresh. Of course, it's not sustainable for most people to do rapid fire uploads like this unless they either do the whole comic up front and then post like that afterwards, or decide to do it as a special occasion for promotional reasons (which is what starting your comic this way would be like).

---

it's again, hard to say which way is better overall though, or if they're even roughly equal. And still, either way it wont matter too much in the long run~