Just been thinking a lot about the future of my comic project. And I'm sure some creators are out there thinking the same... Sooo, if you're wondering what to do and why do it, I found a nice list of alternative platforms to host your project. Personally, I think I'll take the individual website route and make my own soon.
Really tired of comic platforms taking advantage of the communities they claim to cultivate. Tired of these sites putting themselves first and prioritizing their content over ours. Tired of the double standard with rules of what I can and can't do with my own work. Tired of being amongst the many overshadowed creators by the corporate comic farms that can pump out meaningless content each week and override algorithms. Really tired of tailoring my work to an online/mobile template. And I hate censorship of art in general. 
Though I won’t be making the move from Tapas for a while (will need to set things up properly first), I thought I might spread some resources around for others who are thinking of doing the same who are really feeling bogged down by sites like Webtoons and Tapas.
By the way, this is basically your insurance as a webcomic creator. Keep in mind that Tapas is a business, and businesses fail. The way they’ve been driving their focus and the decisions they’ve been making in recent years just goes to show how soon they may end up crashing and burning themselves to then collect and start over with a new platform elsewhere. With that, all of our stuff goes down with it. It doesn’t matter how long a site like Tapas has been running—their repeated bad decisions can break it at any tim, and with that comes more restrictions to us creators. The fact that they’re desperately putting their content and ads first, to make a buck off of a click goes to show you that maybe things aren’t going too well. (Or at least, this site isn't who they were when it first started out, and that tends to repel individuals from the site no matter how long they’ve been with Tapas. This trickles down, and can eventually disintegrate the community and, by extension, their platform.) So, make sure you have a solid backup plan that doesn’t involve Tapas (could be having your stuff on various other hosts, your own comic site, public blog, etc.)
Tapas makes money off of us—it’s not much, considering how much they make per individual, but put all us individuals together and they get a heap under them. Successful creators on Tapas hardly make anything through this platform and its restrictions to financial gain—that’s why creators use things like Patreon and Ko-fi to make more substantial funds for their work. A creator's success is not solely due to this site either. Sure, the initial boost on a popular site like Tapas is great exposure, but that fades away quickly, and your projects just get pushed aside after a while. I think it wise to set up elsewhere if you wish to go far with your comic and have certain future goals for it. Especially people who are trying to make their living off of their work. (Those who don’t care about monetary gain to help progress their work or finance their livelihood, you’re fine with doing whatever. This post is for people who really need support for their projects and plan to go long-term with it.)
Readers will come to you wherever you are to read a good story. It takes more effort to put yourself out there on your own, but at least you can do things your way as an artist. I think that staying true to who you are as an artist is far more important than the number of likes produced via an imbalanced algorithm on your work you had to fit into a template.
Here’s the resource list I found (Same as previous link above.) I do not take credit for putting it together! Check out the person’s blog for more related helpful stuff. Their list under Full Web Hosts is the one in particular that I thought were the best options for artists.
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If anyone has anything to add or has any helpful advice, please share! Even if you’d just like to share your thoughts or experiences on this subject, feel free to do so. Would love to hear it.
If there’s one thing I’ve gotten out of being here on Tapas, it would have to be the creator community. You guys have been dope. Seriously. The encouragement and support has been invaluable to me. And just seeing people be kind to each other in such a way is very motivating. I will certainly miss the forums. But it’ll be a while before I actually leave, so I can cry about that later. xD
