Do promotion threads actually work?

[ueonts]

I spam my comic in these every day and end up not looking at no ones comic in earnest, and this makes me wonder, doesn't everyone else do the same?

Are these promotion threads actually effective in gaining an audience or does everyone just dump their stuff into a pile that never gets read?

[catluckey]

It goes both ways as you mentioned. It's on the persons heart and intent. I come to these threads when I'm ready to share mines and sub someone else's. It works!

[HGohwell]

No.

Not that promotion threads where you spam constantly, sub4sub actively hurts your comic and most of the older forum members have the promotions category muted because of people spamming constantly. We've made threads on how sub4sub hurts you and how to move effectivelypromote, but no one wants to listen because it's easier to just spam your link everywhere and get cheapt fake grwowth with sub4sub.

[KevinReijnders]

I find that they do work, but have a very limited effect. I also don't post in them each and every day, but in intervals (usually when I updated my work)

[darthmongoose]

When trying to promote a comic or novel, you have to think about what you're trying to achieve. What you want: People who will read your work, generating views consistently, and ideally likes and comments too. What you should pay for this: Ideally the only thing you should offer in return is more updates.
The problem is, a lot of people get sort of disconnected from this and overly focused on just the number of subs, feeling very desperate to raise the number to 100 and then 250 subs at any cost even if it's empty and doesn't represent actual engagement that would make unlocking monetisation useful. Having ad revenue unlocked is pointless if your stuff doesn't generate any views.

The best way to use forum promo threads is to post just sparingly, in ones that have a theme, like a specific genre, works with a specific trope, or in ones where you post an excerpt or sample (like "post your best page!", "Post your funniest joke!" "Post your favourite conversation!" sorts of things. Even just "post your latest page!" can be good). Do just one or two a day, rather than a lot at once; people are on the forums at different times, and you want lots of different people to see your promo for the best chance of somebody seeing it and going, "ooh! I like the look of that!"

The worst way to use them is to spam post just your link on twenty of them all in one go, because instead of a bunch of different people seeing your promo, that just means a few people will see your promo twenty times and also think you look desperate and annoying. Threads where you just post a link aren't great, because nobody visits them out of just interest, pretty much everyone is also there to drop their link and go. You can actually check how effective a thread is, by scrolling through and looking at the link boxes. If they've been clicked, there'll be a little grey circle with a number on the box, saying how many people have clicked it. A lot of "Promote because why not lol!" type threads, have a scroll through and you'll find the only person who gets clicks is maybe the OP. If most of the links posted haven't even been clicked, just don't bother.

Sub-for-sub will make your number go up but...

It just makes the sub number go up, without providing you with the hidden numbers you actually need for sustainable growth: Likes (to get seen in the rankings), Views (to generate revenue), Comments (for trending and building a community around your comic that helps reader retention) while saddling you with something to gum up your reader inbox forever.
And yeah, sub-for-subbers will always say things like "Well. It helped me find people who would read my stuff and make friends" to which I will just say... if your series is any good, or you have anything interesting to say, I guarantee you can do that by literally just posting in any thread. Any. Thread. You could make a thread called "What do your characters eat for breakfast and why?" and probably get readers. You could make a thread about "If your series was a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would it be?" and get readers (I'm hungry... I should get breakfast). If you make a series that can't pick up any readers like this, it's not a problem that will go away if you cheese your way up to 100 subs; people won't suddenly start thinking it looks good (nobody can even see your sub count unless they already clicked on it), so the best thing a person can do if they're struggling is to get advice on how to fix it.

[Aeneas1]

They certainly have worked for me. I managed to accrue 160 subs in two years. That said, I do use Facebook as well for promoting my work and I am trying to design a new cover for it so that more and more people can get invested in Nixvir. True, it's a slow process, but I believe in taking things slow. As a famous author once said, "You want fame you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog."

[moontokkym]

I see a couple of people say "it worked for me, I got 100+ subs in x years" but I agree with @darthmongoose here, sub4sub is absolutely a trap... I can count the amount of promotion threads I've posted on forum on one hand, never posted on a sub4sub thread. I'm at 249 subs in less than a year, many of which are active subs coming back every week for the new page. I've become aware that this is a much larger result than you can expect for doing sub4sub with much less effort. Other people I've seen have success like Kate have also been avoiding sub4sub like the plague.

Granted I was lucky, not everyone gets this even with a good comic, but the most forum traffic I've gotten is actually from threads where I've asked for advice and done my best to apply it (still have to go back to fix those pesky mid-chapter speech bubbles that are too small...).

What's worked wonders for me outside of the forum is:

• doing my best to improve my writing skills

• Working hard on my comic's summary and cover so that people are interested in the story before even opening the first page

• Working to make every page worth a look, be it through an important story beat, new information, art improvement, etc...

• Doing Tapas-run promotions rather than forum threads. I honestly believe that submitting my banner to the tapas banner competition back in December allowed me to get on the tapas team's radar and they've put me on the community tab promotions a couple of times since and that really boosted me. I also know that they wouldn't have done that even if I got on their radar if I hadn't done all of the above.

Also people say "it's easier to get subs once you have subs"... That's true, but only with a certain kind of sub. Basically if I have let's say 80 out of my 249 subs that actually read the pages when they come out, they're more active, they're more likely to talk to their friends about the comic, basically promoting you for you. In theory the more subs you have the more active subs there's likely to be and more organic growth you'll get from word of mouth. Not only is word of mouth generally more effective than self promotion, once you get a large number of people who like your stuff who could talk about it to anyone at anytime, you will just start gaining subs effortlessly.

However with sub4sub you're getting the numbers but very few people are going to actually read nevermind like your comic enough to recommend it to friends. Everything I just mentionned has a very slim chance of happening, so it's very unlikely to kickstart organic growth.

[clarissapattern]

thank you for taking the time for writing such an informative post. Although gotta admit I like the sound of your random sandwich posts and am now wondering what my characters would be

[Aeneas1]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[darthmongoose]

I see a couple of people say "it worked for me, I got 100+ subs in x years" but I agree with @darthmongoose here, sub4sub is absolutely a trap... I can count the amount of promotion threads I've posted on forum on one hand, never posted on a sub4sub thread. I'm at 249 subs in less than a year, many of which are active subs coming back every week for the new page. I've become aware that this is a much larger result than you can expect for doing sub4sub with much less effort. Other people I've seen have success like Kate have also been avoiding sub4sub like the plague.

Yeah. In response to "I used sub-for-sub and got 100 subs in a year" or something, I'm just like.... okay, I didn't use sub-for-sub and got 250 in about 6 months, then I got featured and so hit 500 within in my first year of posting."
I have over 2900 subs now. Can you imagine if to get that I'd needed to subscribe to 2900 people's comics or novels!? On top of making all those pages!? AAAAGH! I don't want to spend my time spamming links, I want to spend it making comics or having interesting conversations about them with other people who like to discuss comics!

People actually reading is so much more important than just an empty number going up. Focus on the people, not on the number. Fifty readers who always like your pages will cause your comic to grow so much faster than 100 empty subs, because fifty likes every update will reliably get you into the popular rankings in your genre (or at least the free-to-read rankings if you're in a really popular category like BL). It can be hard, because it's so easy to see everyone's numbers and to feel like you come up short, or like the progress bar on the Tapas dashboard is mocking you, but it's the key to long-term success; care about your comic and its effectiveness at entertaining people, not about sub count.

Quite a lot of people with much bigger sub counts than me are jealous of my comments section, because it's so lively and the readers are so engaged with the characters and lore; that's the sort of thing a sub count doesn't get across, but somebody who knows what to look for knows that it means a series has staying power and the sort of readers who will buy merch, make donations etc. You can't cheat that; you only get it through pouring love and passion into your comic.

[KevinReijnders]

I wanna add that I avoid "sub4sub" like the plague. I'm not interested in the numbers game. Sub to my work if you like it, if you don't I prefer you just don't sub.

[allisoncandraw]

They've worked pretty well for me, I promote for every update and give a mini spiel about the new episode.

[Kuma]

I actually see a difference of views in the weeks I post in the forums and weeks I don't do it. Plus from time to time I get a new subscriber from posting.

[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I don't make sub-4-sub offers, nor do pay them much attention. I'm not trying to get a lot of subscriber numbers. I'd much rather have some readers who will leave some comments. But I don't get those, either. "Laugh with me."

[VividRunning]

I agree with that, but it's at least helpful to build a following so that your series will be more widely recognized by people who actually intend on reading your series.
But yes, sub4sub isn't exactly my favorite type. I want people to subscribe if they want to subscribe, and not just because it's going to give them something back.

[Headypigeon4180]

I joined in February and i'm at 209 subs right now. When I dive into promotion threads it's because i'm looking for comics that are active to read. I only really put my own comic in those threads if A I'm already subbed to the original poster and left 15+comments or B it's a really old thread so I just put myself in there for a bit of brand recognition. There's also C, which are my own promotion threads where I ask people to drop their comics so I can read and leave comments.

My comics average 27 likes per upload after 63 chapters. I have over 1300 comments. Chapter 1 has over 100 likes, this is because I didn't sub for sub, but made a real effort to engage with others as opposed asking you to you sub to me. If you notice even in my promotion threads. I don't ask people to sub to me, the only time I have ever asked someone to sub is if they're already a reader or they were subbed to me on another site.

Sub for sub is whack, tell people about your work by all means, but don't ask people to sub to you, you'll just get inactive subs and your readership will collapse.

[SugarCookie95]

Well I have actually found some of my favorite comics and stories on here through the promotion thread. I won't sub if I don't like the story, but yeah, I think they work. I don't really do the whole sub4sub thing, but I just hope to get more readers and try to stay under the small promotion links so my link doesn't get lost in the thousands

[Harajuku]

eh, promo threads are a response to a problem tapas caused, and honestly? the threads are a bit overwhelming, so it no Suprise people don't often know where to start.
it's almost better to post a promo outside of this forum in the forum's heyday, posting and discussion would be be enough to promote your work. and personally, I think the "posting one of your pages" threads provide the snippet of a comic and i get a better grasp of what the comic is about, and i use those threads to look for something i might be interested in.
though, IM just saying tapas inc. having a separate fresh section (and i mean in bold letters, so y' cant miss it!) of the main page can at least solve some of the visibility issues users have.

[2DLenzy]

I'm very new to this promoting thing as well, but I feel anyone has a chance, outside of sub4sub. I actually go on some threads and start to notice certain creators names enough to get me curious about their work. I honestly think putting your name out there is part of the trick, like networking (anxious cringe). And maybe teasing your comic with a panel or cropped image vs the link, though I include it sometimes.

Yes, the threads get oversaturated to the point where no one wants to read them (lol, me), but I think there is a strategy to posting your avatar/name all over the place (and proof of your worth = comic/novel). It just may not be as effective as say, leaving honest feedback on others' work (and reading their work while working on your own uses up your resources and time, especially if you're a bit slow/methodical or busy with real life, so it's no wonder no one has any made progress/milestones other than posting episodes (with no feedback/comments.)

I'm willing to try it out though, and try to take notes on what other amateurs are trying in the commune (not an insult, I'm an amateur still, and proudly so)

Promo threads are not a perfect place to begin, but maybe a place to start seeing who would fit in your circle and engage with them. Give them what you'd want in return, if it works.

(As far as avoiding promo threads, the only other strat I'm trying to engage in is trying other platforms (ComicFury, Webtoons). Gonna search for others as well, but I don't want to stretch myself too thin just yet!

[SpookyLocker]

my promotion thread is really special with people constantly posting new cool creations to share! everyday I'm addicted to go read new comics and novels!