Do Tapas Numbers do Anything?

[Calculus_Homework]

Asking all you veteran tapas creators who've been here a while. (Even if you've been here a short while, feel free to chime in!)

I know it's not great to hang onto metrics too much, but simultaneously it's something to keep in mind, right? To know that you're doing well to some capacity? I dunno! I'm a little lost at times with what I need to do and how to gain readers who wanna actually read and stick with it. I appreciate those who do, but it's a number far fewer than the sum I see on my account, of course (I think that goes for everybody tbh!)

In terms of motivation, what do you pay attention to most nowadays--the likes or views on individual episodes? What do either of those metrics tell you personally and how does it make you feel?
If you were to leave tapas, do you feel like the readership you've gained here will follow you to other sites in search of your comic or other works?

[Aeneas1]

Both likes AND views. I believe that views are instrumental because they provide you with some kind of assurance that you’re doing alright. However there is a danger against valuing yourself too much by them.

[CarltonIsaac]

The higher the views and likes, and the interactions/comments get your comic to find a spot in 'trending' to attract more readers.

More views also generates the likelihood of more ads being seen in your comic and you get ad revenue.

[moontokkym]

Hello, been here just over a year now with my webcomic!

Generally in terms of what's going to get you seen more is probably having a substancial backlog of chapters and having a couple of people read through the entire thing while liking. That's happened to me a couple of times and I post page-a-week so when two kind souls read through all my pages and liked every one it boosted my comic a lot. I get that it can be frustrating to hear "you need to have people reading to get people reading" but it does only take a couple of people coming across your work by chance once you've built up some story to help you

Subs alone does basically nothing from what I can tell, if they don't read through and like/comment it's more or less an empty number, so stuff like sub 4 sub is usually pointless if it's just subbing and not reading.

In terms of motivation I try to be as detached from the numbers as possible. My motivation comes from being able to tell the story I want to tell, to get to draw the scenes I've been itching to draw for years. That's something I can control and I know that when I don't want to do that anymore it's time to move on to something else. Motivation can come and go but I've never not wanted to tell this story so it's a nice constant in my life I can always count on to keep me going. So yeah the numbers on tapas don't really factor into my motivation, but this is a learned behaviour that I had to teach myself for my mental health.

The one thing that does boost my motivation a lot though is having insightful comments. I'm lucky enough to have 2 regular commenters and a handful of semi-regular commenters who are always a joy to hear from. Not having those comments won't hurt me but having them is a definite boon to working hard on the little things.

One of those commenters actually followed me from Wattpad so despite my better judgement I feel a few people would follow me onto other platforms if it were convenient for them, but it would be nowhere near the current numbers on tapas. I'm just glad to have anyone reading you know?

[Calculus_Homework]

Ahh, okay. I wasn't sure where the ad revenue comes from directly, but that makes sense now!

[Calculus_Homework]

Yes! I definitely feel the same about being able to work on the project overall--it's just something I gotta do. lol

I really appreciate any comments I get. And some of them are getting more prying about the story, so that's fun to see.
I almost to the point where I'm totally detached from the numbers. But it's an almost. Gotta keep working on that I guess.

My worries come from many years of "unsuccessful social media." So I think looking at the positives like you're talking about may be the best thing to do.