Does anyone make a living at this?

[WillowTree]

Hello!

Trust me, I'm 100% aware that it's almost impossible to actually make a living at any of this. That's why I work full time and I'm going back to school (I start on Monday!) I was just curious if there is anyone here who is able to do this (write/draw/both) as their full time job?

I already know that on Tapas, the big money doesn't come until you reach 250 subscribers and people can start donating ink to you. (I have a total of $0.02 from two days of ad revenue )

[Crusoe]

I don't actually think people are making a living of of tapas alone. Most have a patreon, post on different platforms such a webtoon as well and sell merch! I think a lot of freelancing artists combine things to make their art viable, such as starting a YouTube channel for their art, doing commissions and or adopts, etc.

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

I hope at some point to get there. but it will probably be through regular publishing or self publishing

I don't think tapas will generatie the same income as my own job

[WillowTree]

Yeah I know diversifying income is super important when it comes to this kind of work. Also, what are adopts?

@WolfUnderTheMoon89 I can't imagine my own work ever generating as much as my current full time work either. It'd be really nice if it could just generate enough to where I could cool off a little more on how many hours I'm stuck at work though!

[SignedA]

Especially since when you look closely, publishing houses, too, are not satisfied with the mere sale of a book to make a profit.

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

yes. well, I had this discussion with my husband and only when it generates the same amount. I will drop of work which will be a long shot.
good thing I have plots for 11 books rn

I work 40h+ a week atm (Im a manager) and have kids

my Hope is that after publishing around 10 books it'll be enough

[HGohwell]

So idk the going rate on Tapas, but from what I know of Webtoons, when they start paying you as an original/featured creator it's somewhere around $2000 a month, which in my country at least, is the rough equivalent to a full time job a the legal minimum wage. So, you can make a living off of that.

[Crusoe]

Definitely! There's a lot of hours publishing writers spend on promotion!

[WillowTree]

I was working about 50, my husband just took a new job though that pays him about 18% more than he was making before with 100% paid insurance so now I refuse to work overtime at my place. Preferably, I'd like to be down around 25-30 hours a week with school starting up for me again, but that's not likely to happen.

Oof. I couldn't imagine having kids, plus working so much, and finding time to write.

Hahaha @HGohwell $2000 a month is more than what I make now from mine I currently make 10/hr so I would be ecstatic to be offered that much. I'm an author though, not an artist so I wonder how different that pay is for featured/original creators

[Crusoe]

Adopts are designed characters put on sale. So basically you pay an artist for a design they made and get to use it when you buy it.

[WillowTree]

Oh cool! I didn't realize that was thing artists did!

[suyaa3838]

My comic's my full-time gig as an indie creator (as in, not as a premium creator who gets paid by a specific platform). I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to talk about how much more there is to it than the writing and drawing part, and how unlikely it is to ever even get to that point haha.

That being said, if anyone's got specific questions about the whole thing, feel free to throw 'em at me.

[joannekwan]

I'm pretty sure LordVincent and Amanduur are supporting themselves solely from their comic work. They really grind it out though, and are always either producing comic work OR exclusives for their Patreons.

[HGohwell]

I did I rough break down over on another thread that went a little something like this (someone else provided the $2000 for Webtoons figure, I just went with them):

$2000 = 20 days = 4x 5 day weeks = $100 a day = at my country's legal min wage 10 hour work day at at 50 hour work week = 1 page/6 panels per day to reach their minim panel count per weekly update.

And yeah as @joannekwan says you can see from that it's an absolute slog, the weekly updates are huge and it is a full time job.

[WillowTree]

I follow Amanduur's work on Webtoon! Her Plain Boy & Prince series is hysterical

@LannaEXP How long did it take you to be able to support yourself full time?

I feel like I should mention I haven't even been here a month yet, so I'm honest to God not expecting to be able to earn anything substantial for a couple years.

[pilot-obvious]

I don't know if I'm in the minority with this opinion but I actually don't want to make a living at this! I feel like making my comic is an escape for me and trying to make it into a full time living would cause me to fall out of love with my work.

That being said, I would maybe consider monetizing to get a little extra side income as long as my marketing efforts are minimal. It just sounds like a lot of upkeep with posting on all these different platforms. But if anybody does it, I would love to hear their experiences!

[WillowTree]

I've definitely heard people who want their hobby to strictly stay a hobby

[suyaa3838]

@LannaEXP How long did it take you to be able to support yourself full time?

Hard to say. Spent my entire life building up to it, so I'll put it into a very rough timeline instead:

I'm 27 now and have been posting creative projects/making actual content ever since I was about 16, with varying degrees of success. (I'd already been writing and designing characters since age 6~7 or so.) Dabbled in a ton of different things and eventually became a full-time creator 2 years ago.

For comic work specifically, I started posting my first one in late 2015 and managed to gather an audience, but had to take a break from it starting 2017 (after which I did completely unrelated creative stuff out of necessity) and only returned to it (via a complete remake) in October of last year. It's been going well but focusing on it full-time is a risky move on my end based on nothing but my belief that I'm onto something good. (If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's how to analyze my own failures, so I'm pretty confident on this one - still, stability is...something else lol)

I think my main takeaway from my own experience is that you'll always want multiple income sources and just keep getting to know people - I earn pretty much nothing on the platform here itself, but you never know who'll become a patron and/or die-hard fan who commissions you to draw your own characters haha.

[WolfUnderTheMoon89]

I did hear from other self published writers that after 5 to 10 books you can start to sustain a bit.
But that's mostly talking about series. because the promotion part gets easier as for series. people trickle on. and it's a small snowballs effect that happens.

[WillowTree]

So I'm posting my second novel as weekly updates 1. to try and push people towards patreon and 2. to see the difference in subscriber gains compared to my daily posting of the first novel.

Even just with these two out, I've noticed it much easier to gain subscribers on the second novel. They're not related in the slightest and the second novel only has 2 parts out. Those 2 parts have pulled in 24 subscribers so I think there's definitely some truth to the more books you have out the easier it is to sustain.