Drop in new subs?

[joannekwan]

Honestly I'm thinking of leaving the comic game.
Aside from maybe the occasional passion project or commissioned project where I get paid upfront, I'm beginning to focus on novels as my creative outlet. If I'm not going to make a living, I can at least try and tell as many stories as I can before I die, and comics are just too slow a medium for that.

[Azifri]

I'm a small creator and my stats have actually gone up a bit ^^ Still, could be coincidence.

[carloswebcomic]

I'm pretty shit at making comics but I'm even worse at everything else, so it's comics or nothing for me.

I'm considering leaving Tapas and Webtoons and keep the comic going in a scaled down format on Pixiv and my Patreon only.

At least I know that a sizeable portion of my Patreon supports this idea.

[zccoffee]

I see Sarota Springs in popular right now ^^

It is "Horror" top, but you are visible in "all genres" too. Congratulations btw!

Unfortunately, some comics (mostly nsfw, but not only) don't show in many categories after update. It looks like some weird restrictions.

[joannekwan]

Hm, I don't see it under All > Popular. But I guess showing up in horror is fine (and at the very bottom of trending currently).

To tell the truth, I never look at what shows up in individual genres. I have an unhealthy mindset that it's all or nothing. So I try not to get wrapped up in the numbers and ignore the home page entirely.

[zccoffee]

I mean: you have not technical restrictions here
PS: Please sorry for my short and illiterate posts, I can't speak English very well.

[joannekwan]

Yes, but I'm pretty sure Tapas is aware of the bugs of series not being visible and are working on them. So I still think it's early to jump to conclusions, especially when things are still being ironed out.

If you have a specific series you know isn't showing up, it doesn't hurt to e-mail staff at feedback@tapas.io or make a thread here to ping Yoon.

[craftymarten]

I've had a massive drop in subs and views since Feb, I've had no new subs in the past week.
Sometimes this just happens though, it's disheartening but I just have to hope it gets better soon.

[Random_Guy]

I haven't noticed a drop in new subs or anything, in fact this has been one of my best months for subscribers, although I am relatively new.

Sometimes there are just slow months, in fact sometimes you can pinpoint which months are usually slow and compensate for them.

It should also be noted that plenty of people have decided to leave Tapas after the update.

[zccoffee]

@Yoon Why some comics isn't showing up in "Popular", "Trending Chart" etc?

[byelacey]

I think it's too early to tell, to be completely honest.

I also think the site update doesn't affect most of the readership on tapas. These forums are accessible only to desktop users (or mobile users who for some reason read on the desktop version of the website in a browser on their phone) so of course if you get most of your readers from the forums, you're going to find the update to the site affecting your stats.

My actual comic website has mobile vs desktop analytics and just over 50% of my readerbase on there reads on mobile despite the website not being optimized for mobile use. I'm assuming where tapas has a whole mobile app, my mobile readership on here is much higher. The redesign wouldn't have bothered anyone reading on mobile, therefore most of my readership isn't bothered.

As for a drop in stats, I find every once in a while I have a low week, it happened in mid-February and it happened last week as well. Most of that I attribute to my comic not hitting the trending category, because as soon as it gets high on trending, the new subs pour in. Here are my stats from last month with the highest sub day highlighted, and the three update days I've had this month. As you can see, I got more subs on yesterday's update than I did in on any one day in February, while March 3's update trended much lower than average (which admittedly made me go "oh no it's over" lol).

This got really rambly I'm sorry, the tl;dr is: it's too early to tell, and most of your readership probably has no idea the website changed anyway.

[byelacey]

I've noticed that free to read comics no longer require that "update within 24hrs" threshold to show up on popular (I saw mine on there on the weekend, days after I updated) so as long as the popular free-to-read comics don't drop off after 24hrs of no update, other comics that aren't as consistently pulling in new subscribers/views aren't going to get the chance to show up.

[zccoffee]

Well, it doesn't seem like that. Because many comics with 50, 70 even 100+k subscribers are not visible anymore. It's more like sort of shadow ban for some series.

[byelacey]

Maybe we just misunderstand what constitutes popular in that section. It could be a percentage of daily growth or something, rather than a straight comparison of numbers?

[zccoffee]

I think comics with 100-140k subs, high activity and regular updates would have been there anyway.

[cosmosbadger]

I agree it's way too early to tell if this is the new site or not, but throwing mine in for the sake of more data!

For the past month my comic was finally hitting 500-1000 views a day and then this week sudden plummet, which was kind of disheartening :')

edit: obviously march 6th was last update day, updating weekly

[BobbyjoeX]

when it comes to subs... this looks normal (wtf was going on in May tho?)

as for views... this is still very normal

(im well aware of the drop since october, november is when i went on hiatus and its been sparatic uploads since)

[cosmosbadger]

Realised I linked views, but subs follow the same trend.

[yukunka]

I've noticed that free to read comics no longer require that "update within 24hrs" threshold to show up on popular (I saw mine on there on the weekend, days after I updated) so as long as the popular free-to-read comics don't drop off after 24hrs of no update, other comics that aren't as consistently pulling in new subscribers/views aren't going to get the chance to show up.

I noticed that too, which is a pity considering the concept of fair chances, because ghosted comics are a big chunk of what’s displaying rn. But this doesn’t fully make sense, if you scroll until the last popular there are comics who don’t have enough engagement or regular updates to make it onto popular. I’m talking about comics of 100 subs vs 46k of @zccoffee ’s. I’m comparing the past model where comics with less subs/engagement will go towards trending and comics with a lot of subs will stay in popular for 24hrs. If the 24hr timeframe doesn’t exist anymore, those 100 sub comics (with no engagement) are kinda weirdly placed in popular in my opinion. So I think that’s what @zccoffee meant. As an avid observer of charts, i can say their comic was always on top popular, so not to be here rn doesn’t make sense, when comics with similar sub count display well. In fact, many NSFW ones like ENOKAN do not appear for one sec in popular, only trending. (when previously being always on top)

My comic was usually crawling somewhere in desktop's popular when I updated, but being NSFW and all, I’m noticing a trend of why it’s not appearing, even below those with 100 subs on popular.

I’m happy for lesser known comics having exposure, but i’d rather see the NSFW team in popular too, because now it’s been completely purged (yes, even those with 50k - 100k)

Additionally I hope the browsing limitations of charts is temporary. in the past I could go so many pages back to browse, or scroll for 10,15 minutes. Bruh now it ends in like, 2 min. SAD.

[seru]

Hmm...

I don't see any drastic change in views or subs. And I've never been promoted by Ta/pas.

For context, the spike is when I upload a new page.