About three years into making my current series is when I got into the triple digits. I update every Friday and currently in the process of working on chapter 05. I have about 188 episodes so far lined up and I started my series in 2018. I dont really advertise my series in the forums too often, seems like a waste of time, so i mostly stick to Twitter, and since im consistant on updates people usually tend to find my work on their own

I just recently started posting my work on Webtoon. Only have 1 episode so far but I'm pretty overwhelmed that it got me over a hundred subs in just a few days of posting.

Here's what I did. I carefully observed several outlets I can promote to for months when I was still working on my buffers. I made sure to check that the groups/subreddits I scouted have a lot of people WITH constant engagements, and not just empty promotional hubs with 0 activities. Additionally, I also started building my Instagram through fanarts.

Then, in the moment of truth, I banked hard on eye-catching art and posted some of my most impressive panels to get attention. Out of all of the places I posted it on initially, I lucked out on 2 facebook groups where it blew up unexpectedly. Managed to snag 110 subs and 700+ views in a span of 3 days that way.

Only thing that scares me shitless is the pressure it placed on my next episode lol.

I gave you a sub to add a little bit more push on your goal. You can try searching for tapas groups on facebook and promote them the same way I did with my webtoon. I feel like it's one of the fastest ways to get more genuine subs from my experience. I've also got like 1 or 2 subs through hashtags on instagram so maybe you can also try that as well.

I've come to realize that promoting your work is actually half the battle in this field. Writing is hard. Art can be tedious. But social media can be very overwhelming if you're not active on it

In any case, rooting for you man! You can do it!

i have 10 on tapas. so. i dunno.
but i have almost 500 on webtoon. i did nothing, it just took off randomly one week. no idea why. its died down alot tho.

I guess what I did do is work really hard on the comic,
I tried to make the comics package on theme, and in a genre that was recognizable and popular so people know what they're getting. It's an isekai, with sexy fanservice-y ladies.
I worked hard on the comic cover and thumbnail, poring over similar examples that were popular on tapas and webtoon, and trying to hit that vibe.
And I took alot of time to come up with my blurb, I want it to be short and punchy, so it immediately peaks your interest.

as for tricking people into reading with marketing or somthing. I dunno. Im not sure there are any tricks, other than just paying for ads on various sites maybe.

well I haven't reached 100 but my series has grown a lot since I started uploading again a couple weeks ago, at least what I did was have a consistent schedule and episodes that get the reader desperate to know more lol, and also, never and I mean NEVER promote on sub for sub threads here on the forums, what I do is compliment other people's series/ask for feedback and other things like that that make people actually try out your series and they will only subscribe if they actually like it, another thing would be an eye-catching cover (Which I don't have ) and interesting name/genre, and always remember, quality over quantity, readers prefer better episodes than fast episodes so if your struggling to post 2 episodes a week then for a while change your schedule to once a week or whatever time you need so you truly get into the habit of reaching deadlines with great content, and also remember that you can cut corners whenever you want, (reusing background templates, poses, using 3d modelers as reference) I hope this all helped but I think the most important thing is keep on trying until the end, never quit, one day your series will be on the front page of tapas with over 1 million subscribers, you just have to wait!
I read your series and the art is just stunning, you are really talented and the story is really good, your comic will be big someday, keep it up!
(Another thing is I recommend someday posting on WEBTOON, your series will definitely become popular there, but I recommend slowly start adding color to the episodes when you post on WEBTOON, so like you have monthly updates to give you enough time to do that!) This is not criticism btw but I also want to say that those like bonus episodes of those drawings are really nice but readers prefer full on episodes, bonus episodes are made to keep the viewer interested but what they truly want is story, explanations, action , I'm only this because there is only truly 3 story episodes and its been 4 years since you uploaded the first episode

It took me about a full year to actually gain 100 subs on Tapas with roughly 50 episodes (which is equal to 6 chapters of my manga). I used to update my webcomic weekly, at first, although the pressure quickly got to me, so I ultimately opted for a bimonthly release, which made things a lot easier for me.

The only thing I did was promoting on the forums and on other social media (Instagram, Twitter, DeviantArt and Reddit). I also tried making friends and connections with other authors and creators on the platform (as well as on Instagram and Twitter), which is an amazing experience.

So, in the end it's all up to you. Unfortunately there's no secret technique to get more people to read your series; you just have to put in the hard work and, with time, you'll see the results. It also depends on different factors and one of them is luck. Every single creator has their own pace when it comes to gaining a following.
The best thing, though, would be to actually build an active audience and a fanbase, which is a lot more difficult.

Fenris nailed it! The way to get a following on Tapas is to go in with the knowledge that you are in the ring with professional comic creators and to realise that means you're going to have to try your best to look as good compared to them as you reasonably can with your available time and budget. It's all about hard work and attention to detail. A good marketing campaign will only be effective if the promo artwork and logo used look good (so people click it) and then it links to a comic that looks good and is easy to quickly get invested in (so they stay and read it and subscribe).

I have currently just shy of 1400 subscribers on Tapas. I hit 100 after about three months of posting without engaging in sub-for-sub. Do you know what most of the people I know who have over 1000 subs have in common?

Professional training or experience.

This is seriously something I wish more people were aware of! Nearly all of them either have a degree in something like illustration or animation, AND/OR have done some years of working as a professional illustrator or similar. Almost none of them it's their first ever comic, most of them have at least made some short comics before or had an older webcomic online.

So when I came to make a comic on Tapas, I knew I was going to have to really work my arse off because I know some of the people with popular comics on here, they're IRL friends and aquaintances and they're incredibly accomplished and skilled. Like the artist on BREAKS is literally one of the most famous comic artists in the UK of her generation, she's done work for Marvel, she drew the official Life is Strange and Jem and the Holograms comics, the graphic novel adaptation of Vampire Academy and she's regularly a special guest at comic events... or the creator of Firelight Isle is a Rising Stars of Manga first place winner and was the artist on Freakangels, like yeah, as in, that anime that just launched on Crunchyroll? He drew the original comic that was based on (thankfully unlike Warren Ellis who wrote FA, he's a really lovely person).
I've worked professionally as an illustrator and games artist, had my work published a few times and placed in some national manga competitions, but I'm seriously small-fry compared to people like that, so I've been working hard to create as polished and entertaining a comic as possible with a reliable update schedule, and also to make my marketing really consistent and polished too. It's not easy!

People on the forum might give your comic a look just because you seem like a nice person, but the readers on the app don't know anything about you and are only interested in how good it looks and how easy it is to get into. The upside is; they don't know what school you went to, whether you've won awards, been published, or how many readers your last comic had; you are on an entirely equal footing with pros and it's all about your cover versus theirs! The downside is those pros have years of experience to draw on and they already know exactly how to get and hold attention with their comics. This can be daunting, but don't forget that with the internet, there are amazing resources for improving art, design and storytelling, and with practice and hard work, anyone who puts in the time can equal a professional-level comics creator!

Your covers should always catch attention with things like colour or faces, and they should always feature the title written in a clearly legible way with some kind of nice and appropriate typography. They should ideally in some way make it clear what the comic is about. Lavish covers with attention and make sure they're polished looking.

The first three updates of your comic ARE VITAL. You need to establish interesting characters and the art style and launch into an interesting scenario immediately (this is definitely something I'd do differently if I could start again on my comic, I'd have the opening be faster paced). Three episodes is roughly how much a lot of readers will give a comic a try for, and if you haven't hooked them with the combination of that attractive cover and a strong, interesting start, you've lost them.
Also the comic should be very easy to read on a small screen, so always pay attention to your font size and spacing and your speech bubbles as well as the font choice. Anyone who doesn't know about comic fonts or where to start... just pick a simple free dialogue font from Blambot and you pretty much can't go wrong. Anime Ace 3, Ditigal Strip 2 or Letter-o-Matic are my suggestions for people who are stuck.

Assume you are trying to attract a person who has so many good looking comics to choose from that they will give up at the first even minor inconvenience. "This cover doesn't suggest the comic is about anything interesting, I'm not clicking it", "This art looks scrappy, I'd rather read a prettier comic. Bye!" "I can't read this writing on my phone, I'm out", "I've been reading three whole pages and nothing has happened, see ya later, space cowboy!" (feel free to read all these in a Teen Girl Squad voice if it makes you feel better. It always makes me feel better! ).
Some creators might just say "Ugh, well, I don't want people like that reading my comic anyway. I'd rather have smart readers who look beyond the surface of my comic and see its depth and meaning an also have an attention span for slower-paced, atmospheric storytelling!" which is fine... but not necessarily compatible with building a big audience on a platform where the average reader is a 20 year old woman who is a casual comics fan (ie. no, she probably has not read Akira, Watchmen, Persepolis or Maus), likes Romance and/or BL and is reading comics on her phone while eating lunch between uni classes or something.

Tapas isn't an art community like Deviantart, where most interactions are artists wanting to connect with other artists by appreciating each other's work. It's a publishing platform where the vast majority of the userbase (like literally over 95%) are just here to read comics on a mobile app. Chances are you can reach 100 subs by just slowly collecting people on the forum and discord who want to be friends, but if you want to be able to get beyond that (and you probably will because guess what lies behind that progress bar counting up to 100 on your dashboard? Another freaking progress bar going up to 250), you'll need to make a comic that appeals to the non-creator readers who came to read pro-quality comics.

@darthmongoose
perfectly said, professional background is key

You don't necessarily need the background these days, but you will need to use every resource at your disposal to try to get up to a level of polish where you can compete with people who do have a professional background, and it'll probably take experience, so it's unreasonable to expect huge success on your first comic. Doing a professional qualification or working professionally is definitely a good way to assure you're on that level though.

Hey, chocollate. I'm just curious. What comic are actually making? I went to you user page, and it's incredibly confusing.
You have 22 series? And they all seem to have like... 3 issues. And no actual story. It seems kinda spammy.

Now I feel weird because after checking my stats (nedded to go back 2.5 years so had to do some clicking ;p) it seems like I passed 100 subs mark somewhere in my second month of publishing (back ten 1 BL series updated 1 page per week, first 2 pages posted on the same day)
I don't remember promoting too heavily on the forum but I was posting about updates on deviantart, tumblr and I think twitter and instagram

hm, thats one way to do it...

I would like to suggest you make sure you really enjoy what your making, treat it like a hobby, not a future career that will make you money.
Because even if you hit 50,000 subs and start making ad money, that money will pale in comparison to an actual job. So its still not really worth doing, just for the money.
So im not sure about trying to game the system to get subs. Just make something you really enjoy.

For both 6,75 and TMIC, I hit 100 subs after about 3-4 months.
With 6,75, I already had some readers that moved with me from inkblazers after it shut down. I didn't do much other then uploading consistently and talking with other creators (as in, commenting in series I read, and checking out series of people who commented in mine). After that I had a very slow but steady growth, till my hiatus.
With TMIC, I had some readers come over from 6,75, but the growth was much quicker here, and I wasn't doing much more. Probably because it was a different genre.
I have to say, this way years ago and I feel like it was easier to earn subs back then? But that might be because completely different types of comics are popular now and mine might be just outdated haha also my fault for neglecting my series for few years.

My comic that reached 100+ subs was actually my least liked comic for the longest time. It had the lowest likes and reads out of everything I did. It wasn't until Tapas placed in on the BInge tab that I started getting readers on it. I think people are open to read it because it's short.

So I can't give advice on updating. I guess the most I can say is find someone who can help promote your series.

I've updated regularly and practiced my art, and with the aid of promoting all over the forums, I got 100 subs in a year and a half