Gaining subs without social media

[Missapogee]

So, I've been posing my comic for about 3 months now, and its around 30 subs (29) now. I figured this was a normal rate of growth, until I read a thread on here of artists taking about how the average is around 1-5 subs a week, and many of them said that having a social media presence is vital to sub growth. Which makes perfect sense, but theres only one problem. I've completely cut myself off of all social media. It was starting to become a soul sucking, time wasting habit that only served to make me feel bad, so, I decided to just stop touching social media altogether. And it's been great! But that means I can't promote myself via social media. So, my questions are:

1) What are some ways to get noticed outside of the normal "Promote on socials!" advice?

2) Is there anyone else on here who doesn't use social media? what kind of sub growth have you experienced?

(If there is no other great way, that's no problem, I am perfectly fine with a slow rate of growth, I'm drawing this comic for myself anyway, but advice is still super appreciated!)

[WillowTree]

I have an instagram but I don't really get on it too much and all of my followers are either from these forums or a couple of my readers that I have here on Tapas. I don't think it's done anything to increase my subs here on Tapas. I've had pretty good sub growth. I posted my first chapter on August 11th and I'm currently at 459 subs for my novel

[Missapogee]

oh wow! that's a lot of subs! Congratulations!

Could I ask how you promote on the forums? I've seen a lot of threads about how the bit promotional threads are pretty useless, and others that say that it's off putting/cringe when people insert self-promotion too often, so i'm pretty unsure about how to go about it

[mcarrowolga]

Check out this list of resorces for webcomic promotion, folks:
http://randomwebcomic.com/webcomic_promotion.html

It covers social media and other useful stuff.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Social media is useless for me.

Probably it's all down to the market for your story and the quality of the series itself, no amount of promotion and friendship can salvage shit nobody likes and poor quality will nope people away (not always though).

Promoting in the forum is more often a miss because people usually go to the topic just to dump their shit, wipe, and flush. There are some better promotion topics which requires engagement and description (like review for review, or describe your main character as something, or discussion about elements in the story), try those instead.

[WillowTree]

I don't think I promote too much? When a thread is perfect for me (like the romance one earlier!) I'll promote there and sometimes I'll post on other random ones, but only really when there's other interactions as well.

Honestly, I think the best thing you can do is just genuinely interact with people on here. I follow several works that I only initially checked out because of the creator and I had some positive interactions (that had nothing to do with promoting our works) on here. I'll also regularly just follow the links in someone's profile on here if we've talked/had similar lines of thoughts in threads

[Missapogee]

thank you for the resource!

[Missapogee]

Haha I guess that's the harsh truth. I don't personally think my comic is shit quality, but there are areas where it could be improved for sure.

Thank you for the forum advice!

[ScarletDemon]

I don't have social media for Tapas, I have social media for my day job, but none for Tapas. I mainly have just used these forums for advertising my stories, as long as you don't get discouraged from a slow growth, you're golden. I have a completed novel that has 17 subs and 91 episodes, meanwhile the one I'm most currently working on has 145 subs and 95 episodes. As long as you stay true to your story, an audience will come in time, you just have to look out for people on here looking for interesting stories, sub for sub and things of that sort, as long as people are seeing your story, there's a chance someone will find your story and love what they're seeing/reading.

[rajillustration]

Times I haven't used social media (because trust me I'm at where you're at with social media where I try to limit myself but it's like...I still use it and everytime I'm on there it freakin sucks) I found it helped to look at webcomic libraries (there's a bunch on tumblr and other places) and submit my work to them. I submitted my work and got interviewed by a little blog and that got me hundreds of views. Just really looking for direct marketing on the few blogs that are left which still get readers.

[Dysis]

In my opinion, it is more about interaction. Promotion will only make an impact in social sites if you are consistent and use proper hashtags. In Tapas, the more you interact with people, the more you can bring your story to their attention.

If you like a story, you need to let them know. Comment your thoughts freely, leave a like if you found a paragraph interesting. In return, they might want to check your story out, and if they like it, they will become your readers. ^^

[VibrantFox]

When it comes to making use of the forums the most effective thing for a lot of folks has just been engaging with the community, participating in discussions on certain topics, sharing stuff where it fits and just getting to know people.

It can definitely be easy to get swept up by and overwhelmed with the stuff on social media so even though I'm not leaving any platforms I do try to hold myself to taking breaks when I feel it's necessary

[drcharlotterodricks]

The useless goddess hath spoken XD

[drcharlotterodricks]

So on a more serious note, I make my mom share it in her whatsapp stories, plus since my comic is slice of life I share it with my friends and they share it with their friends<<<only works if views are what you're after
Else be active on the forums and engage with other people's comics

[CursedBeasts]

I don't use social media aside from reddit (if it counts!? it really feels more like a forum than a proper social media site). I couldn't really get my art out there no matter how long and how hard I tried, and there's just too much meaningless noise on social media. Also instagram insisted on showing me gross videos.

I run two comics: Bestia's Wrath (a Star Wars the old republic fancomic about a sort of a canon character stand-in), and The Lost Firstborn (an origin story of my DC Comics \ New Gods OC). I kinda got 30 subs on the latter recently and I think it has to do with the fact that The Lost Firstborn updates twice a week while Bestia's Wrath has 1 update a week. Someone here on the forums mentioned that comics that have shorter but more frequent updates tends to be picked for featured and are also on the recently updated page.

And also TLF is probably easier to follow fandom-blind because it's a fairly straightforward origin story comic about an OC while Bestia's Wrath proooobably is better enjoyed if a reader at least knows the basics of Star Wars or played SWTOR so its a bit less accessible I guess.

I did post a link to Bestia's Wrath on the game's subreddit but I'm not sure if it gave me a lot of exposure. I might post a link to The Lost Firstborn on a DC comics subreddit of some kind at some point but I think it's doing pretty well on its own.

I also participate here on the forums, and while I actually don't plug my links that often, I think participating also helped because being friendly kinda goes a long way and there's also a link to my comics in my profile here so someone checking it out might click on them. There's also a thread where you can plug your updates whenever they happen, and it brings some readers in I think. Not that many in my case, but it does. There's also many threads where you can promote your comics, although I think they get closed once in a while.

[domisotto]

I only use Twitter to do stuff that interests me, but I have a pinned twit with my work. It does nothing as far as I know. My story gained 125 subs on its own, which was plenty. Some of them are people I know from other forums, but most are folks who run into the story. Then I was lucky to be featured, and it kept the story afloat for a couple weeks afterwards, getting into popular... I really can’t get into trending because I dunno why... but whatever.

Honestly, I feel that posting often, writing a story I like and being grateful if someone reads it from popping up in Fresh section is pretty much what I feel like doing

[jmassat]

Consistent, on-schedule updates can make a difference -- and, like CursedBeasts said, so do frequent updates, and so does the story's accessibility.

You might also consider genre. Some Tapas genres have more stories than others, so naturally there's going to be more competition for people's eyes in the former. Gaming, Girls' Love and LGBTQ+ stories have significantly fewer entries than other genres, so if your story's in there, it might have a bit of an edge. Also note that while you can give your story up to 3 genres, it's only the first of these genres that affects your story's categorization (if I remember correctly).

Social media is not all that great for marketing...you have to really invest time and energy into it. But spending time in smaller communities of writers and comickers might be a good alternative that can also produce genuine friendship (or, if not friendship, then camaraderie and support). I've found that in Discord servers as well as forums like Tapas.

[WhoDrew]

That really does make a lot of sense.

This might also explain why my Gamers Guff series is the most popular on my profile at the moment,

Appreciate the advice @jmassat

[ninjashira]

I almost never post any of my comic stuff on my social media, just because it's such a pain in the butt to get my pages from my computer to my phone to post on Instagram, and I have to resize it and save a separate version to upload because of Instagram's awkward aspect ratio limitations...

Out of my 1,000+ subscribers, I got maaaayyyyybe 20-50 of them from social media. The rest is all just updating regularly, being active on the forums, and getting chosen for a Staff Pick and for that weird Easter Egg Hunt event.

[Enthriex]

I don't really like using social media, more so because of similar reasons to yours.

I find instagram really annoying because of the needing to resize everything, so it's rare when I upload anything there. I think I just got used to uploading stuff in deviantart, and I believe the people that subscribed to my story are from deviantart as well, haha.

I kind of uploaded all what I had in deviant to here and kind of left this abandoned... Though when I came back years later, I noticed I had like 75 suscribers, I know that's not a lot but it's something for sure (considering I don't really speak to anyone) though it's more like I don't know how to engage in conversations with others.

I also became more motivated recently so I've been continuing it.

It was easy to talk when people commented more than just "Nice" or "Cool" and stuff you can't really reply to, so it's come to just me updating my comic because I find it fun.

So yeah, I have that problem as well (the social media thing) but I guess it's a nice idea to try and engage with others in this website just like some here are suggesting.