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Sep 2023

Okay, I understand the idea of wanting bigger numbers. I remember back when I was an incredibly small Youtuber, I saw these EVERYWHERE. But they never actually helped you grow, they had hundreds of subs but only got a handful of views a video. Isn't that counterproductive? I mean, the whole point is to grow and have more people see it! You're not spreading your series because these people only want subscribers back, they're not going to read.

And I know Tapas has subscriber milestones like monetization at 250. But if your views don't match the subscriber amount, you would never get much anyways.

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    Sep '23
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it is counterproductive. What I think people intend to so with these is make their comic looks more popular but idk.

Oh my goodness, thank you! I honestly am just very fed up with these promotion threads. They are just spammed and sometimes there's no body or text, just a link. I understand promotion threads, but there are just too many. When I see people copy paste on a million different threads, it makes me not want to read their story.

I refuse to engage in sub-for-sub for this reason. I don't sub to anyone unless I genuinely want to read their stuff, and I would hope that people subbing to me would only sub to mine for the same reason.

I only sub if I think the artist is better than me and provides something I think I can learn from.

(Now let's see how many people decide that means I think their comic is shit despite the lack of me saying so...)

I lowkey hate sub to sub kinda engagement because it's not sincere. Those that are subs to you cuz of this tends to not views any chapters of your comic. That's why I never participated in promotions thread to begin with. I don't wanna feel forced to like a story when it's not what I like.

I tried to test the market and did this, sub to sub, like 2 years ago but it didn't work that much. What works for me was uploading my webtoon to illegal site, which gets me around 200+ subscribers per chapter on line webtoon (it depends on whar genre you're in and how good is your art). My genre is BL so most illegal sites are highly dominated by fujoshis

Disclaiimer: This is just based on my experience. What I did maybe doesn't work with others.

Friendly reminder to anyone who doesn't know: you can mute the promotions category altogether


^ Select "Promotions"


^ Select "Muted"

It's usually by/attracts people who are desperate for numbers and/or have heard that having numbers makes it easier to get more numbers without understanding why (the actual why is because if you have higher numbers likelyhood is that the people who read your stuff will also recommend your stuff to their friends and interaction boosts you in the algorithm... and empty subs do neither of those things.)

I can kind of understand them though, it can feel very lonely if you put a lot of work into something that you feel like no one is seeing, especially if you have jealousy blinders on and you're constantly looking at more successful comics going "my story's better than this, why won't anyone see it?" and if that goes on long enough I totally get why some people resort to sub4sub. Plus they can constantly see other people around them going "My comic hit 250 subs in under a year" "my comic hit 250 subs in under 3 months" but they can't see the hours of work behind those numbers and it's so easy to become bitter when you've been here longer working your arse off for less.

Tapas Interface doesn't really help either, with the sub counter on the dash and the promise of monetisation at 250 subs... even though I feel like it's not a secret that if you have subs but no one is actually reading you're going to earn litteraly nothing, some people still haven't really thought through the maths on things like adrev enough to realise even a dollar per 1k views is an astronomically high expectation and reality is nowhere near that... and they're not even at 1k views total yet.

I don't really want to judge them, whether they be blissfully optimistic or bitter and desperate, but they are, in any case, doing something that is counter productive.

From what I've seen, it all ties back to the idea of "support" and impatient people.

Sometimes it feels nice for a number to go up, I did it for a while and it wasn't the best. I wanted to keep up with my goal to get to 100 in a year. It didn't super matter to me how it got done. I like to think that most of my subscribers are people who are genuinely interested in my story. I certainly didn't like sub for sub because I'd subscribe to a story that I didn't like and after a month, I'd quietly unsub. I suspect that's what happened on the other side too. I update twice a week and that'd be annoying for a person who didn't bother reading it so they'd unsub quietly and it'd be a net zero.

If I had to guess the whole process is a search for validation, you can pretend to yourself that you have 100 people invested in your story because you have lots of subscribers. It's a frustration with stunted growth and I can't be mad at that because I'm frustrated with my stunted growth.

I met my goal already, which is why I stopped. But I think that tapas fails their audience by giving them the same shit all the time and they fail their creators by making them spin their wheels in the dark. A subforsub isn't good it isn't permanent but it is certain, it's an agreement between you and a random stranger to click a button and feel a little bit more heard.

To be fair, sometimes I read through those promotion threads. Every once in a while I find a comic that seems fun. But at the exact same time, there's a couple people who all they do it seems is spam promote into every thread.

You can still view Promotion threads from the drop down menu. The feature mostly just removes them from the All Category feed on your home page.

Yeah, what @NickRowler said. You can still check the Promotions category manually after muting it (which I do occasionally, sometimes even post in it if I see a thread that might actually be relevant to my comic), you just don't have to have your front page constantly inundated with promotion spam.

My experience: I tried sub4sub threads hoping for some of the users to read my webcomic, even the first pages and to get feedback. I felt really disappointed: people subscribed without even reading my stuff, while maybe I would give a try to theirs. I also hate the "let's help each other, I'm near Y milestone" but never reciprocate...

I still post in promotions threads when I update, but few at times and even in the days that come. I do this because maybe someone could get curious by the description of the current update or by the plot (I try to add a preview and a sentence that resume the update without too much spoilers).

I don't know I would go and say its counterproductive from my experience. I had some really nice and thoughtful comments from people who subscribed through such promotion threads about the story and their reactions to reading it.

I've also read some really fun comics and novels I wouldn't have seen otherwise. I do try to put in a blurb and tags in the post and I do appreciate that when someone else does it, but I also think it's okay to allow people to figure out how to best promote their own work.

However, I'll try to be more cognizent of putting so many links in the promo threads.

Unfortunately it is, in most cases, counterproductive if you aim is to grow you series and climb the ranks. While we've never been given the exact algorithm, it basically works on percentages and engagement. A lot of sub4sub is only interested in the number of subs, not good engaged subs. Which is counterproductive. Not all, but most, and if you've had good experienced, great, but a lot of people do just sub and get their sub and never engage.

So to really oversimplify it, when that happens you get people with 100 subs but like 10 comments/likes, Tapas sees that as 10% engagement vs 10 subs who all comment/like reads as 100% engagement and so Tapas reads it as a better, more popular series. You actually harm your series by having more subs but less engagement percentage.

Thanks for the explanation. I'll be the first to admit I didn't know that.

To give newbies the illussion that they are growing or that someone is obligated to read their novel/comic and support it :joy:

I've been in this site for two months and this is what I've noticed too.
It's why I leave a like and comment to every comic/novel I come across with. I leave it to thank/appreciate the creator for sharing their work. At the same time I leave my username (footprint) on their work so that when people happen to visit my profile and check my work out, I gain some reads in return, sometimes likes and comments as well. And that's when they gain a sub from me and I from them, and we end up exchanging reads/comments/likes. After reading a few chapters, I even realize that I actually like their story. Sometimes these subscribers end up becoming a friend not just in Tapas but in other socials as well and we support each other's works :coffee_love:

I'm not eager to raise my sub count. I'm searching for readers. So yeah, I feel like there's no point in subbing if you don't gain interaction from subscribers.