Has it become harder to grow an audience?

[LostKelp]

So, I've been getting curious lately (very dangerous I know) and I've been looking through old threads about their comic success stories there's this one in 2015 where everyone seemed to get 100 subs in under a year, I know that this isn't too uncommon nowadays, lots of people can get random bursts of subscribers through being featured or just grow their audience through their social media and advertising.

But I don't really know how people do it exactly, you can spam promotion threads here but no-one seems to check anyone out beyond the first poster unless it's a sub4sub you can do the same on discord but does anyone really check promotion channels? You can post on Instagram or tumblr or Twitter but good luck if you don't already have an audience. And that feels like your only option at this point, you can put as much effort in as you like but your success story could just be one of the staff picking you randomly one day for tapas Tuesdays or featured or whatever. And after all that badgering and promoting and whatever, how can you be sure that the audience you get care? (This isn't directed towards any of my readers who may be seeing this, you guys are great, even if 3 of you are just me and my alt accounts) .

So does promotion actually work? Or should you just write the damn comic and hope? If after a year of being stuck at 20-60 subs should you just expect to stay there? Has the market become oversaturated and now only the very lucky or people who can afford tons of advertising and consistent updates get popular?

I dunno man, I've only been here half a year.

[VibrantFox]

the comic landscape has changed quite a lot i think especially as its moved into the mainstream so it can be hard to gain traction in terms of numbers which i think is why a lot of folks emphasize just focusing on putting work into the quality of your novel/comic

i will say that depending on the subject matter of the story i may look at stuff people are promoting on their twitter or tumblr but its usually a matter of luck when it comes to gaining subs outside of your own creative circles

there definitely seems to be more power in word of mouth than just straight promo unless you really know what your doing in terms of marketing but everyone's path is different so growth nowadays seems especially sporadic

like when i did my first comic back in like early 2015 i managed to get pretty decent traction since slice of life/gag a day comics were what was booming then and then just engaging with other folks within those spheres and not in a hollow ladder climby way but just having genuine interest in a work and interacting. i dunno how common it is for folks to be engaging with each other in comment sections nowadays but i knwo it was a pretty common sight at least with early tapas (i cant speak for how things are now well enough since im not active)

[system]

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