Have you guys been successful with your comics?

[seru]

Success is hard to measure.
I guess in terms of popularity and income from your comics.

[storytimebiondi]

I've only actively been doing comics for about a year. In that time I've managed to produce a continual 2 pages a week and have garnered a close-knit, but successful following on Tapas, and have been published in an anthology with a short story I wrote.

I feel like I've done well for myself.

In terms of improvement, I feel like I need to be more engaged with the comic community, both on here and locally. Being a hard-core introvert and lazy social media person, it's a real challenge. So, I'm hoping my year 2 successes are even better

[GesuGesu]

I only started because my friends were doing it. I mostly just wanted to catch up to their sub count at the time (~1700)

I ended up reaching over 7.5k subs in the 2 years since I started uploading on Tapas. I have no idea what to do since I didn't plan to do much with my webcomic hobby. I wouldn't consider myself popular since I know quite a few with subscribers in the 20k, but I would say I'm in a very comfortable position in terms of popularity since I haven't reached 1000 subs anywhere online except on Tapas.

In terms of money, I've made enough for maybe an extra meal or two. I wouldn't depend on comics for income. I make more money off one-off commission jobs.

[Cavechan]

No... struggling to get fans, struggling to get patrons, but I'm going to keep going because I love comics and I love my comic.

[baasinsimple]

lol 4 subscribers. Doing worse than the comic I made a full year ago that was infinitely more crap and uninspired than the one I make now, but I love my 4 subscribers because they're the most supportive people I've met in awhile so that counts for something.

[Pandastrophic]

It's thankfully going well but I feel like I only noticed improvements in how the comic has been doing after like 3 years of working on my current comic project and after having a few failed project before this.
I had a comic back in 2010-11 on smackjeeves which I would consider a "failure" due to how badly I handled the story, characters and art, as well as a bunch of other comics I made years ago that just didn't work out. They're all part of the journey and helped me improve even though after the 2010 one I gave up on making comics until 2015.

[SeraphicMayin]

Happiness and success doesn't come from popularity and income. Popularity and income come from happiness and success.

I have a singular measure of success and its something I learnt from a motivational audio from the like 50s by Earl Nightingale. (It's called the Strangest Secret and you can find it on Spotify and Youtube)

He defined success as follows:

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy Ideal.

I believe popularity and income are not a good measure of success.

When and only when you learn to write/draw with surpassing quality and command of Story that you find "popularity and income" and not until then.

If I went by popularity and income then I'd be failing at comics cause my Max subs on a single comic are 1.5k and 10$ from tips since I activated it months ago. My measure of popularity is 50k+ subs and a livable income.
Now that's on me, I haven't been consistant in my updates over time and I let one of my most popular stories crash and burn and I ended up taking it down (long story).

However.

If I go by Nightengale's definition of success then I'm incredibly successful because I'm still progressively working on the comics. My worthy ideal is a lifetime of creating stories and I'm acting upon that daily.

And it's this mindset about success that has lead me to study Storycraft.

Back in May, I decided to dedicate five weeks to my Incubator submission. I was working right up to the deadline.

And Swaha was chosen. No one will see the comic for months to come and so I'm still relatively unknown. But this, I consider success because I'm still working on comics and will continue to do so. I do not know if people will enjoy Swaha but it's my current ideal that I'm progressively realizing at the moment.

So I think success is easy to measure, if you have a more uplifting definition to it.

[Kann]

Not quite succesfull, but I'm happy with the amount of subs and views I have now. It's my first comic ever anyway and I don't expect to make a living out of it. XD Just having fun~

[lil-sea-salt]

I am an amateur artist and comic writer. I think my goal is for my work to look more commercial and professional. I am a ways off from that, but I did recently make some panels that I am very proud of. In terms of that, I would say I'm not successful.

[craftymarten]

It's hard to measure success for anyone I think. I launched my first webcomic ever in March and I'm still updating at 2 pages a week and I can see my art getting better so I'm really proud of that! I wasn't sure I'd stick to it but I'm really enjoying it and I hope that shows! I'm learning a lot about colour palettes and backgrounds and anatomy and generally making things look a lot better!
It's difficult when you see comics that are new getting thousands of subscribers and you think "why can I not do that?" but I wouldn't keep going if I only wanted to become popular. Better to have a few supportive fans that comment and are invested in your work!
I've just sent my first 80 page volume to print and I'm so excited to get them and sell them at comic conventions. I started drawing concepts a year ago and if you'd told me a year ago I'd be at almost 100 pages I would have been so excited.

[unknown_user]

I've worked on my comics nearly 5 month. It's my first comics (if not count ones which I made at childhood at wallpaper of my parent's room), but I strive to draw it good and redraw some parts for several times. As a result I'm making it veeery slowly and it's still, of course, far away from work of proffessional artist. For now, I have only 37 subs here. Maybe it's because its thematic is not very popular here, or because it is too cynical or too incomprehensible or too ineptly drawn...
But nevertheless I'm happy every time when I see a new subscriber, or like, or friendly comment. So... I'm not successful in topicstarter's sense yet, but at least I'm having success in making my life more interesting by doing something new and expressing myself in an unusual (for me) way.

[qwerty]

I've only been on Tapas since July, so not a long time.

Anyway, regarding popularity and income - 25 subscribers, $0.00.

I feel pretty successful though because popularity and income were not the reasons I started my comic. I started it for one reason - to improve my art skills, and I published it on Tapas for two reasons - to keep myself accountable and force myself not to be too perfectionist by setting deadlines for myself.

Success is easy to measure if you know what your goal is. I had/have one goal - to improve - and I have improved a lot.

[beta1042]

I think it depends on your definition of successful. I'm not rolling in wealth from it, and I don't even think the hobby has paid for itself, but that's also not why I decided to do this. (Although I'm actually really amazed that I've made money at all- maybe $350 since I starteda yr ago)

LIke @A_Toad, I decided to draw a comic to get back into art and improve my art skills, and when I compare my first chapters to my latest, I 100% can see a big improvement and to me that is a huge success.

[mon_quu]

If you mean in simple terms like sub counts and whatnot then...nah. But, that's on my part for not being consistent with my uploads and feeling defeated too easily. I love drawing, I love making comics, but sometimes I can't help but let the negative thoughts dictate on whether I should bother if I have no audience. So it's a work in progress, really 8')

[TheFriendlyMan]

Depends! Not in terms of anybody reading it, but in terms of it now existing - absolutely!

[silverraven0]

The answer is no. Both in popularity and income or whatever. ^^;

I've been on and off tapas and drawing on my phone still hurts my hand, so I'm taking a break from making comic, though I'll be continuing one of my project in another month or so tho.

[MadamBubble]

Moderately successful, all thanks to being friends with Peacuch.

[storytimebiondi]

If I went by popularity and income then I'd be failing at comics cause my Max subs on a single comic are 1.5k and 10$ from tips since I activated it months ago.

I feel like so many people measure success based on these factors because this is what social media has trained us to do. We are always extrinsically happy: finding joy only in the affirmation of ourselves from others. When in reality, happiness always comes from inside, and a sense of self-satisfaction and self-worth (at least in my mind).

If I go by Nightengale's definition of success then I'm incredibly successful because I'm still progressively working on the comics. My worthy ideal is a lifetime of creating stories and I'm acting upon that daily.

I think this is the best way to handle it. The act of creating is why we are all here, after all. So long as we can still create, that should bring us some joy.

[KoreanTacos]

Id like to think my success is more based on all the interesting people ive been able to bond with through my comics. My goals for my comics seem to be doing their jobs too even with my minimal subs so im fine with that.

[spadesart]

im doing pretty well given im close to 2k subs, but i dont have the audience interaction/feedback i was hoping for, so i feel like im only halfway where i want to be