There's a bit of an issue with a disconnect between a lot of people who make stuff on Tapas, and the audience that reads stuff on Tapas. 
The number of times I see people saying, "UGH. Why does Tapas keep forcing all these stupid Villainess comics on me? nobody reads them!" and I'm just left wondering... if they've ever actually looked at the numbers to see if that's correct. Because I read through "Beware the Villainess" (a Villainess series that's actually a cut above the rest in terms of self-awareness and use of the concept. If you're only going to read one premium villainess comic, I recommend that one), and even with unlocks costing ink, pages a long way in still get a very healthy number of likes and comments, suggesting that people are not only reading it, they're enjoying it enough to probably spend money, or to sit through a lot of ads or do surveys and stuff in order to read it.
So even though the premium series are getting a boost to visibility through promotion, as somebody who has had features, I can tell you that's not the whole story; Tapas readers won't read something if it doesn't appeal to them, and they're not entertained by, even if it's promoted aggressively. We discovered this back in 2020, when Tapas experimented with "community picks" features on the front page, where people from the forums would recommend works for a front page feature. Tapas discontinued it after only a couple of months, because a lot of the works being promoted were barely getting one or two subs out of it.
A lot of people are thinking about it backwards, thinking features = popularity, when it's more like "stuff Tapas thinks will be popular, sees has become popular, or that got good sub gain last time it was featured, gets features." Tapas' goal is to generate ad views and get people to spend ink. From their perspective, works that encourage people to spend more time on the platform, bring people to the platform, or especially cause them to buy ink or interact with sponsors to get ink, are valuable. They boost stuff based on how effectively it does these things, or at least how effectively they think it will.
There are really two paths to becoming popular on Tapas:
- Make something that appeals to people who read something else that's already popular on Tapas. That work will have brought people to the platform, and those people want more things like it to add to their library. In my case, that's stuff like Hard Lacquer, Pandora's Devils, Magical Boy, or maybe even Heartstopper; indie comics about LGBTQ+ characters going on adventures with a hybrid manga/cartoon/indie sort of vibe to the art and fairly polished presentation by standards of a solo creator. If the staff see your stuff, and see that it seems to be gaining engaged readers, they'll start including it in feature collections with similar stuff to encourage growth.
- Make something so appealing to an audience outside of Tapas and market to that group so effectively that you bring them to the platform. This approach is a lot harder and is more likely to succeed if you already had a big following somewhere else.
Hopefully that's all of some sort of help!
