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Oct 1

It's just about one year since I started posting my cozy romance fantasy Etherwood here. When I first started, I did a good amount of searching for topics like this so that I could set my expectations appropriately, and learn from what does and doesn't work on Tapas.

What was the plan? What were my expectations?
I had three chapters complete (72 pages) before I started posting pages. The idea was to post the whole first chapter at once, since nobody wants to read a comic with less than 10 pages, then weekly updates from there on - 1 page per week is what I can reliably produce.

I would post my comics to r/comics a week after they came out on Tapas - and that was pretty much my whole advertising plan. I've never really had an online following and I'm terrible at social media, so that was about as far as I got with that.

I did not expect to make any money from Tapas at all (webcomics are not a good side gig if you're in it for the money!). I hoped to get 4 new subscribers every month on average, which would put me at 48 by the end of the year. You might think that's a bit low, but since it's a SFW slow burn romance comic, I'm at a disadvantage to fetish or humor comics in terms of sheer meme-ability. Etherwood is also a solo affair, so I have limited attention and time for marketing as well.

So how'd I do?
Well, I didn't miss any uploads! That's more than most comics can say. All the comics that started on the same day as me have gone on indefinite hiatus now. To that end, I'd recommend to newer webcomic artists to build a year's worth of backlog before going live. It helps to build the discipline of keeping up a regular comic, and you won't be discouraged by the lack of views common to new comics.

Here's the stats after a year:

Views were much better than I expected! One of my comic pages performed very well on Reddit in April, which was a nice boost. That burst of enthusiasm died down a bit, but lately I've had a more solid monthly distribution. Not much on comments - I find people are more likely to comment somewhere else than actually on Tapas. Most comments have been positive. I have fielded a number of "I never knew this existed," type comments, which means I need to find some better avenues to advertise, I think.

Every month has given me more than the 4 subscribers I expected. Some of my subscribers are only subscribed to Etherwood, so that's a win. I even made it past 100 subscribers, making me eligible for that mythical 'monetized' status, which netted me a whopping $0.20 this year. Don't go into webcomics for the money, folks. My Patreon also makes $5 a month, which is not bad. After all, none of that is from my mom!

I hope next year will be even better! We'll see next October. I've found that while there seems to be a lot of new comics every day, there are really very few that make it past 6 months. If you're a new comic maker, see if you can make it to that point without any hiatuses or missed uploads.

There are comics who did better than I did, but many more that did worse. I'm thrilled to have accomplished more than I expected. The comics that did better had a much more go-getter advertising plan, were team efforts, or both. I'd say I need a couple more comic pages to perform well before I can start consistently pulling strong numbers.

Did this help you? How did I compare to your comic?

You can see Etherwood here:


I'll also sub4sub if you're interested. Just comment below!

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Hello! Thank you for sharing your stats! Now I can gauge the future growth of my comic. Mine is actually fairly new so I don’t really know how to describe the overall general growth of it yet because I don’t have that much data (like a years worth of data) or anything. :grin: anyway, I did just look at your comic and I really liked the watercolor panels you did, so I subbed. I will definitely be reading it when I get free time.

My comic is here if you want to try it out. Thank you!

This is interesting. My comic is brand new as well, so I too have a shortage of substantial data.

Mine is a comedic science-fantasy strip called "Destiny's Echo: Manifestia". You can find it here. I'll be checking out yours soon too. It looks cool!

It is difficult to talk about the success of my comic without trying to come across as superior. On the one hand I have done very well, I should think. I do not have as many monthly views as you had, but the number of likes I have received was, well, unexpected. I have, of course, been on the top row of the action fantasy category more times than I can count, and I have worked very hard to promote my work. Anyway, without further ado, and of course not without alluding to my own subscription, may I introduce to you my own fantasy story, my “fireside pantomime”, as Thackeray would term it.

This is really interesting and comes at a very convenient time for me to also reflect on, since I just hit a year on Tapas back at the beginning of September, as well.

Unlike you, when I started, I didn't really have any concrete goals as far as gaining subscribers, or any idea of what I was going to do to advertise. I think I was operating on the Field of Dreams model (if you build it, they will come) of promoting.

I fairly quickly realized I was going to have to do something to draw readers to my novel, so I started posting a lot on this forum. Then, I made an Instagram. Posted occasionally on r/selfpublish and the Tapas' Discord promotions channel. I don't think any of these things have been particularly successful in drawing in new readers. My Instagram follower count is abysmal and engagement almost non-existent. I have a Ko-fi that has been used once, when a friend of mine had an urgent grammar question over Christmas lol. (For the record, I would not have charged them to answer that question! That was all them!) I think, really, this forum has probably been the most successful avenue for getting new readers.

So, after a year, I'm still fairly baffled by promoting and what I should be doing better. TikTok? Paid advertising is probably the way to go, but I'm loath to do that for a novel that is only on Tapas. I plan, eventually, to self-publish this via Kindle, so I would intend to try paid advertising then. I'm also considering publishing on Royal Road and might consider paying to advertise there, though I don't know how well I could expect to do there, given that I don't write LitRPG or progression fantasy (and Royal Road is not known for supporting LGBT content, either, which is why I initially chose Tapas over RR).

Anyway, let's look at some numbers:

That one month of 11,000+ views you got crushes anything I did! Your views in general look really great to me. I have puzzled and puzzled over why I've had a few months that do so much better than others and can't figure out the pattern. It's the thing that really puzzles me.

Most of the big months for likes I get come from one or two people binging my (very long, at this point) novel. I love it every time it happens.

The comments are pretty robust because I've made some friends on this site who will dependably comment on each chapter, and I very much appreciate them! I get so sad when no one comments—I really just want someone to talk to about this silly world I've made.

In the end, I don't really know how to measure my performance on Tapas against the average for community novels, either. Of course, I wish I could increase engagement, but I'm also happy to be getting engagement at all. Things could be a lot worse, and the people I do have reading are pretty great.

I'll keep puzzling over ways I can better promote, but I'm not expecting to find a magic bullet at this point.

Considering, I upload monthly and I started promoting more frequently recently my comic isn't doing bad.

I have hard time staying consistent with promoting my comic and having monthly updates doesn't help it.

I have around 40 people who read every new episode I post which is quite impressive to me considering I don't upload weekly and when I started with the comic, I wasn't promoting it at all.

I've found that the inverse of Field of Dreams is more true - if you don't build it, nobody will come. In this era, starting a new webcomic is like setting up a little stall on the outskirts of a giant convention. There's way too much else for people to look at to expect to just be organically noticed without doing anything. IG and FB have performed poorly for me, I think meta expects people to pay for advertising, but if you do, then you end up getting mostly fake viewers. I don't think paid advertising makes sense for a minor webcomic.

God bless those readers who go through and 'like' every page. They're the real heroes. You sure have a much more active comments section than I do!

What's you comic name? Do you want a sub4sub?

Trust me, if I had a magic bullet, I would be using it. Well, except for doing XXX content.

Congratulations on 1 year! I'll be at 2 years in March, time really flies huh? Kudos for never missing an update, that's really impressive!

My comic has done significantly better than expected. I thought maybe I'd get 50 subs and be happy with that lol. My subs haven't been increasing as much lately, but I'm fine with that. I had to take a couple breaks here and there.

Here's to many more years of success for everyone! 🥂

Hey just subbed here is my comic to check out.



https://www.conventure-comics.com/

Thank you for sharing! I love the art style of your work.

It is very exciting to share my web novel and I agree that having the work pre-written is the best way to go. It is easy to let life bog you down, which makes me scared since I only have one more chapter that was pre-written.

But congrats on your year! Here's to many more!

I've found that the inverse of Field of Dreams is more true - if you don't build it, nobody will come.

Ha, very true!

I've been hearing a lot of people say that IG is over for artists in general. Not sure what to do instead.

And d'oh. I got so wrapped up in number crunching and blustering about different promotion tactics I forgot to actually link to my novel:

I love your art style! That first page with the house and the scenic background is beautiful.