How long did it take you comic to be successful?

[Chronitis]

Hey, just wondering how long did it take your comic to get to a point where you can confidently say "Yeah, my comic is doing really well"

[kyupol]

My 1st comic, Brood Knight... Started in 2001. Took about 2 years of being unnoticed except in yahoo groups. Was on geocities.
2003 - got on drunkduck... took about a year before it topped the list a few times.

My present comic, MAG-ISA... rode on success of Brood Knight. Took about 5 or 6 months before it got featured on drunkduck. Won a couple awards for best philosophical / political comic (2009, 2011). Nowadays, its fading from the limelight. Only "old guard" type readers... my fault as well for going on a few hiatuses. That and... the tens of thousands of webcomics online.

In short, I consider myself somewhat successful. Scale of 1-10, I'm about a 6/10.

Just sharing my experience. May be different for everyone.

[keii4ii]

Depends on how you define "really well." For me, really well is making $500+ each month on Patreon (not nearly enough to quit a day job, but it'd be a point where I make $100+ per update, and that's something). Or having an actual, sizable fandom that actively generates conversations and fanwork.

It's been about 2.5 years since the launch of my comic, and I'm not there yet.

There are also less money/fame related goals that are just as covetable -- if not more! But while I really, really want to reach those goals, I feel "doing really well" is inherently tied to fame/money, so I'm not going to talk about those goals in this thread.

[Evan]

Well, I wouldn't consider my comic Penciled as successful yet and it has been about a year and a half since I've started.

[timinabox]

after 14 years of making comics I'm still wating for my first reader O_O

[emkay]

can you link your comic so we can check it out??

[punkarsenic]

im definitely not there yet.

i think ill be there when im seminally satisfied w it; w its structure, writing, and art. mainly focusing on art, i guess. when i can look at creators i love, and say im on the same level as them, thats when im doing well.

right now, There was a War is going through a bit of a style metamorphosis as i read and learn more about art and about comics. i feel like its at a really awkward stage right now. maybe soon itll bloom though. thatll be nice.

theres also all that stuff about money and a following and blah blah blah not there yet either, not paying any attention to it bc its a buzzkill i dont need.

[Chronitis]

Are you speaking to me or timinabox?

[Chronitis]

sorry to hear of the state it's in. Do you plan on making a completely different comic, or will you try to bring back interest in your comic.

[kyupol]

Plan to finish MAG-ISA... And then will be doing more short story comics. Gonna roll em out like Jack Chick tracts.

[candaceandco]

I talked on the phone to a fellow artist, and learned that there are really 2 aspects to creating a comic: #1 is creativity and #2 is business. I'd like to start with the business aspect of my comic first: I have been earning about a dollar a month since 2011. Comparing that to the sheer amount of time and money invested in producing the cartoon quickly makes me realize that this is an investor's nightmare. Moving back to the creativity aspect: It is paramount that an artist enjoys creating his or her art. That joy always comes through when others view it, and often they, too, greatly enjoy seeing what a happy, engaged artist is up to. People often look forward to what is coming next. To that extent, I am hitting it out of the park.

[Shanny8]

I think it's really rare that a creator can have a "successful" comic with in a given period of time. For every one of those that we see(or believe we see) there are thousands that may do marginally okay, but arent. I've been working on my comic for about a year now, and even though I've made some progress and a few accomplishments(making the trending section a few times)- I cant claim it's successful.

Also success is measured differently by people. Some people may think a lot of subscribers is successful; others may think becoming a premiere comic on Tapas or Webtoons is success. For me, I feel if I can get my comic to the level where readers are talking about it and I'm making a decent enough penny off it as a supplemental income, then that is success for me.

[ryoko]

Hmmm...I feel successful because my readers love my characters as much as I do ^_^

[ahhvecadoes]

7 months. I started hitting my stride this year with Heart Hex, and April was my hiatus month, where I was working on new pages and advertising CONSTANTLY. Before that, HH was just supposed to be a comic I worked on every so often, but there was a lot of encouragement here and on Webtoons so it's now become my focus.

I don't have thousands of subscribers yet, but I think feeling like my art is worth looking at and coming back every week to see is a success for myself.

[ghostmaya]

I took me 5 years before I can say that I'm successful. I'm a freelance manga artist from various writer and sites like upwork. Actually this is my 4th work. 3 of my works are manga and been hiatus because of low audience and readers. Im really desperate that time so study how it works by spying other works specially at webtoon to learn why they become successful despite of lack of art. So somehow I downgrade myself MANGA into WEBTOON format. Then I made OH MY GHOST~! which is supposed to be my experiment work but it turn out that people love it. I usually get 12-100+ subs before now im happy with that since I 600+ here in tapstic and i got noticed much at LINE WEBTOON where most of my audience and PATRONS are from there. I got 11.8k+ subs there and WEBTOON Pledge me every month until July ^_^.

[Kura]

Around 5 or 6 years? And I'm not even really that successful.

[jennula]

Success can be measured in many ways depending on who you're asking.

I can't quit my dayjob and work full time on my comic to pay my bills, and compared to many of my friends, I have very few followers.

BUT the people who read my comic are so nice and great at commenting, which always makes me a bit tense before I release a new page (will they enjoy it???), but in the end always makes me smile since they seem to like the direction that my comic is going =)

Also, in Sweden, I have been published a few times, which doesn't pay my bills, but it's nice to get out there and to be in the same anthologies as some of my comic idols :3

I've been drawing comics since 1998 (with a few hiatuses inbetween), but been more serious about it since 2014-2015, I think =)

[timinabox]

why?
I'm done with comics, there's nothing left to see here

[aFistFull]

Half of it is luck, really. Not discrediting talent but with most things creative it does come down to luck. Hell, I'd be happy if I had a small but dedicated readership. As several people have already said, being 'successful' depends on the person's point of view.

[whirlwyndstorm]

If we're talking readership I haven't said that yet so --- 15 years and counting. My audience has always been small and quiet.
But a major goal for me is actually finishing a comic, so that portion of success all up to me!