How many were your first subscribers?

[Ariallove]

I feel you...I was also wondering how they quickly gain that many subscribers for a short period of time. My first episode only got 3 subscriber but I just keep updating my comics and I got more.I asked for some tips here and got the same reply as what AnnaLandin said. I also became active here in forums and sometimes I advertise my comic.After that I gain more than usual.

[zetina]

What qualifies as "the beginning" haha
I'd guess I'm currently in my "beginning".

I imagine for most, it's just a steady growth until something happens to get a ton of exposure at once, or alternatively when the steady growth grows over itself because more people can spread your story around. Like a root branching out.

[niinasalmelin]

I think numb had somewhat 11 subscribers or less and I'm still starting out soo there's that. New subscribers come every month so the growth is slow but steady.

[shaylafarley5]

I started posting back in late March of 2015 (a b-day present to myself :p) and my first few subscribers were 7 I think. Now I have 30, makes me very happy!

[Valyson]

Well I'm still new and my comic Omi-Ni has just reached 29 subscribers. I'm still curious at how some of the creators who are new, post one page and have over 1k subscribers in less than a week! I think about their art and the story, and how they got all the attention! I hope to reach that sort of number one day.

[shaylafarley5]

It's mainly because they have a huge following on Deviantart and or tumblr then comes to Tapastic to publish. I've seen some that have just 1 page posted and gain 200 plus follower and don't post anything for a month or more.

[Doubtcent]

I started with 2 on day 1. Then I reached 10 a long time later.
It took until month 4 to reach 20. And only after creating 60 episodes did I ever break even with the subscriber count. It took forever.

Then I started over, and now I have a conglomerate of 125+ (mostly because a lot of my old subscribers carried over) after 10 weeks.

[Marvin]

It's mainly because they have a huge following on Deviantart and or tumblr then comes to Tapastic to publish.

While that may be part of the reason, it's not the only one. Here's what I picked up as a complete nobody (I have no deviantart, tumblr, facebook or anything) :

• An easily likable story : As I said, I came from nowhere but got 574 subs the first month. I believe that my thumbnail was attracting enough and my story is sort of mainstream (a bit, I guess), using familiar tropes that makes it appealing to a large audience. I did not write it that way for that reason of course, I'm my own audience, it's just a happy coincidence, so don't make your story mainstream if it means destroying it just for the sake of gaining subscribers.

• Being Staff picked : I had the chance to get staff picked about a month after begining which got me 200 subs in a day and enabled me to stay featured on the main page for several days after that.

• Being featured in the spotlight : I haven't had the chance to get there but I suppose it's the same as being staff picked, only better =)

• Appearing in the daily snack : One day I had the good idea to post 4 pages in one go instead of just one, which got me in the daily snack and I gained 2000 subs in 24h, that was crazy. I was really happy to suddenly be able to reach out to the readers that only used the app and couln't find my comic any other way... So my best advice would be to post several pages in one go when you begin with your comic (if it's a long-form story, not talking about gag-a-days, those can get you into the DS anytime) I know the staff is more likely to feature the beginning of long-form stories so that the new reader isn't completely lost.

• Posting thank you drawings. (It contributes more in a steady income of subscribers rather than a big boom but it helped a lot at the beginning I suppose) I know a lot of people discovered my comic via the TY drawing I keep posting on my readers' wall, (though I'm completely behind on that, with that 2000-subs-in-a-day thing). When I keep seeing the same drawing on everyone's profile, I inevitably check the comic out since a lot of people seem to love it... (Though I post my drawing privately when the readers has a hidden reading list). Note that this is a side effect, I don't post TY drawings to advertise myself on other's wall but more as a way to open communication and encourage people to leave a comment.

One of my friend who also came from nowhere posted the first four pages of her comic and immediately got staff picked and featured in the Daily Snack. Bam ! More than 3000 subs on that first glorious day.

Anyway, sorry if this feels like I'm bragging, it was absolutely not my intention, but I just wanted to give the perspective of someone who got a lot of subs pretty quickly without bringing their tumblr army with them. Pure luck played a big part in that too I guess.

[shaylafarley5]

Oh wow congrats! And you're not bragging, it just that most people i follow or stumble upon usually come from a different site then disappear for a while. Luck of the draw it seems?, maybe I'll get there one day.

[gone]

I'm aiming to get more then 1 XD

[Jabbage]

@Marvin - wow, that's living the dream right there!

I started a week ago here on Tapastic, and one of my comics has 20 subs, the other has 30.
I'm really intregued by the fact that my older black and white comic is "winning" so far! I think the thumbnail is grabbing more people because its got a mysterious monster in it, rather than an old lady (I guess old ladies are boring I'll have to try to work out how to fix that.)

Over on my main site at ComicFury my first comic started to build more of a following after it had ended than when it was currently updating, so when I started posting my new comic it gained a lot of subs very quickly just because people knew me/liked the other comic. I know a couple of people were really baffled that I had so many subs so quickly, I had to reassure people, nooo I've worked for a year to build that readership!

[2rinaran]

I actually do remember the day I posted my very first page of Mew Mew Parfait and I kept checking back to see how it was being received (I'm sure we all get excited?). In the first 24 hours, I got 18 subscribers and that was pretty impressive in my book. Now I'm 10 pages in with 56 subs. I expect it will be a long time to 100 and who knows if I'll ever see 1k. I would do special things for those milestones as well, but for now I'm settled with doing small contests time to time to go with the story instead of the sub count. ^^

[joannekwan]

Hm, I gotta go into my series performance stats because I really don't remember. : P
I'll just give what I have for the first month for each of them.
Demon House: 190
Heavy Horns: 330
Erie Waters: 200 and it was hanging around 500 for a while then I got to be one of the Daily Snacks and the sub count went to 1.4k about.
At Ease (hasn't really started yet): 250

[SpavVy]

I think my first subscribers were somewhere in the 30's or 40's in about a month or so.

[heterodont]

According to the subscribers chart in the dashboard, first month of uploading I apparently only had 5! Now I have 531 after...nearly a year of updating (11 months)

I don't quite pay attention to my subscriber number so it is kinda startling to see such a jump...even if it's spread out through a year.

[Pandastrophic]

For my comic Socializing101 I first started posting back June 27 1 month later I got around 700 subscribers.
Safe to say I almost got a hear attack I was so happy as I didn't have any expectations for my comic since I've had previous webcomic projects back in 2010-2011 which I barely had any success with at all. So I was kinda convinced that my current webcomic wouldn't do so well either but I wanted to work on it just for fun, people ended up liking it so that's good ;v;

[Mharz]

I started The Angel with Black Wings on March 2015. The subs actually got stuck on 27 until I started to get active on Forums and Twitter on October and it managed to gain 129 subs as of this day. (I feel pathetic.) I've been at this for almost a year and I only got this number. (Sorry if I'm unlikeable.)

[60Six]

Looking back at some dates, City of Blank looked like it had about 800 in its first month (Which I still can't believe). That first month was without a doubt my most successful and I think I owe it a lot to the fact I already had about 40 pages finished, so I was able to upload every day, sometimes a couple times a day. Apparently at one point I made it into the daily snack as well, which helped a ton. Things have obviously slowed down a tooon since that first month with me only updating twice a week now.
A lot like @Marvin said though, I really hope this doesn't come off as bragging! But like they said as well, I just also wanted to provide experience as someone who didn't have a Tumblr or DeviantArt army backing them. For me personally, the huge boost was just having a very big queue of pages to post at such a frequent rate that my comic was constantly visible on some page of Tapastic for about a month. And that is exactly what I advise to artists now if they're thinking of starting a comic: Finish your first chapter before you start posting it. Then go ahead and post it like crazy (once a day or even more if you have that many pages), make it so it's constantly seen and get an audience from your frequent posting that will stick around once things catch up and you figure out your normal pace.

[Marvin]

For me personally, the huge boost was just having a very big queue of pages to post at such a frequent rate that my comic was constantly visible on some page of Tapastic

Same here, I did that the first week, it helped a lot !

[blop]

Glorious indeed xD I wasn't expecting that.

I think your art style is the first thing people look at, so the more appealing it is the more sub you'll get.
It might be a bit sad but I think at first it's easier to get people to be interested in your comic with good art than a good story, because it's easier to judge right away. And even after that I think people tend to be less critic when a story is not perfect if the art is good enough.
You can get famous with crappy art or an art style that is not mainstream and a really good story but it will take more time I think.