How much time did it take you to reach lots of subscribers?

[keac]

Just woke up in the morning, and saw a lot of replies... Gosh! Why some of ya'll talk about sex or boy's love comics? (Actually, I respect that.)

Also, I'm just very very curious on why some people have lots of subscribers (Quickly or Immediately). I sometimes get jealous, but at the same time, they were also my inspiration on making a Tapastic Comic after drawing on paper.

But thanks for your advice, sir @Marchen

[ErithEl]

@keac It's hard not to get jealous sometimes when you see the overnight success stories, but honestly, that's not what you want to be.

It took me about 7 months of consistently posting a page a week for Burning Bright to finally reach 100 subscribers, and I will admit during that time I got frustrated and jealous on occasion, wondering why no one liked my comic, while someone else's with only two pages already had 400 people subscribed to it.

But the thing is, it seems that no one - not even the creator - knows exactly how or why their comic got so suddenly popular. The one thing I can tell you about that is people often subscribe or follow because everyone else is doing it: It's the popular thing to do at the time. I know it sounds stupid, and very much like high school, but it's true.
This isn't necessarily something you want because a portion of those people probably didn't really take the time to read, and another group of them will stop following later on because they went in with expectations for the story that it didn't live up to.

What you want is subscribers or followers to come gradually as the story or comic progresses and grows. To me, this has always meant that whenever I receive a new subscriber (whether it be one a week, or two in a day), that person has actually taken the time to read my story and is genuinely interested to read more. Those are the people who are going to stick around and become invested in your creation. Those are the people you want following you - not a pack of people only doing something because everyone else is at the moment.

And also...yeah, I've noticed it a bit more on Smackjeeves than on Tapastic, but seriously if you want a comic to become quickly popular, make it a BL story. Unfortunately, a good majority of them are purely fanservice, but since I'm a big fan of any truly good romantic relationship in comics, I often find myself wading through the the BL section until you find that gem that actually has a plot worth reading!

[blop]

About getting jealous I understand that feeling, but what you should taking account of is that people who get a lot of subscribers in a few time didn't get their comic done in one night like magic.
I think most of them spend a lot of time on it (especially longform story), writing scenario, drawing characters, drawing the pages... etc. Someone that get over 100 subscriber in one night may have spent months and months working on it.
And maybe you too worked a lot on yours but you can never now how much effort someone put on his comic.
(I'm sure if I publish a comic and nobody subscribe I would get jealous too, but I'll try to think about that).

[Kamikaze]

We joined in late April, so we're barely over a month old. Here's our stats as of today.

That said, I'm with @bmacbride @scythe and @Marchen on this. While creating your comic and getting lots of popularity is definitely a plus, even here on Tapastic it's RARE. Outside of tapastic it's even more rare. Most webcomics rarely make it past 30 updates, and even if you're consistent, and your work is good, it's going to take a long, long time to get to that point.

For example: PvP took 5 years to even get popular, but when it did? It blew up. Turns out some other comic (for the life of me I can't remember which) that was pretty popular had gown down for the day. So they posted up PvP's link as a place for readers to enjoy comics in the same vein.

The reason I'm saying this is because while it'll take a while, the thing that is going to make or break your comic isn't the art or even the story - it's your network. I don't think a single person here who is serious about making comics, is here because they want the 'ass pats' or the popularity. They work hard because they have a story to tell, a career to make and fans they want to share their work with. As artists here, we don't need the 'oh you did a good job!' even though that's really nice to hear, we need people who will go out and tell OTHER people how awesome our comics are. Who spread the word, and make more fans. For lack of a better word we need comic evangelicals, not ass pats.

Hard work, consistent posting, and a solid network of other creatives who support you is what gets you onto the path of success. :3

[faithupgrade]

I thought having update will give you subscribers. I think the key is to get featured in tapastic, and thats the big question how to get there.

[jmhenry]

It's weird with me. The Lostland was on this site for two years and only managed to get 46 readers, but for some odd reason in February it started to blow up. I'm currently at 177 readers and it's just gone up and down from that number. I'd like to believe that most of my readers from Inkblazers just moved here after the shutdown, but most didn't seem to care when I put the message up. I kinda wish I knew what I did right.

[Vikiro_Hop]

I was pleasantly surprised on get the ten subscribers I did off the back of few chuckleworthy posts and rudimentary art. (my first post will be a week old tomorrow.) I'm certain it being a gag strip helped a lot, but I didn't choose that format to get subs or pander to an audience. I really wasn't expecting much audience either since I considered the project a way for me to sharpen my skills (still figuring out this whole drawing on the computer thing.) and just have a bit of online presence. Definitely going around and being active on the site is a good thing. (Not just for exposure, but it helps the community as a whole.) Artists need to network and more importantly have friends that can help them out when it's needed.

[Kecreed]

---

I must admit I wasn't active that much the first two years I joined but I was able to get a couple of subscribers on my first comic. Now its well..I haven't even made it past 10 subscribers for my second comic. Which is kinda discouraging considering that I update it three times a week too. Either way I understand success doesn't just happen and personally I feel happier that I've gotten this far to begin with.

[michaudmarc]

I've been posting just about a month, have approx. 30 odd pages of story to read in my long-form sci-fi comic Arc29and I've only reached 20 subscribers. The comments I've gotten, though, are very, very encouraging. So I look at it as a "field of dreams" mentality. If you build it they will come.*
*if the quality and consistency and regular updates are there.

[KSlinger]

I joined Tapastic around 8 months ago and currently have 405 subscribers to West-- a long form fantasy full of action and drama, as well as eventual romances, (straight, gay, etc). I've been told it's most similar to Avatar The Last Air Bender, Studio Ghibli films, and Mad Max, but I only know Studio Ghibli so I have no idea how accurate this is.

I suppose uptake of subscribers has been relatively laggy compared to some other comics but I wasn't really paying attention until other creators began questioning why I had so few. West doesn't have any of Tapastic's favourite subjects in it-- BL, for one, a clear romance from the beginning, for another, or masses of comedy, quirkyness, etc-- but I know there's way more to it than that.

Scheduling has been a huge problem for me. On a personal level this year has been hell (moved house, new job, deaths, marriages, births, break-ups, the lot!) and the schedule went from weekly to monthly over night. I probably lost more than a few readers over that.

Now I update a bundle of 4/5 pages as frequently as I can and provide behind the scenes sketches and character information whenever I want a break-- not to placate anyone, just because I like it. Obviously when I update the numbers shoot up a little, but it's never by huge amounts and I'm still not very good as keeping track.

I had about 240 subscribers scattered across the internet before I got here but as far as I know none of them have migrated. I very rarely acquire new readers elsewhere. But, again, I'm really not into monitoring these things.

[scottwuming]

When I started, my comic only had very few subs and for a while it was stuck on about a 100. I went on hiatus for months and when I came back, to my surprise, it's already reaching 1000 subs. o_o Since then, every new update gets me more quickly and I very much appreciate that. >< Now when I post a new comic series, it instantly gets way more than I expected. I'm super super thankful. ><
Funny though that my comic with the lowest subscribers is the one that isn't BL. XP

[Kyosu]

As they say my colleagues, you have to post new pages more frequently
take mine One of Us
I don't post it frequently because I waste my time on details. My suggest ,that I'm going to follow, is to make a bunch of pages that let you post at least once a week and have time to make new pages.

[Kayke]

Those are my current stats right now. I started posting my main comic Creep here mid May and I gained followers pretty quickly because I was featured in staff picks and I already had a following from tumblr, twitter, and my own website Creepcomic.com. It's a character driven action story about teen superheroes.

My second comic Snips is actually just a place for me to post my shorter one-shot mini comics instead of making a separate series for each one. I started that in late Sept and it's still pretty low in follower count... which is not a surprise to me because it's only got two episodes, is limited color, and the stories are not as fun and action-packed as the other comic. They're mostly just me working out my thoughts.

I dunno, when you see someone gain followers on a comic really quickly, they probably either got featured early on or brought a following with them from another site. Though I'm sure there are cases where people just have really amazing art and story premise and the public can recognize that. There's a ton of circumstances and factors to take into account.

[PocketFloral]

My current stats on my Horror/slice of life comic Glamour (not counting the 150 followers on the Glam tumblr account) To be honest I'm extremely happy with my number considering the comic isn't even 3 months old yet. The ppl who do sub are also pretty active and vocal, another thing I'm extremely grateful for. I've gotten a staff pick though, so that greatly helped boost up the number.
Something I heard repeatedly in the forums when starting out was that it'll usually take about a year of consistent posting to build up a following and that's definitely put how i feel about my stats in perspective. There has to be existing content for people to make an active choice in whether or not they wanna sub.
One thing I noticed though was once the comic started veering into its horror side i did lose subs. I think mostly because the beginning was so cute and nice people who weren't attracted to horror were still subbing but realized later on "hm this might not be my thing" which is understandable.

[heterodont]

Sharing stats? sharing stats.
I joined tapastic around March, so I've been on this website for roughly 7 months? Granted, I've been working on my comic Kongene Faller since 2012, it's listed as action bc I've never really been able to pin a genre onto it. Prior to uploading to Tapastic, the readership was limited to my group of friends and maybe like 3 strangers. I always feel like the art in the first two chapters is what usually turns people off from reading it. 1k+ views on the first few pages that slowly drop as you go down, then again there are 200+ pages!

Either way, just like everyone else says - it's usually not a good idea to focus on how much views your comic is getting bc soon that behavior can lead to feeling unappreciated, putting too much effort into nothing, yada yada negative feelings. Not to mention if you force ways to get more views, you WILL get an audience but it won't be the audience you want - not to mention you'll just make yourself miserable. Just make your comic for yourself and sooner or later it will get attention!

[allenthomas]

I still haven't reach 100 subscribers, but I have also only been on tapastic for about 9 months. I still don't entirely understand how this subscribers thing works as there are a ton of different comics that are of very high quality (much higher than mine) and not even have 50 subscribers meanwhile others get to 100 within weeks. I honestly think there are three ways that people hit 100+ subscribers,

1. Having a previous following before uploading here thus hitting 100 rather quickly, if they follow you.

2. Having a quality of work amazing enough to grab people's attention on its own without promoting. Even good enough for other to promote for you. (I do this myself for really looking comics)

3. A slow and steady approach, which may be difficult at times and the longest of the three, but will get subscribers due to consistent and reliable posting over time provided the artist doesn't give up. (which could also be said for the previous two)

It should be worth noting that some comics apply to all three numbers above.

[jacintawibowo]

Hello there!
We're JesnCin, and we make Tales from the Well, an all ages dark and creepy fairytale. Often compared to Over the Garden Wall.

We started our comic in June. On that very month alone with only page 3 posted, we reached over 500 subscribers (we were lucky enough to have been featured on Staff Picks!) By August we managed to get 700 subscribers. By early September Tales from the Well was featured on the Tapastic phone app as the Daily Snack, and sky-rocketed to 3.1K subscribers.

On the surface, it looks a lot like an overnight success. However, we believe a lot of Tales from the Well's success came from supporting other webcomic artists long before we started and having a very strong network of artists friends to share your work with! We were completely touched when webcomic artists we looked up to supported our webcomic upon its release, advertising it on their sites and recommending us through Twitter and tumblr. Our friends were even nice enough to draw fanart of my characters, and we were less than 10 pages in. My amazing comic professor recommended us to all her connections, getting some very important art people looking at our comic since day one :B All that helped a lot with getting Tales out there, and we're certainly working hard to keep that going!

[ikushina]

I think it was within a month my BL comic got 200 fans xD people are so thirsty lol.

^le stats
and yes, I putted the BL label to tease the people who hate it. As if the title or the image wasn't enough.. d:

"Manyak comics"... well, got it over time. I remember being so overwhelmed when it got 40+ fans :'D

But keep drawing people! Just DO IT!!

[Dorian_Grey]

@joannekwan I struggled with this exact problem, and I guess I could to get more subscribers with a tag like that?? ...But then I realized my story is more about the struggles faced by that characters and much more beyond that tag.
But I agree, a lot of those tropes bother me a ton and it's unfortunate.

I got about 200+ subscribers in about two months in Unravel. Which is a promising start! (I hope haha!)

That's setting yourself up for failure because good comics are a lot of hard work, and you will not be able to keep your work ethic up if you don't love what you're making. That said, a complete lack of outside encouragement will also kill your work ethic. You gotta find a balance between making what you love and making something that's good.

I completely agree with this. I was just hoping my story would catch interest with no gimmicks and just hard work and a good story (or as best as I can tell it.) I have no following elsewhere.
So with that in mind, I'm hoping that my hard work will slowly but surely pay off. As much as I would like a ton more subscribers (I tend to jump ahead of myself and expect more from myself sometimes,) I'm trying to be very patient.
Patience is key.

[joymontserrat]

I started off really slow. I would get about 5 subs after every new episode I uploaded, and then it just sort of stayed at 46 for about a week. Then I woke up to like 133 and by the end of the day I got about 300+ subs in about a day (I have no idea how).
The whole day was about 10-15 subs a minute.

Lilies For Death | Tapas

Here is my comic, it is romance/fantasy.