How Quickly Did Your Comic Get Subscribers?

[skippyjoeskilling]

I've been posting my comic every week for five months and still only have about 20 subscribers. Is that normal for a first time creator? How quickly did you guys gain subscribers?

[punkarsenic]

yh thats pretty normal, but a little slower than average. looking at your comic, the premise is cool and the art is definitely passable - hows your promotion? people cant subscribe if they dont see your comic. you should get some promotion on twitter and tumblr down - 1980s werewolf stuff is a very tumblr-appealing thing, and twitter has lots of opportunities to plug webcomics

that said, i gained subscribers blimmin slow. i have 300 subs now and ive been posting just under 2 years - my first few chapters were pretty hard to read, which holds me back. other people i know got that many in six months, but were riding on the momentum of a previous series or short and had more experience to begin with.

[fuyudust]

I started out in early Jan, I have 540 something subs now. It was hella slow at first but I think it's gaining faster recently.

[KSlinger]

I've been here for four years (ish) and have only just reached 3k subs. I haven't been mega active in terms of advertising but tend to get a sub a day. A few years ago I took part in a site-wide collab which gave me a boost in numbers but otherwise it's been slow. I put that down to lack of/irregular updates.

For a 20 page comic (assuming each update is a single page, but even if it weren't) that seems pretty normal to me. Do you advertise it at all?

[nekoendy]

I've been posting my comic 3 times a week, the subscriber count dropped from 24 to 22 and got stuck there for several months.
I finished the comic sooner as a 25 page one-shot today.

My comics don't even get comments, let alone subscribers...

[beta1042]

hmm I started in Oct and I have close to 140 subs. Yeah it's a slow slow growth here on tapas.

[Im_moron]

3 years and 40ish subs

I think 10 ish of those subs come from after the remake, and it's been up for a year

[Kann]

Little over 50 subs in four months. I upload three times a week and advertise my series here and there. I'm new to all this comic making stuff. XD

[feardeer]

I was lucky enough to get New and Noteworthy within my first week of posting, so I shot up pretty quickly in subs. Since then it's been a steady decline though. I'm currently stalled out and have been for quite some time, so I can confirm that natural growth can be a bit of a slow crawl.

I think the best thing you can do is stay engaged with your current audience. Engagement is more important than sub count! I manage to get comments on every update, despite having a relatively slow paced introductory chapter, and I suspect it's in part thanks to the fact that I reply to nearly all of them. (The only time I don't reply is when I struggle for days to think of what to say and come up with nothing haha). I imagine new readers see me posting in the comments and it makes it feel like a less impersonal, more welcoming atmosphere. I hope so, anyway!

[Purplegirl]

Lol I've been on here for like 2 years and I only have 11 subs, which I guess is kind of my fault because I can't update often thanks to my hectic life.

[GesuGesu]

Almost 3 years. 6k subs. Write BL. (finger tap to forehead)

[djwaglmuffin]

16 subs in a week? That doesn't sound bad.

But I'm in novels. Not sure what to expect, to be honest.

[YangKoete]

I started out about a year ago and I have 73 unique subscribers.

Personally, it fully depends on;
1. Time of year since there's ALL sorts of things.
2. Frequency of uploads.
3. Quality of uploads.
4. Overall interraction with the community.

If I didn't do #4, I'd have only 40 or so probably.

I was on Trending ONCE, but hey, I'm happy.

[josh_reynolds_draws]

For my current series: https://tapas.io/series/Bad-Idea-League, I started about 4 weeks ago, with 10 pages so far, and my current subscriber count is...

Six.

[A-weird-girler]

Way slower than yours. I only have 17 subscribers.

[dawgofdawgness]

Before I got featured I had a decent climb of 10-15 subs per update, I think now I get about 20-30? But I also lose a couple every once in a while. I think the trick is to make every update have content and try to avoid “filler” pages because of the plot isn’t moving quick enough your readers might lose interest. That’s why “page-an-update” doesn’t always work.

[geovannicharles001]

Took me like four months to get 80, but most of them are people from my school. I say keep at it and ask friends and family.

[LortiaMJB]

Currently on 12, started a month ago. 3 of which are family/friends, rest all random subs. I'm not complaining.

[akiocha]

Hey, my situation seems to be very different from other peoples posts. I used tapas back when it was still called tapstic so I already had some followers when i started my recent new webtoon however, I easily got several hundred followers a day maybe about 1000 a week because I was placed and the New and Noteworthy page. I find however that after it was taken down it is ridiculously ridiculously difficult to get followers on Tapastic. I have no idea what happened to the site. Back in 2013 it was so much easier and now even though I have nearly 5000 followers the number actually barely changes from week to week. I find that webtoons does a much better job of trafficking new readers to their discover comics. That could be an option for you. Overall, the sad truth is that Tapas is just really saturated with comics so unless you get a feature/advertisement from Tapas, it seems like you barely get any followers, even for people like me who have a higher amount of followers. Goodluck!

[amortelito]

Yes, is normal. I have been here for 30 days I have 36 subs (who I love dearly) But daily updates have not be sufficient at all to have any traffic whatsoever. If it was not for the forum I would have 3 subs and 2 views. Looking at the stats some days I have like 2 views. I'm totally okay if people think my comic is garbage and that is why the don't subscribe, But I'm worried that people apparently are not even aware we exist.