How to deal with the follow unfollow method

[martinadenatale]

Hi guys, I'm writing this topic because I'm just annoyed by the follow/unfollow situation. This is one of the reason why I'm recently posting very little on instagram since on that social network this happens almost daily. It was very disappointing to realize that Tapas is not free from this kind of stuff. Receiving a follow/unfollow p**s me off, especially because growing on this platform is a slow process and costs a lot of work.
Do you have experimented follow/unfollow on your profiles? How do you react?

[DualDragons]

Yeah, when i first started out on tapas i got a load of them. Not knowing the ways there i just went with it and thought it was cool. After that i realised that most of them didn't even read my comic and one guy was just plain advertising on my wall. I unsubscribed almost all of them but sadly i have a bunch of dead subs left, which hurts my stats

Nowadays i don't do sub4sub or follow for follow. I also made a statement on my profile that i don't do these kind of things.
If someone asks me to follow or check out their comic on my wall or advertises in my comment section i just block them.

[martinadenatale]

Yes, follow/unfollow is a "silent" sub4sub. Someone just start to follow you hoping to receive the same back but after a little time unfollow you without reading a single panel. This is totally useless and also nerve-racking

[LadyN]

As a person who hasn’t updated any of their works in at least a month or two, nobody really unsubscribes since they aren’t bombarded with notifications. I don’t initiate follow4follow or sub4sub but if someone asks me I’ll sub and maybe check it out.

[martinadenatale]

Sorry, I didn't get. Notifications lead a person to unsubscribe? When you publish a new chapter your followers receive a notification, right? Is the way it work. I thought updates were important and was bad to not upload new progresses. But maybe I didn't understood what you meant

[KoreanTacos]

Ignore it, people are just jerks sometimes, just continue your work as if you aren't doing it for others, but to at least accomplish something.

[martinadenatale]

Yes, of course I will and I like to do this for myself but some mechanisms sometimes are... discouraging.

[DogshitJay]

Do deadsubs hurt stats? I had no idea.

[DualDragons]

Yeah i heard they do.
In fact, views, likes and comments are better for your stats because they can put you into trending if you gain a lot of them. Whereas I don't really know what subscribers do other than unlock the milestones.
Again, i don't know the full details of it but there is a reason why people don't like sub4sub.

[Kelheor]

Sorry, I didn't get. Notifications lead a person to unsubscribe? When you publish a new chapter your followers receive a notification, right?

I believe it works like this: a person subscribes to you, maybe they didn't like your comic that much or just started reading, then they forget about you, next time they see a new update they decide the comic is really not for them and unsubscribe. When you don't update, they just don't remember your comic is in their library (and many people have thousands of those), so they don't unsubscribe =)
So it's a usual situation when you gained readers, but then with the next update some are unfollowing.

[martinadenatale]

Oh, got it. It make sense Well, better loose then.

[LadyN]

You definitely didn’t understand. Updates are good. On the other hand, most people who don’t read comics/books in sub4sub don’t really care for you or your story. They just want those stats up or something.

People then forget your story exist after subscribing so you don’t ever have to worry about losing subs cause they’ve already ignored your existence.

Sorry if it didn’t make sense. Basically “people just don’t care“ is the message I’m trying to get across.

(And I just realized someone answered your question.)

[martinadenatale]

Yes yes, I got it now! Also another person explained me Thanks anyway <3

[snowy]

I just lost two subs right after posting a new page, so thanks for explaining what that was about. This has been happening fairly regularly actually, so I probably have an even smaller audience than I thought I had.
On the other hand, comments and likes are up slightly, so at least I'm not getting worse at this, I guess.

I have no clue how to deal with this, and yes, it is flippin' annoying as heck.

[martinadenatale]

I'll do a new update in few minutes. Let's see what happens

[snowy]

The weird thing is that this also happens to me on webtoons, where you can't even see who subbed you, so how they expect me reciprocate is beyond me.
And if they just really suddenly don't like it anymore, I wish they'd at least bother to tell me why.

[martinadenatale]

Yes, maybe an explanation could be useful.

[Kelheor]

And if they just really suddenly don't like it anymore, I wish they'd at least bother to tell me why.

These are mostly just people who were not really invested in the comic.
Every time I post on Webtoons I lose something like 20 subs, if each of them will write they are leaving for the better comics every time, I would choke and die at some point

[snowy]

Lol, ok, fair point.

[mappypaint]

Sub for sub can actually hurt your ranking in the trending section if the subs aren't actually reading your comic. So just a heads up.

It was from this thread, an old subscriptions vs subscriptions topic back in Nov 2015. So this was before the need of subs to unlock the tip and milestones feature.