How to prevent decline of engagement on webtoon?

[SharpKatsudon]

Hi everyone,

There’s a thing I’ve always noticed on webtoon (or webcomic platforms in general)
No matter the amount of subs a story has, after a couple of episodes the number of likes and comments progressively drops, of course there are a few exceptions but I’m currently in that case and I don’t know how to prevent it.

I’ve started my story a year ago, I’ve built quite a Nice subscribing (almost 20k readers), I feel like there’s a real community of fans gathering around my story, but in the meantime I’ve seen the likes per episode decline :

After my 10th episode, it looks like people got less involved in my comic despite regular updates and (or so I hope) some improvements in both my art and story telling

This is pretty frustrating, especially as my subscribers count keeps increasing at a steady pace, are there any tips to prevent this from happening?

My comic : https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/nemesis-chronicles/list?title_no=323576

[milejdyvan]

Honestly, I wish I could get that much engagement and likes Just saying. I would say it's natural for the decline though. Some people lose interest. Eventually, they will go up anyway, but the first chapters will forever have the most engagement by default.

[HGohwell]

Early chapters always have the most engagement across the board since people start with the early chapters to decide if they like it or not, of course. They've also been up longer. Your later chapters are probably a more accurate depiction of your readership. You don't judge a books popularity by how many people read the first few pages and put it down, after all.

And also, we get these posts this time every year. There's almost always a drop in engagement August/September as schools go back from long holidays.

I'm not sure there is much of a way to prevent it beyond the standard advice of advertise the hell out of yourself and keep improving. Really you're just experiencing the nature of webcomics as it is across all platforms. (I believe this is called the law of diminishing returns and it's awful but it's a very real thing)

[bear1]

There is nothing really you can do about this.
As it was mentioned, older episodes are seen by more people and often liked more. Also, people tend to ‘like’ the first episode of a new series more in support of the creator. Later they just read them without necessarily hitting the like button.

Also, not all your active readers immediately check out your newest update. With weekly updates it sometimes takes the whole week or longer until everyone got around reading the newest episode (some even wait for several updates to binge). Hence the fewer likes.

Also, just to let you know, on my series the likes have cut nearly in half since EP1, but my readers are still super active and chatty in the comments. As far as I understand your readers are quite active in the comments too. And that’s what really matters
Therefore I wouldn’t sweat over the likes That decline is just natural, imo

I think more important is to keep the series rolling and not letting the numbers bring you down.
If it really bothers you a lot, you can always ask your readers to hit the like button. Webtoon readers are usually very eager to help with such a small gesture and when we asked our audience to do that on our other comic, we usually get a spike in likes for a while