Ideal interval for uploading comics on Tapastic

[RonuCreative]

Hi Guys

Hameed here from kirucomics. So i'm a creator and have been uploading my manga series Almier on tapastic for a while now. However now I'm looking to improve my standing on the site and I have a few questions on how to go about it.

First thing's first... I've been uploading a page daily for a while now (sometimes two) but I'm starting to think it's making the comic look too unwieldy and long (I'm on the 13th episode where each episode has about 30 pages). I'm considering going through my past uploads and combining the pages into small chunks instead. What are people's personal experience with this? Is it better to upload one page daily or a chunk of pages once a week or something?
Also is there a way to combine the pages without loosing the previous likes and comments left by fans on each page?

Secondly how does a comic get featured, does your comic have to be in colour to get featured or be considered premium?
Another thing is Almier wasn't made specifically for mobile like a lot of the premium comics... it doesn't have a complete vertical flow... (I always planned to print it as well at some point) in your experience does that decrease the chances of being featured?

P.S: this is my first topic so pls forgive if i've broken some kind of rule or someone else has already posted these questions or something... this forum contains a lot of information lol.

[eleoza]

1st off I'd like to say that Almier is one of my favorite comics here. The art is amazing, the story original and well thought out, it has a nice reading flow. I've been reading Almier for quite a while now and I don't quite understand why it doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, might just be my opinion but it kinda bugs me cuz this comic is so awesome in every way .-.

Updating daily works best indeed. Merging episodes won't matter much I think and you will indeed lose all the comments,
It doesn't matter than Almier is long, in fact I personally prefer long reads.
As far as I know a comic doesn't have to be B/W or colored to get featured, I think they're just looking for comics that stand out and have good art and story. Perhaps they didn't see Almier yet ^_~

Ok so now just lemme go ahead and tell everyone here: ALMIER IS AWESOME! GO CHECK IT OUT! :3

[RonuCreative]

Oh wooow thank you so much Lucazu... I feel so honoured that you enjoy Almier so much and I hope and pray you're right about it just not being noticed yet.

You've actually made my day lol no joke... I didn't think reading a reply or comment could bring me so much joy hahaha... you really are an awesome person loool

[eleoza]

ah I'm glad I could cheer you up ^^ Just being honest though, you work so hard on Almier. I help hoping it get noticed too, it just has tooooo~ Keep it up <3

[Herofeeder]

i noticed when i uploaded 30 comics in 30 days, my sub count standed at 25
when i made 3 days break between the each i started getting more likes and more subs...i currently have 79 and i get to talk to my subs
a lot more often then i did 2 months ago
im guessing some subs dont like it when they get notifications of the comic on a daily basis
they preffer it more "oh look its been a while lets see what he made now"
now that could just be me and my subs : p
Pure example is i have about 10 to 15 likes on my old comics where as i have 20 23 likes when i have 3 days to update the next one .
my guess is they can get fed up with the comic if its popping up non stop . and bcs of that my sub count went higher then before.
i guess the best way you can see if thats true or false is you can compare your sub count with the Views and then with the likes .
and check your older work to see how many views likes you had compared to your newer work.

cheers

[RonuCreative]

thank Lu, I sure will

[RonuCreative]

This is a good idea and you make a very valid point Herofeeder... tbh i can kinda see people getting fed up with seeing notifications pop up everyday but that would only be a problem if I was loosing subscribers... it shouldn't affect the new potential fans that aren't currently subscribed to your work.
I'm not really loosing subscribers so i guess the subs don't mind that much.

Anyways thank you for your reply... you've given me something to think about.

[shazzbaa]

Secondly how does a comic get featured

No one knows!!

There's a lot of discussion about what gets a comic picked by staff picks and what gets a comic featured on the front page and honestly? We don't really know. I feel like to some extent it's whatever catches the staff's eye. Comics with small archives and big archives have both been featured. Comics formatted for Tapastic have been featured, comics formatted for print have been featured. Both b/w and colour comics have been featured.

Personally, I think it's better to not worry about getting featured. Unless you want to email Tapastic and ask them to feature you, it's a really low odds of happening, so in the meantime it's best to focus on just promoting your comic yourself imo!

[Aspie_Gamer]

The easiest way to increase your comics position is to have a consistent schedule. Having done the "chunks" method before, I've noticed I've gotten more views, likes, comments, and even subs when I update one page a time. In fact, because I was updating the same episode before, this caused viewers to have to wait for the episode to load because it was so long (I'm talking about 30 or so pages here per chapter) and by doing the one page per episode method instead as of chapter 4 of my comic, Life of an Aspie, its been easier for viewers to read as a whole and its gotten more feedback from my subs than the previous chapter, chapter 3, did.

[sarrowsmith10]

im guessing some subs dont like it when they get notifications of the comic on a daily basis

I can't agree with this enough. Don't over saturate your readers. I'm a follower of your comic, but I usually only look at your comic maybe once a week. And I don't always go back to read older pages, because I just don't have time, so I only look at the page that happened to be uploaded on the day I logged in. I'm mostly at the point where I have no idea what is going on because I missed so much. So I gaze at the nice art (and it IS very nice art!) and then move on... 1 or 2 pages a week, or 1 episode with 3-4 pages in it a week would be a much better pace for your comic IMHO.

I prefer comics that have a small bunch of pages in one episode, only because it takes forever sometimes for my browser to load new site pages every time I have to scroll. And on my phone you actually have to hit the "next" button and the whole process is very slow and I get impatient.

[Jazdraws]

This may be a little out of the blue, but do you find that uploading at a certain time of day helps? I'm based in the UK and have mucked around with uploading a page to coincide with what I thought would be peak times in the US. Of course I know that people from all over use Tapastic, but I have noticed a large number of US artists and readers.

[RonuCreative]

Yeah Shazzbaa, thank you for that. I appreciate it... I'm really not too fussed but i just thought I'd ask incase there was a simple answer that I'm missing out on lol.

[RonuCreative]

@Aspie_Gamer I seee... thank you for your feedback... so just to confirm, you're in support of uploading a page a day then?

Oh wow, @sarrowsmith10 I'm dismayed to hear this... there's no point in following and reading if you don't understand what's happening... what do you think i can do to fix this... obviously going forwards there's the option of uploading 3 to 4 pages a week (which I'm still considering) but what about all the episodes that's already out there...?

What would need to happen to persuade you to go back over and gain a good understanding of the story?

@Jazdraws I've thought about that too, that different times might play a role and i even played around with updating at different times but didn't get any conclusive results. How did your experiments go, what did you find? what are the peak US times in GMT ?

[sarrowsmith10]

Honestly? Because your series is so long I'd actual prefer to just buy a physical copy or a complete digital version. That way I don't have to scroll through Tapastic's website which can be really slow once you have a ton of episodes loaded.

I don't think there is an easy solution, and lots of people who have huge amounts of episodes are all faced with this problem. Even my comic is getting close to having similar problems.

But mostly, I can go back and read things during my first pass at the comic, but if you are uploading too often for me to keep up, then I just won't keep up. You could always start a patron, if you want people to see pages faster.

XD I feel so bad that I admitted that I got lost in your story. Please don't let it be discouraging, I really like your work! I should probably go back and catch up since you want me too. Haha... #donthateme

[RonuCreative]

looool @sarrowsmith10 haha I can't hate you lool. And please don't feel bad, you were being honest and I really appreciate honesty. I could totally see where you were coming from. You're right in saying that it's a difficult problem to tackle... I'm not discouraged. I guess I'm probably just being selfish in wanting you to really understand the story right now... when I create these stories, i don't know why but it's very fufilling to see people enjoying it and coming on the journey with me... it's almost like I'm connecting with all the readers lool.

Anyways I always kinda planned to print one huge long book for the first season... so now i will make doubly sure that i do so just so that you can get one

[TACOBERTO]

I'd rather not bother with vying for the attention of the daily featured as it's dependent on the current mood of the Tap mods. Just keep in mind the format of Tapastic. This site was most definitely made with a mobile audience in mind so it might throw off the flow of longer narrative comics in favor of the quick one page per chapter comic. Which sucks because I'm reading through your comic right now and it's fantastic.

[sarrowsmith10]

Yesssss. I'd be so happy to support a printed book!!