One thing I have found about Tapas from talking with a lot of premium creators privately is that a lot of the time, the best way to get a Tapas premium is honestly just to make a comic and focus on doing a polished job of it and building an audience on your own. Tapas do look for people who seem like they produce work to a reliably professional standard and regular schedule that captures the attention of the Tapas audience, and I think they also favour people who seem like go-getters in terms of marketing their own work.
People like that are more likely to get offered premium opportunities, and if you already have or have completed a popular comic on Tapas, they'll probably pay attention to a pitch and give more consideration to more unusual pitch concepts.
I feel like removing the 2000 subs requirement for pitching, while it technically makes sense to allow people whose following was elsewhere (ie. webtoon, print comics or social media), may have been misleading to a lot of people on Tapas. The chances of getting a pitch accepted seem pretty low if you don't have something comparable or close to that sort of following on some sort of platform with a similar audience to Tapas.
People maybe thought that the removal of the requirement was a sign that the company is willing to take a chance on less experienced creators who don't yet have much of a following, but realistically I feel like someone would need an absolutely killer pitch with really polished samples and a concept that sounds like a sure-fire win with the core Tapas audience to pull that off, because to Tapas as a company, investing in a pitch is a gamble. If the work is anything a bit more unusual, it'll be a lot easier to succeed if you've already shown them that you can bring in an audience on Tapas.
Basically, if you have under 1000 subs on Tapas, don't have a huge following elsewhere (like instagram or another webcomic platform) and you're thinking of pitching, I would only do it if the pitch is for something very "safe" ie. close in aesthetic and concept to things with proven popularity on Tapas and with a really strong elevator pitch. Always remember that when you're pitching, you're basically asking somebody to invest money into your product in the hope of a return. They're way more likely to do it if you've already proven that your products have a market/audience.
