If you just start a new comic today, would you bother with tumblr?

[Zpreader]

I doubt I would post a comic there again. I think it's good for a general account to post your art and give updates on your progression with a project, but even then Instagram may be more useful.

[lilydusk]

Haha oh yeah! I totally get you. When I decided to get on the Tapas forum (yeah I even need to 'decide' these things lol why) I kind of had this idea that I want to interact with creators more than to promote my work. Webtoon is definitely serving its purpose for getting our work out there with minimal (actually zero) promotional activity. Which is awesome because it leaves you with more time to work on the stuff that actually matter. I think if anything, it's the best place to start off at, to grow followers (my humble opinion).

Anyhow, I'm digressing. I'm glad you started this topic because I vaguely thought I was the only that just couldn't get Tumblr to work for them, haha!

[modrawmanga]

I was lurking on the forum for a while too, before I started to interact haha, and it's a great to see the thoughts of others who somewhat going thru the same thing,
cos if I ask people in offline life about tumblr, or anything webcomic related, theyll give me funny faces and say things like: why are you wasting time to create these free contents for random people on the internet... Lol...

But after hearing all the others opinions... I don't think I'll bother with tumblr, unless I got nothing better to do....

[punkarsenic]

id say tumblr is a useful platform for promotion and sharing art, but not as a platform to post your comic. i posted my comic there for a while and gained very very little traction, and its better to just refer people over to your patreon or tapas or smth else

[spadesart]

im gonna be that guy and just let you know that zamii really hates when people bring up the steven universe incident and doesnt want it to be mentioned any more because it sends her into panic attacks when she thinks about it. (no i was not involved in that discourse either)

And since I know somebody is going to try and defend that cesspool,

ive actually been posting updates with my comic there for over a year and everyones just been friendly with me? my audience is even mostly sj crowd people and i havent seen any callout posts yet lmao
i dont think the site would be upset with loaa, theres a pretty sizeable autism spectrum community on there thats always happy to see stories about their experiences by people on the spectrum (im allistic so lmk if im wording this wrong)

and i mean if you block someone on there they cant even share or like your posts and they cant see you in tags

but like as a functional website its not the best for posting comic pages even with the new 'notifies when posts' option available

[spadesart]

tumblr is good for posting art and update notification posts like this

and theres a webcomic format theme available but i prefer not to read webcomics on that site since im mostly on mobile unless im drawing

[Croik]

If you're posting update alerts on Tumblr, you should know that sometimes they hide posts with outside links in them from the search function! But there's an easy workaround, if you create a redirect page on your theme and use that link instead.

[TheThoughtfulBoxful]

Hi hey hello howdy I'm new here-- but I've been lurking the forum for a little while and thought I'd ask a question thats been on my mind pertaining to webcomic-ing. I hope this wasn't already asked/discussed--- but if so-- SORRY BUT, on to my question; What platform do you find is best to host your webcomic independently? Meaning, how do you go about making "your own site" for just your comics content. I am personally thinking of two options. Tumblr: I've seen a lot of creators …

Found a similar thread!

[NickRowler]

Tumblr is a blog site. It is designed for quick posts that people scroll through quickly. Fanart and dumb memes do well on this platform, anything that requires more time to read/look at doesn't. Building up a following is very difficult, most people just want fanart and memes. Even if you make something that hits 16K notes, that doesn't mean people will give a damn about you or your other posts.

People will sometimes fuss about the "harassment" on Tumblr. For this I say, if you avoid politics and hot button issues, you will be OK. I once got hassled by some pro-gun loonies because I made a post about being anti-gun. If you get dumb anon messages from angry people, just ignore them. No one hassles you solely for being white, male, cis, or straight unless you are being racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic. For the most part, people leave you alone. There are some "edgelords" on Tumblr, sometimes you have to be careful of them.

Tumblr also has a lot of porn bots.

[sandpaperdaisy]

This explains a lot. Thanks for the tip!!

[YangKoete]

I upload a few links to my tumblr. Not much else. It gets 1 - 3 people each time, so hey.

[Strontium]

My comic original was hosted on tumblr, and still is. It's where the www.heroesofthantopolis.com URL goes. I don't have that many readers on tumblr - it's mostly just my tumblr friends who aren't also on Tapastic. However... it's a much better website to show off in professional settings. Business people who do not know about webcomics would find Tapastic hard to understand, and it doesn't look super professional. My tumblr page is clean, has artwork all by me, design by me, etc, so a person looking to hire me knows I have some knowledge about website matinence and graphic design. And since I'm applying for a lot of marketing roles, that's important to demonstrate!!!

So yeah, I wouldn't write off hosting a comic on tumblr with your own URL like I do because it looks nice on a business card and appears more professional to non-webcomic people. It's like a portfolio site for your comic, and if you buy your URL at the right place it can be very cheap (since hosting on tumblr is free.)

[sprakdesigns]

My comic does way better on tumblr, like, my top-hitting comic on Tapas has 17 reactions, while on tumblr the same comic has 25,000 reactions. I started my comic at around the same time on Tapas and Tumblr with no followers.

I think the site isn't friendly super 'posting' and 'style' friendly to comics, and I don't know how long-styled 'serious' series would do, but I've seen a lot of other comedy/slice of life comics get huge popularity on tumblr. The tumblr reblog is way more helpful to getting your comic quickly spread around then anything I've seen Tapas do.

It depends on your comic, but honestly the only possible waste in putting your comic up on multiple sites is a bit of wasted time, which isn't the worst thing to bargain when trying to figure out what works best for your comic.

[modrawmanga]

Good point, being everywhere is not necessarily productive.

Lots of great pointer from everyone here, I definitely have a clear picture at this point of do's and don't s.

Thanks everyone!