Hi I'm Headypigeon4180
My series Ice Cream Truck of Doom is currently on 5 different websites. The purpose of this thread isn't so much to self promote but I'd like to share how I feel about my time (so far) on each site, as well as provide insight to anybody who is looking to upload on Tapas itself or try out a new comic hosting site. I've been meaning to make a thread like this for a while and after hitting 500 views on Tapas (yay). I figure this will be a good way to celebrate, if anybody is curious this is my comic series https://tapas.io/episode/2765378
To start off i'll go in order of which sites I joined first I will be using my Hawk and Flo themed Image links.
Webtoons:
^This is my Mr Nippy Inspired version of the logo ^^;
Webtoons is the site I very first uploaded my comics onto, I was very new to putting my stuff online and I needed time to get used to a lot of stuff such as pixel dimensions, vertical scroll format, e.t.c. The site isn't the best if you're a newcomer wanting to get noticed unless you're making an LGBTQ+ romance novel. It was a very good site for me starting off because it meant I could make a ton of mistakes and learn from them without getting too much scrutiny for it. My comics perform worst on webtoons, primarily because my stuff simply isn't inline with what's expected of a web comic on the site. The other reason is I feel early on I made a lot of downright strange beginner mistakes. These include and are not limited to making the borders between panels too small, dirty looking and questionable shading techniques. Questionable hand lettering and vacuum packed word balloons. Which when you look at how polished and professional many webtoons look isn't going to go down well with the site's core demographic. That being said my comics did better than I expected them too, I launched into Ice Cream Truck of Doom on the 17th of April of 2022 and it will be celebrating it's 1 year anniversary in a couple of months. The best I have ever done in a month is 300 views.
I wholeheartedly recognise that webtoons as a brand has been met with controversy the past year, bare in mind I have not been on the site that long. My first attempts at putting stuff online was the 22nd November 2021. My perspective understandably will most likely not line up with people who have been on webtoons for much longer. I do want to say that even though my comics flop harder than a beached whale on the site. My main reason of staying on the platform is I genuinely love the community. The community is the best part of webtoons and for me personally is the reason I stick around ^^;. That being said I do find it annoying that I can't click on the names of people in the comments section to check out their pages. Notifications can also be a bit erratic in my experience and many people have resorted to installing apps to ameliorate (improve) this issue. There are many times where I get a comment from months ago and only see it because I decided to give my comics a proof read. The single worst aspect of webtoons is something virtually all of us know well, fear and at times are truly angered by it. It is to us in the webtoons community would consider oue el Chupacabra. I am of course talking about the rating system.
Do I need to read before I rate? no, oh dear...
Why is the rating system so bad? well a rating system in and of itself is not a bad idea. In fact I support them in concept and i've seen them executed well on various platforms (with varying success). The one thing that makes the webtoons rating system bad among anything else at least for me personally is this. You can rate yourself 10/10 as a result Webtoons with a 10/10 rating look dead and as a result 8.5 to 9/10 webtoons have better ratings as it means i've viewership is active. Second is You can rate a comic without reading it ,as it is located at the top right of the chapter select screen. On Comic Fury (which I will get into later) there is an out of 5 rating system, however in order to rate a comic on that site you need to click on the comic and at the very least have read one page of it. The third problem is partly a symptom of problem 2 people are scared of getting review bombed so community discords and other social media will rate a webtoon 10/10. Not necessarily because many of the people who are rating 10/10 feel that way about the authors work. I like rating systems I genuinely do and I have nothing against the idea of webtoons having one but please move it to the bottom of chapters. That way in order to leave a rating you will have at least seen a sample of the artwork beforehand. Anyway there are people who have explained this already that's my obligatory rating rant out of the way.
The main strength of webtoons is right now it's the most popular webcomic hosting site as a result there are a lot of discord serves you can join, which can allow you to network with other creators. If you're active on social media the social media team is very friendly and will have events that can allow you to promote yourself via twitter. Being on Twitter and discord is a must for Webtoons it makes the experience that much better. There's also a currency for reading creator webtoons, I don't read many comics other than ones my friends give me so I can't weigh in on that aspect too much as i'm a comic creator these days. It takes up a lot of my time compared to when I was a kid and collected comics. If anybody would like to give a more in depth perspective on being a reader on webtoons feel free to do so ^^;.
I give webtoons a thumbs up overall, it's a good site if you're just starting off. That and the community is worth the price of admission. Be prepared to get yourself an Instagram and Twitter account and you should have a great time. Add a thumbs up if you like networking on social media too ^^;
Next we have the Duck Webcomics
This is the Duck in my art style with Hawk's hat design for the letters ^^;
The Duck is a site that's been around since the mid 2000s it is the only one of the 5 websites to have a vertical scroll feature. This alone will be a deal breaker for many of you it was for my friend Marv the creator of Captain Pigeon. My comics perform best on the Duck for a few reasons. 1 the site like action comic books, 2 they like experimental off brand art styles, 3 the readers on there like long term story telling and 4 the sites demographic gears towards Adult comics. This is is the site Hawk and Flo: Ice Cream Truck of Doom was first featured on. Within around the first two weeks the comic established it's residence of living in the top 25 section. I dropped lucky that The head moderator Kawai runs the featured section and really loves my comics. It's as an acquaintance of mine David Tarrant used to say 'sometimes it's about finding the right buyer for the art work your trying to sell'. It's a very true quote as the moderator that featured me went on to back me on Patreon. The Duck is active enough, the forums are a bit dead but the overall comic quality of the site features some surprisingly stiff competition from comic series like Magic Misfits, Danielle Dark, Charby The Vampire and Simply Sarah which have been going for over 10 years.
^The current top 10 section i'm 7th atm
The best way I can describe the Duck is imagine a legacy video game like the first generation of Pokemon games or the first Halo Game. The Duck is run by a small and passionate community of comic creators that back it on Patreon. It doesn't exactly have a lot of cash to throw around to improve site glitches. It has the right idea and it's definitely charming (community is fun too), but without balance patches and updates it can be Janky (it will be getting a site redesign at some point). As a result the Duck can be quite easily exploited by a long term storytelling comic with action elements, an off brand art style and lots of updates. Yes you read that right page updates, it is possible with 0 self promotion to become a household name on the site by spamming page updates. This was unintentionally discovered on my behalf as I went into grunt work mode fixing my comics backgrounds after receiving feedback on Reddit. I uploaded over 125 pages in the course of 1 weekend and it's how my series initially got noticed.
On Tapas and Comicfury they stop you from hitting the recent updates section more than once in a day by having what's called an update timer. On Tapas I believe theirs's lasts 24 hours. I know on Comic fury you can only go back to the recent updates section after a 10 hour time limit; however 3 sites i'm on don't have an update timer. Webtoons, Globalcomix and The Duck and out of all of them the Duck will reward you the most for abusing the fact the recent updates section doesn't have an update timer. Especially when it doesn't have a vertical scroll feature and you can just keep uploading pages over and over. If you so choose you can basically feature yourself and while you're at it every 25 pages you upload you can get a milestone announcement and be on the front page. Yep every 25 pages. Now in fairness to me I only ask for milestone announcements every 100 pages I upload. The Duck is quite a wild trip, the comics are very off brand and many of them are awesome to read. Quality of comics is definitely not an issue but bare in mind the stuff on there is quite wild and off brand (and NSFW). I fit in well on the Duck in case you couldn't tell xD.
I give it a thumbs up overall, the site has a few glitches here and there and spamming page updates is a particularly broken strategy on the duck. Which if you're not good at self promoting (like I am) This will definitely work in your favour if you draw fast or have a big stockpile of comics. They'll even hand out badges to you for 100, 200, 500 and 1000 pages.
Next we have Comicfury
Comicfury is a nice little site with a surprisingly active forum, those of you who would like to network without needing to be on social media so much will find the site quite appealing. There are plenty of seasonal art trades, people on there are for the most part supportive and fun. I have had acquaintances in the past who have told me they've had the odd troll attack their comics, but that's true of just about anywhere I would say. The site gets a lot right, it has vertical scroll as an option, but with a 12 page upload limit. It has the option of viewing all pages in a vertical scroll mode as well. The Vertical scroll mode is an excellent feature for people that like just making 1 page a day and uploading it at a fairly relaxed rate. This is definitely a site for you as people don't mind 1 page updates as much compared to somewhere like Webtoons. Tapas has something similair but with a handy chapter select menu.
If you're going to be active on comic fury there is a bit of a learning curve involved if you're not used to HTML for forum signatures. Banners are practically mandatory. Down here is an example of the one I use ^^.
My comics do average on Comic Fury, I get a few comments every now and then I have a nice chat with the community. There's not too much to discuss on this one as it's a well put together site. The one thing you need to know going in is every site has a certain audience or demographic that the site excels at. For Webtoons it's anime romance Novels, for the Duck it's off brand Adult rated Action comics. For Comic fury in my experience it's oddly fan fictions that dominate the site. Particularly Poke'mon Nuzlocke fan fictions. So if you're a Poke'mon fan Comic Fury is a must there's so much for you to read on there it's unreal.
Wild Poke'mon fanfics have appeared!
It gets a thumbs up
Next we have Globalcomix
^above is my custom link that leads to my GC mirror on the Duck ^^;
Globalcomix is one of my favourite sites out of the bunch. In the long run it's making the right decisions to take off in a big way. the site layout is straight forward and makes sense, there's a very wide variety of comics on the site. At the moment anything goes and it's quite exciting seeing so much variety in way of comics, people and creators. You can charge for your comics, there's a donate option. it's much like being in a local comic book store but online. Which is another reason why I love this site so much, that and my comic recently got featured 2 days ago in the 'Updated supernatural Dystopia section on the site at the moment. What's that Pics or it didn't happen? well here you go.
I'm the one on the far right^^ I hope you get the point *badum Tish
The people who run the site are on my friends list on Discord they are a great group of people who genuinely care about comic creators and have the right mentality for long term success. I understand right now Webtoons and Tapas are more popular but in the long run Globalcomix is going to really take off especially with the increased demand for indie comics. So far out of every site i've been on despite probably arguably the fiercest competition of the bunch my comics perform second best on GC after the Duck. The demographic that will emerge will likely be mainstream comic fans, which again my comics screen tested well with them before I put them up online.
I give this site 2 thumbs up
Last and in to be fair not least is Tapas:
No not that Tapas
Sorry had to get obligator food joke out of the way:
Nice doggie
Tapas is the site I have been on the shortest amount of time but I do have a few things to say like the site so far. I'm a particular fan of the chapter select menu and the fact you don't have to click right to load new chapters. It does have a bit of an obsession with Thumbnails for my personal liking, which is why I have (with permission) been using fan art i've received throughout my time online as the thumbnails. . The best way I can describe Tapas is imagine your local Library, there's quite a bit to choose from it's fairly accessible. The owner of the Library is a fan of Webtoons and It definitely shows especially since when you go to the recent updates section it is defaulted to Romance novels.
Everytime you go to the comics page it will automatically set to these
If you read romance novels, this and webtoons are the best choices for you (atm). Especially if you like anime style art. Fudge my Juggers! there's plenty of romance novels. Oddly so far my comics seem to be doing ok. Not blockbuster numbers by any means but has been steadily growing subscribers (I have 6 including myself lol) and I recently broke 500 views. I might be too early to give my thoughts on some aspects of the site but I will do my best.
On the site there is a currency called Ink, similar to Webtoons coin system where you can build up coins in order to read new chapters. Tapas is in many ways the Pepsi to Webtoons' coke or The Sega to Webtoons Nintendo. There are some things it does a better especially since Ink (the virtual currency) can be turned into real world cash. This is available to creator comics that have hit 100 subscribers. I do know people who have gotten over the 100 sub threshold and one of my colleagues say he has earnt 3 cents in his entire time on the site, I have been told there is an event called Inktober where people can fundraise through the site. This is worth looking into especially if you make anime style romance novels. The social media isn't quite as active as the one on webtoons and there are fewer discord servers you can join, but again it does something better such as not having a rating system. If you hit 500 subs you can apply to make merchandise which my friend Slingy (creator of Space Pack, OniXFox) was successfully able to do. One last thing there is a Tapas forum. I am very new to it so far it seems pretty cool.
This site is a thumbs up for me I love the way vertical scrolling is implemented and a two thumbs up for anybody who makes anime romance novels.
That's me for now. I hope this thread hasn't been too long thank you for reading it I put a lot of effort into it and if anybody wants me to elaborate or ask questions let me know i'll be more than happy to answer.
Have fun and stay safe!