Hello
I feel the best way to start this thread would be to explain why I made the original thread. I wanted the original thread to be a way for people to find the right site for their comics.
A link to the original thread can be found here again. Much of it stands and if you would like to take a look here is a link :). The original covered my thoughts Webtoons! This thread doesn't have a webtoons section but the original does if anyone is interested.
The original thread missed a couple of things that I would like to go over in this thread. The first thing I wish to go over is in regards to some things I have found out since making the original thread but also I'd like to address where the original 5 sites currently are. I'll start with the original 5 sites then move onto the 3 new ones.
The 3 sites I will be talking about in addition to the original 5 are Tumblr, Ko-Fi and Patreon. They are popular sites to host comics on and a surprising amount of people haven't tried them out yet so I'll do my best to inform people of my experience with those sites.
The first thing I need to address right off the bat is talk about Globalcomix.
As of a few days ago Globalcomix recently announced that they have had an investment of $6.5 million dollars into the company by a private investor.
People are eyeing up Globalcomix right now as the site has been growing. The App is atm in Beta but the reviews so far for the app have been highly positive. The site is looking like it is about to take off in a big way in the near future. Quite a few creators are looking into mirroring onto the site as ad revenue has been going down and the site itself has a feature that allows readers to tip creators money. You can also set monthly goals, I set mine based on what I saw other people doing as I myself am still getting the hang of a few things on there.
You have the option similar to Ko-Fi and Patreon, to provide early access releases of your comics or novels. There is an excellent thread on how to do this by the user MousyLou. My original thread did not touch upon this feature and I wanted to address this. If anyone is curious here is a link to how to monetise your comic.
There is also something else I wish to discuss with you all. That is the fact the site has an excellent public lists function. A screen cap of this is below.
My comic runs it's own 'Pseodo' featured section called the recommended reading list. Where I promote other people's comics at the end of my comic's chapter. Promote the comics on social media and on Globalcomix I can add your comic to the public list as seen above ^. So if you have been considering trying the site, feel free to contact me. i'll give your comic a read and i'll consider (and most likely) add your comic to the recommended reading list and hopefully get you off on the right foot on the site. I know I'm not able to bring you 1000s of followers instantly but I'll do my best. I am one of the mutuals with Globalcomix on Twitter and they have pinned the recommended reading list to their Twitter profile in the past. Which was a massive help for everyone involved.
I've had a very nice time with Globalcomix over Twitter, I grew up as a comic collector so I have common ground with the current admins. Unlike Webtoons or Tapas which have their own separate social media teams The Globalcomix Twitter account is run by the Admins and they each handle the official twitter account in shifts. They also have a very good Discord which gives you your own separate section for your comic as opposed to the usual promotions section. In your section you can share WIPs and announce updates as you can see Multiple comics have their own sections ^^.
There is also a section for recommendations, so.. you know what that means?
Yep, The recommended reading list has it's own section in the official discord. Yay! I will be mirroring this thread into multiple places so I won't be leaving any direct discord links in this thread but it is pretty easy to find. If you have any questions about the site itself you can go into the creator chat and ask the site owners/ moderators yourself. They're very friendly people and I have so far had nothing but wonderful interactions with them and the Globalcomix community ^^.
The other thing I would like to address is how the Featured section is handled. They essentially promote 3 things on Globalcomix forum itself and on Twitter.
One for Trending Webcomics with a certain theme.
One for Popular Webcomics with a certain theme.
And Fresh Friday Features, which is chosen by the people who run the site who feel certain comics need a bit of a boost.
For a direct quote of how the featured section works here you go 
So. yes i've had an excellent time on the site so far. In terms of my Analytics I have some days with lots of views and some days with very little. So if you get on the site and you're disheartened by the fact there aren't many views on what you make just yet. It's partly because due to the fact the app hasn't dropped yet. There are currently a lot of creators joining the site and a lot of readers are waiting for the App to drop. The best piece of advice I can give right now is go mirror onto GC as soon as you are ready and get your foot in the door. In the long run this site is making a lot of good decisions and it's an overall well polished and put together site that I took a liking too. Partly because it reminded me of a next gen version of the Duck Webcomics (The site with Hawk and Flo Adventure's oldest surviving site mirror). Site visibility is good, like the Duck there is no pre-conceived notion of what a comic should look like so atm things are the wild west. In my opinion mainstream comic readers will likely be drawn to the site as publishers such as Top Cow, Archie, e.t.c. are available on there. Interestingly Indie comics so far seem to be what perform the best in terms of trending and popularity algorithms.
You also don't need to work yourself into the ground doing rapid fire updates. You can pick a schedule that suits you without worrying too much about getting buried by 1 page per day gag comics or other comics with large backlogs being mirrored onto it. The recent update section is split into into different sections very well, stuff from publishers is for the most part kept separate from the indie comics. There's sections for left to right comics, sections for Vertscrollers, Webcomics, Graphic Novels, Manga. Whilst the site has stiff competition to compete on, High site visibility is a good thing and is a strength the site will have going forwards. You can also sell PDFs of your comics If you wish to go down that route. Shoutouts 2 Nocturne 21! ^^.
One last thing if you're on Instagram, Globalcomix will repost WIP images of your comics!
So time to move onto The Duck Webcomics, Who fun fact went second in the original thread too ^^.
I'm going to go straight into the 3 things I missed out in the original Thread. First of all you see that all those familiar site logos? Well That's what the site buttons are used for. My daily routine is I check the Duck Mirror first as I upload my comic roughly 1 page per day. I then click the buttons at the top which teleport me to the other sites i'm on. I basically turned the Duck into a tripped out version of a Link.Tree. It's very very easy to do this! I don't normally share technical instructions in these threads but, this feature is just way too cool not to include a tutorial so i'm going to tell you all how to do it.
Click Edit
Click Links
Now you want it on Header links. Type the name of the thing that you want a link to in the top box
then copy and paste the link to it. If you don't add an image it still works you just get blue writing as opposed to an image.
Then click choose file and upload the image that you want as your image.
I recommend Highest quality, 190 Height and 639 width.
Congratulations. If you follow this it will save you a surprising amount of time in the long run xD. You can do other things but this is simple and really fun to do. 
The second thing I wish to address is that in the original thread. I said the site doesn't take vert scrollers in the traditional sense. If you're dead set on making a vert scroller on the Duck it's actually quite easy to do and unlike Webtoons.. Actually let's you save in the Highest quality, If you notice the File Size is 20MB.
So An average Webtoon/Tapas chapter can be put on The Duck no problem. There's only one thing you have to do. Copy and paste all of your chapter files onto one long file. It's what my friend @sefra114 did with their series 'Bagley The Ok Magician'. Which is how I found out myself. Thanks Sefra! That being said the site is slow paced and easy going so 2-3 panel 1 page a day is fine It's what I do ^^.
The third thing I wish to talk about is the social media experience. The Duck Twitter account is run by Tantz Aerine and sometimes run by one of it's other admins such as Ozone Ocean or Emma Claire. It has liked and retweeted me in the past and has been very helpful to me.
The Duck Twitter account has a Twitter chat called Quackchats. These really helped me out a lot when I was just starting off. They ask you questions about webcomics and you're experiences as a creator. They tend to be once a week though as of late they've been a little more inconsistent. They're very good though so keep an eye out even if you're not on the site. If Tantz get's chance she'll like and retweet you.
They're just in general fun to do and they give you an excuse to tweet something over the weekends when things get quiet. The Duck is also on Instagram and any comic they feature they will post about the comic and promote it a little bit.
The site has an author blogs section on the front page. A comic is chosen every Wednesday for this section. It is run by Kawaidakusei, Who fun fact donates to me on Patreon.
Some of my readers may recognise her, The lowest tier reward on my Patreon or Ko-Fi get's you this shout out. £1= 1 month worth of Hawk and Flo Adventures giving you shoutouts. This reward will also apply to anyone who is able to donate me the equivalent amount in Ink on Tapas, come Inktober.
Another thing before I move on is as I mentioned in the past, the site hands out milestone announcements and cool looking badges you can attach to your profile. Like these which you can get for 1 page, 100, 500 and 1000. I don't have the 1000 one yet apologies I can't show it right now x'D.
You can also get one for Featured (The green trophy). Being top 10 or Top 5 on the front page, but interestingly.. There's no badge for being number 1 in the rankings section. If you'd like to give the site a try and try and earn some badges. Kawai is the one you contact for the badges as she runs the announcements section. I briefly talked about Milestone announcements in the past thread. They are genuinely excellent and more creators on the site have been following my example of asking for them. Which they should! And dang it you should too!
High Site Visibility is a solid strength of the Duck, so if you'd like to get noticed and be King or Queen for the day by all means do so. The milestone announcements are open to everyone, if you want to Leave a link to your main site mirror and promote that. Go ahead and do so! I promote every site i'm on, on the Duck. The site to me is like, what the Black Pearl is to Jack Sparrow of the Enterprise is to Captain kirk/ Picard or the Millennium Falcon... Well was to Han solo, as a creator the Duck is my Batmobile! Love this site so much. I changed my mind from the last thread 2 thumbs up it rocks.
Now we move onto Tapas. This might come as a surprise, to many of you but here goes.
I joined in February this is my comic..
And this is how many comments i've left to other creators since being on the site.
Woah Nelly! Yep.. If that doesn't speak for itself as to how much I enjoy being on Tapas. I don't know what will! The previous thread was a little bare bones in the Tapas section so what i'd like to add here is my time in the forums. The forums are really cool, I like forums in general, the Globalcomix forums are quite similar, though Tapas has. Quite a lot of sub for sub threads in the promotions section. So much that some people even disable notifications from the Promotions section of the site due to the fact there are so many. Don't let that deter you though because the Tapas forums are fantastic and I really really appreciate the fact that If I close the window on this long Magnum Opus sized thread. Which will rival Leo Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' In terms of sheer girth. The forum, will remember everything you've just posted and save it! Which thank heavens because I would have actually have lost half of the thread up to here if it wasn't the case LMAO. I shut the window by accident and squeeled in anguish earlier. Looking back it was funny. Good job i'm making this thread here first x'D.
Tapas in my experience is very community focussed. It's a very accessible and very good way to network with other creators much more effectively, it's one of the best sites for it in my opinion. If you're community driven like I am Tapas is bliss I always look forward to coming on here after I park the Duck webcomics outside the front door. In my experience Notifications work consistently well as every good site should have them working. I really like that anyone subscribed to your work is able to see updates on your wall. It's an excellent idea and like Globalcomix it allows followers and subscribers to sort of be intertwined much more as opposed to having them Separate and only followers see your profile posts. On the Duck only people on your friends list can post on your profile oddly, which is quite strange but anyway. Back to Tapas Edit as i'm making this I just discovered I can add Horizontal Lines to these threads! hot dang, the forum is good.
At 250 subscribers or every November you gain the ability to tip each other the site's virtual currency, called Ink. Which can unlock episodes of Paid Tapas originals, or you can get it converted into real world cash. I'm unsure on the Ink to Cash method but i've been told by plenty of people it can be done.
The main thing I love though is walls. I mainly work on my laptop as I draw and type on a keyboard a lot, I really like the walls on Tapas They sort of remind me of something a social media site would have. They're very well put together. I especially appreciate the fact I can add links to other sites i'm on here. I'm a fan of Teleport buttons because i'm on so many websites. These are a life saver for me they really are. I also met quite a few of my Twitter followers on Tapas as well so I was often able to grow myself on Twitter and on Tapas at the same time as I was checking out profiles.
As an avid reader myself I really appreciate the fact that you can keep scrolling down to go to the next chapter as opposed to scrolling all the way down. It also allows for Traditional Prose such as novels to be viable! Novels came as a very nice surprise for me. I use to study English and part of me missed studying books as it gave me a reason to read them but Tapas. Tapas filled that small void in my soul so props to the site for that. It also has a featured section for Novels as well as comics! So if you're an aspiring novelist looking to try a webhosting site. Tapas is an option, I see quite a few authors in the Tapas forums so I suggest trying the site out and use the sites rather sublime networking options to find other people in your community.
At 500 subscribers You can have your own Merchandise store. I haven't hit 500 yet I'll get to it If I keep at it so i'll keep you posted when I hit it for the inevitable sequel to this thread.
So yeah I love Tapas, It took me off guard in a great way. Two thumbs up if you're like me and like the community aspect of things.
Next is Comicfury
Comicfury is a site with a bit of a learning curve. It's very HTML based something I myself easily get rusty with. The site's main strength in my opinion is it's forums. They're absolutely fantastic and have a very strong argument for best forums of any webhosting site. Tapas has a similar forum, however comic Fury allows you to have forum signatures which can lead directly to the other sites you're on. Here's mine as an example I use my site buttons for my signatures atm ^^. This is the easiest forum post I could find off the top of my head.
The other main strength of Comic Fury is site customisation, people have come up with some excellent custom site layouts and if you're on a listing site like Top Webcomics. You can have a link to your webcomic listing on your Comic Fury click to vote your comic up the top of the list then go straight back to Comic Fury. it's a little old school but Comic Fury has particularly good synergy with Webcomic listing sites. It's good to look into and can be a big help.
Comic Fury is an odd site for me, I absolutely love it, but I can struggle for stuff to say as I'm not that much of a Tech wizard. My IT skills are adequate enough most of the time so I simply stick to one of the default site layouts. It suits my comic really well though so when in Rome . One thing I will say is being active helps a ton and if you're like me and you have the signature linking to all the different sites you're on other people are more likely to click on your signature and check out your other site mirrors. Here's a fun little screen cap of my Globalcomix analytics where two people decided to check me out on there ^^;. Fun fact my first ever readers on Hawk and Flo Adventures original Webtoon mirror were people from Comic Fury. One of them Hollering.ghost is still a reader she makes an excellent series called Haunted world.
How these Sites handle site analytics I'll save for Part 3 when I'm feeling up to it. This threads starting to get longer than I anticipated. I will discuss the seasonal art collaborations you can join. Comic Fury does an excellent job when it comes to art exchanges. I've taken part in two of them myself in the past. The First being the blind date crossover exchange and the second one I entered was 30 days of characters. Which is similar to the Inktober event on Tapas from what i've heard, i've not done Inktober yet but i'm looking forward to it ^^.
Anyway time for a DLC character It's time for Tumblr!... wait what Tumblr?! Yes Tumblr ^^; Here's a shot of my page.
Tumblr was set up as a social media site similar to Twitter or Facebook. Twitter basically took over from it and became more popular, but Tumblr was able to survive due to the fact that It's a site people use to host their webcomics on.
I've experimented with Tumblr a bit in this regards and from my own experience it's similar to Comic Fury in a lot of aspects. You can post more than one image in an upload, you can scroll down the list of images that you click on in a gallery. Like Comic Fury their is a limit to the number of images you can put into one upload. On ComicFury it's not a big deal as there's an infinite scroll function. Tumblr on the other hand is a site that would favour left to right comics more as opposed to vert scrollers.
I've seen some people customise their Tumblr pages and make custom URLS to the point where they look like their own websites. Lots of artists from years back still have their Tumblr blogs, I myself only got my Tumblr somewhat recently I check it once or twice a week and reblog my friend's stuff and promote my series a bit on there.
I like the fact that when you have an image gallery you can swipe right or swipe down to read pages. Part of me wishes a webhosting site would come along that would do what Tumblr does but not have an number of images limit. It's a little hard to describe here but the site is definitely worth a try, only real issue I have with Tumblr is it can be a bit difficult to grow on if you're not someone who's been around a while.
Number 7 is Patreon!
Patreon is a site that allows people to donate and support you, so for that reason the site is pretty much one of the essentials for trying to monetise webcomics online. Well either that Globalcomix or Ko-Fi. Tumblr can allow people to tip to you but i've no experience on that aspect so I won't touch upon it in this thread.
The first advantage of Patreon over Ko-Fi is there's no image limit, so I frequently find i'm able to post entire chapters on the site with no caveat's most of the time. You also don't require a Paypal and you're able to withdraw your money directly from your deposit. The only problem with Patreon is the fact the site takes a fee so if it says someone makes £100 they likely make far less in practice.
ATM My Patreon is as straightforward as it get's I modelled mine primarily on @MK_Wizard 's. Each tier is only £1 more than the previous.
Everyone get's the Patreon, Ko-Fi shoutout as i've already shown previously, With Kawai and Grape Ape. If you support me on Patreon for £1 you get a months shoutouts at the end of Hawk and Flo Adventures as well as the upcoming Thirley Peak. One thing I have noticed is that Patreon doesn't give a notification when people follow you or you follow them that's kind of annoying, other than that they work fine.
I may have mentioned some of that prior, but there are two other Patreon's I'd like to talk about. The Duck webcomics and ComicFury are both on Patreon and accept donations to help keep their sites free. They're wonderful sites and they're the only two community run websites that are alive right now so I strongly suggest considering donating to them. One of the perks you get is on the Duck you can get a front page link at the front of the website.
On ComicFury you can get a special rainbow coloured banner for the forums.
They're both cool perks and to my knowledge don't require much of a donation in order to receive the awards. Now *pants onto the Last site i'm on.
Ko-Fi is similar to Patreon, unlike Patreon Ko-Fi Allows you to make one off donations and doesn't charge a fee. The bad news is if you want anybody to tip you less than £5 or more you have to pay for a membership program >.<. The site is pretty easy to use, so far i've had one donation in the time i've been on there. You can only upload so many images into one gallery though, similar to Comic Fury and Tumblr. There is a membership option on Ko-Fi similar to Patreon so if you have memberships on one site it's very easy to transplant them over when you get chance. Ko-Fi's pretty good overall though growing it from scratch is hard but well... so is growing any site from scratch. ^^
I think that covers it thank you all for reading! If you have any questions or would like to chip in your own experience feel free too! I'm going to go lie down now this thread was exhausting ^^;.
