Is the webcomic audience dying, becoming more niche, or are we just in a recession?

CallMeMattheww 2019-04-12 16:16:08 UTC #1

So I'm sure that many have noticed the somewhat strange decline in many comics view / likes, both on Tapas and Webtoon recently, now at first when I started noticing this I just figured that it was the normal progression of how webcomics work with the first few chapters being the highest and the following chapters slowly declining until the views / likes plateau at an average number but the problem here is that most of the comics nowadays don't plateau and the number just keeps going down

I remember that a few years ago (mid - late 2016) that's when everyone was in a cool place where many managed to plateau and keep their audiences coming back every week, I even remember people bragging about how quickly their webcomics would take off during this time (mainly on Webtoons as Tapas has always been brutal LOL) but as it is right now almost 90% of comics seem to be going down with audiences leaving in droves and this isn't just with indie creators, this has also been affecting the featured comics as well, some featured comics have nosedived so hard as they used to (on average) get 20 000 likes but as of right now are in the 1000 - 2000 zone but of course some have managed to keep their audiences and a few featured comics have managed to get even bigger than they used to be like unOrdinary, I remember there was a time when the comic would only get about 30 000 - 40 000 likes (around the arc where Sera was suspended and Arlo was targeting John) but now the comic is on average at 100 000 but sadly many other webcomics have been on a downwards slope

So my theories are that either:
1) The webcomic audience is dying and for whatever reason people are abandoning the medium completely or maybe they're just bored of webcomics for now and in a few months they'll come back or
2) The market is becoming a lot more niche and so many have stopped giving other comics attention and only focus on their particular niche and those who are don't fall into a niche gravitate to the popular comics only or
3) A lot of creator are not good at writing and in turn can't retain their audiences, though this reasoning is weird to me because why all of a sudden has everyone gotten so bad at writing?, I mean did everyone only have good writing skills back in 2016 - early 2018 and by late 2018 everyone just lost all their talent....

Also I think it's worth noting that the heavyweight genres aren't effected as much by this situation as a lot of Romance, BL and Comedy series have (for the most part) retained their view / likes but on the other hand genres like Drama, Supernatural, Fantasy ,Action and even Slice of Life are heavily effected by this and it also effects new series too, as I've noticed that many comics that fall into these lesser genres, that are even promoted by both Tapas and Webtoon nosedive a few weeks after release (with a few acceptions of course)

Please note that I haven't really done any hard research on this issue, all of this is simply through casual observation so I'm in no way saying that any of this is fact, so I'm basically saying I could be wrong about this whole situation and I also acknowledge that there could be many other factors that I might not be taking into consideration and so with that said, from my casual observations this is what seems to be happening.
That either the webcomic scene is dying or it's becoming more niche or we're just going through a "recession"

EXTRA NOTE: Webtoons doesn't show the view count for the comics and only shows likes, so I assume that the relationship between likes / views works in a similar way to Tapas, where more often than not if a comics likes go down their views are going down too.

Likri 2019-04-12 16:46:59 UTC #2

I think it might not be a problem with less people reading comics, but with them just pushing the "like" button less -a lot of media is consumed on average, and in long running series people binge and sparsly give out likes. It's easier with short comics that don't have a overlapping plot (since it's likability is usually a gut reaction "I relate!/It made me laugh!"), where as a big plot may have less "like worthy" reactions the farther it goes. Not necessary it get's worse, just the older crowd of readers takes it with less spark than new ones.

graveweaver 2019-04-12 16:59:54 UTC #3

Just the opposite is happening. Viewership, at least on Webtoon, is at an all-time high. You can see this data for yourself here https://www.similarweb.com/website/webtoons.com#overview (alt:
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/webtoons.com)

I have noticed none of the trends youre mentioning nor have I experienced them myself. Most comics that launch get 20k+ likes and continue to do so over their lifespan, except for the ones with an unpopular art style.

I was really into the Webcomic scene in 2012 or so, and dipped out until recently. There is literally no better time but now to start a webcomic- its like a goddamn view buffet compared to back then when the best we had was like, smackjeeves, and I just hosted my comic on my own site and paid for advertisement on mspaintadventures for $200 a day and got maybe 10k views out of it, whereas now I passively get 20k a day on Webtoons and then they give ME money, lol!

Kittosaurus 2019-04-12 17:06:02 UTC #4

I know I am one of the worst offenders for this when I binge read! But when I'm caught up with a series and reading a new episode once a week when it comes out, I usually try and like an episode once I've finished reading.

denaliah 2019-04-12 17:56:11 UTC #5

I think it's just certain slow times (dips) and then peaks will come. But I think there's more competition now which means readers have more and better quality stuff to consume in the same amount of time (which means they get less time to interact with each comic). So its not so much that the number of readers dwindled but the ratio of readers to webcomic? I do remember lookiing to forums and webtoon back in 2016 and how everyone seems to have struck gold, sometimes I still wish I started back then cause it would've been so much easier for me then...but no point in that since I wasn't emotionally or artistically ready so...meh. Just remember that there's good things about the now? Like because there's more better content you have more examples to look up to and inspiration? But sometimes I do wish it were easier to get noticed sigh I don't think we reached maturity and decline phase yet, there's still growth, but the infancy stage for the site (WT) is long over.

Kittosaurus 2019-04-12 18:00:56 UTC #6

I feel the same way! I've wanted to do comics for soo long but I held out for a long time because I didn't think I was artistically ready. If only I'd known the only way to get to the place I wanted to be artistically was to actually just start doing comics! Oh well! Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

You make a really valid point I was thinking the same thing. The market is soo saturated right now that it's tough for any comic to keep consistent readers with all the new content popping up everyday!

amberberry 2019-04-12 18:51:19 UTC #7

I'd also imagine that one reason is that there is so many webcomics now that the viewership spreads between them instead of focusing more on certain comics. If you compared to the amount of webcomics in 2016 and the number now, I'd imagine it's hundreds and hundreds more. It's not even realistic to assume that all comics would get the same amount of attention.

But other factors that have been mentioned affect too. I, for example, barely ever like episodes even though I read many series. So looking at likes could be slightly misleading.

CallMeMattheww 2019-04-12 18:52:39 UTC #8

First I'd just like to say thank you for posting those links because I've actually been looking for sites like this for awhile now.

Okay so I went back to check on all the comics that I noticed the number drops in and it seems like almost all of them are in an unpopular style (basically they aren't in the typical anime style) though there are some that are in an anime style that are also experiencing a drop, but looking at them from a closer perspective I think it has more to do with viewer fatigue as those comics are on their 200th update and some have obvious writing issues (in terms of plot, random plot changes, story telling problems, pacing, characterizations etc...) which I can understand why people are dropping the series.

But I never actually considered the fact that people can lose interest in a comic if the art style is something that they don't like, I mean I knew it was important but I never knew that it was "that" important

jurinova 2019-04-12 20:51:46 UTC #9

Personally I don't think webcomic audiences have gotten smaller, I think it might be quite the opposite actually. They seem quite popular still. A lot of people also casually read webcomics and they're almost like a modern daily newspaper strip for many people.

However, my theory is that hosting sites have way more power than ever before in deciding how to control the readers attention, and this is leading to a situation in which popular comics are getting more popular and less popular comics are having an ever harder time finding readers. At least for me it seems like hosting sites have been slowly changing their business models to favour the popular comics and making sure they get enough visibility. It's understandable, but can be frustrating.

There's also so much content these days that the competition for readers attention is tough. Some people find the BL tags in the preview pics on Tapas to be annoying but honestly, it's a good marketing technique. That's part of the reason BL comics are thriving; they have found a way to get easily noticed in a crowd of thumbnails.

These are just my personal views on the matter but I feel like this isn't just a webcomic issue but a bigger one. There seems to be a trend going on online where there's just too much content these days and sites are pushing certain content to the top because it's the content that brings in the views. People have been complaining about how it's gotten harder to get noticed on multiple sites. Of course I don't know anything for certain, but this is just an observation.

VibrantFox 2019-04-13 00:39:40 UTC #10

one thing that comes to mind as was mentioned earlier is the sheer volume of content. There's way more webcomics now than there were just a few years ago so reader attention is spread thin. Speaking from a reader perspective (though I consume and create content) I personally experience what I can only think to call "reader burnout" recently where I just felt overwhelmed by the backlog of missed updates I had piled up after being away from tapas for a long period of time. I LOVE reading webcomics and I'll always enjoy exploring new content but during that period I just felt more deterred. There was simply too much. I'm not sure if it an experience shared by others but if I feel like I've got too much on my plate rather than trying to chip away at it I'll just leave it for longer till I think I'm ready.

I also wonder if the fact that some folks are coming into exam season is at least partly reason for any kind of decline. It's sometimes hard to pinpoint numbers and get accurate calculations across genres, platforms and etc. but I know there's usually a bit of a dip around testing seasons.

As for likes I do think that less people are hitting the button. I've noticed a handful of comics (myself included) have started putting little reminder pictures at the bottom of updates to promote doing just that alongside social media/ko-fi/patreon simply because without a reminder people more often then not just don't tap/click the button.

Visibility just seems like a whole nother monster in itself but I feel like it'd take a lot more analyzing and parsing information, just because it's so easy to make assumptions on what's wrong or whatever.

Overall though I don't think the audience is dying but may just be spread thin over all the content out there

michaelson 2019-04-13 01:02:25 UTC #11

I wouldn't say that any of the theorized reasons in the original post are accurate.

Hm, something to note is that Alexa ranking does not take into account mobile app traffic or readership, which we're seeing a tremendous amount of growth in. In fact, mobile readership has eclipsed our web readership for quite some time now.

Readership in general continues to grow at a fairly rapid rate on Tapas, but as @VibrantFox mentioned there's A LOT more series being created. In any given month, we're seeing anywhere from 1,000-2,000 new series debuting on Tapas. To put this into perspective, we didn't even have 1,000 series in our first year at Tapas.

Also, if anything I think webcomics today are a whole lot more refined than they were in 2016. The level of craftsmanship that we're seeing on a daily basis being part of the editorial team is absolutely astounding - there's so much good stuff out there that it's becoming almost impossible to feature everyone that should be featured.

So, why does it FEEL like readership might be declining?

For one, it might have to do with the series that we're looking at.

Longer running series that aren't BL/Romance tend to have a downward decline the further the series go on - it's only natural, this is called a decay rate. If you think about the entry points for a series, then you'll see that it's kind of tough for a long form, weekly serialized story to keep growing. The main entry point is usually the prologue/first episode. Most people that would share an episode of a long form series are most likely to share that episode - beyond that? Not a whole lot of share potential, so there's a natural downward trajectory unless the creator is really active in trying to get more readers engaged with the prologue/first episode.

Other short form (gag-a-day, comedy series) have an easier time maintaining growth because each of their episodes have a viable chance in being shared and being exposed to new readers.

Hope that helps!

ble 2019-04-13 03:46:05 UTC #12

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

keii4ii 2019-04-13 04:02:08 UTC #13

Question thus becomes: what are Romance comics doing right that comics of other genres could learn from? (The answer could very well be "nothing, just keep doing what you're doing" but still worth pondering)

ryoko 2019-04-13 04:43:29 UTC #14

I've got a longer running fantasy series (since 2015, 700+ pages and a serialized story) on both Tapas and Webtoons, and I'm still slowly growing on both sites, albeit Webtoons is growing at a slightly faster rate. There are lulls during holidays, but for the most part I'm still seeing growth in views and subs. It's not massive jumps in either of those numbers, but it's still a steady upward trend. I do update 3 days a week consistently and I think that helps retaining readers and new readers can binge.

Maybe it just seems like there's less people reading webcomics right now because spring break and Easter vacation days may be affecting numbers. People read comics when they get bored at work/school, but if they have other things to do, they may not be checking in as often.

Likes aren't necessarily connecting to views. People forget to like or just don't like even if they are subbed to a series.

Likri 2019-04-13 07:14:06 UTC #15

I don't think they're "doing" anything special, beyond thier intended genre - as far as I've seen, even in non romance comics, most upvoted comments will be about ships and romantic subplots, as long as there are 2 characters of any gender present in the comic. People are just like that XD.

TimCaloweh 2019-04-13 08:50:20 UTC #16

I blame the search engine and the tag system. It's like netflix. So many shows and not everyone can (even if they wanted to) watch all of them. So they devised an algorithm that would work to everyone's specific tastes and recommend shows for every specific individual. With so many comics now, the market/sites have grown saturated. We need specified exposure. At least that could bring creators to their specific interested parties/audiences.

baasinsimple 2019-04-13 11:28:11 UTC #17

To target one individual part of your comment, and as Michaelson mentioned the amount of comics debuting, I just think we're over saturated now. Things have actually grown so it's just harder for us to "Strike gold" so to speak. As well as other people mentioned with just the purposes of their genre, hence why I'm establishing a romantic subplot in the first couple episodes to keep a trajectory aid. Honestly, I think you're just going by a doomsday scenario and you just don't need to overthink things too much cause if you do you're just gonna kill your work ethic.

michaelson 2019-04-17 17:24:12 UTC #18

Hm, an interesting thing to consider might not have to do with how the comics are written or what they are doing right - but perhaps the audience's behavioral patterns?

A few years back there was an a paid subscription service for reading called Oyster. Readers would pay a set amount per month and be given access to the entire Oyster library, and Oyster would pay the authors/publishers a rate based on pages/time spent read on their works. So the biggest problem they ran into was that the romance readers were reading more per month than they were paying for - for instance they might have been paying $4.99 per month but were reading way more than $10.00's worth of books. The reading pattern for people interested in romance was voracious and ultimately crippled the company financially.

This isn't to say ALL romance readers behave like this - but it could be a contributing factor for why the genre might be performing well

Strontium 2019-04-17 19:10:27 UTC #19

Maybe because romance stories are about the building up of a relationship, so readers are more willing to stick with them because they know the have a happy romantic ending to look forward to? But with a story that has romance but isn't a romance story, maybe readers get tired of waiting for the end to come and they don't know if it'll end in a way they like or not (whereas a romance story, you know they will get together at the end. If they didn't, readers would be pissed.)