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Apr 2021

Work, work, work and keep working until you're good enough. If you keep it constant and active, subscribers and attention will slowly come.

If you set a deadline for success to come, I'm afraid I bring bad news...

Building up a social media presence and networking with other creators is a good place to start.

What do you mean your time is running out?

It's extremely difficult to make a living this way, and you have to expect it to take a long time and be a lot of work that may or may not pay off. You gotta find the balance between shooting for the stars, developing realistic expectations, and making sure you can, like, live (afford food, rent, etc).

With publicity.
But publicity is not enough really. That may bring people to a 'first view' of your work, but you want them to stay. You also need to always work on your art, and scripts -if you want to do both. Search for tutorials, practice on traditional and digital media, search your niche, and avoid cliches.

Desire something to happen its not enough, you will have to work hard to achieve it.

I'm a little hesitant to ask why you say your time is running out when your bio says you're 16 years old. I hope you're not suffering from a terminal condition of some sort, because unfortunately my only advice is... it takes time. Your work is actually very solid for a teenager and with a decent following, so I'd recommend just keeping at it, learning as you go, staying in school and studying great comics.
I didn't start doing professional gigs and placing in competitions til I was about 23 or so, and to do that I just made webcomics on the side while in University and hung out on comic making forums to get advice, read lots of books and tutorials on the subject, that kind of thing. Study, keep making comics, get a day job on the side if you need one while you build your skills and audience.

Promote, promote, promote! The internet is big and there are tons of creators out there. As long as you update consistently and promote as much as you can, the readers will come!

Would anyone here recommend doing commissions for income? I imagine there'd be more profit in doing those compared to ad revenue from comics and making a Patreon or Kofi

i need to change it to 17, and no i am healthy (kinda idk) what i mean is that i am at the age when i want to move, and also i made a promise to someone that i \will make it my job because my comic is based from a story someone thats not here anymore and me. anyways thanks you for the advice, i really do hope things go well because it does generate a lot of joy for me when i draw.

Wait a minute, I'm actually not sure if that's the way to go lol that's why I asked in the first place

That's a great motivation and I hope you succeed! But you will need to pace yourself and be realistic about what can be achieved so early in your career. I don't doubt that in time you can become a professional comicker if you keep at it, but even a lot of award winning pros I know who do it professionally and are in their thirties have a day job on the side, especially if they make original works. Many of them are games artists, designers or web developers. Don't give up on your dream, but make sure you have a safety net secondary career going to support it, because realistically it's a career that takes time to build up the skill, following and contacts for.

Are you SURE you want to do this as a job? People always say to "follow your passion." But I say, passion is great, but you can't eat it. If you love making art, chances are you will like it a lot less when you have to do it 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, with the constant threat of starvation hanging over your head.

You might want to consider getting a job that's tolerable and pays the bills and saving your passion for the weekends. I'm an electrical engineer and I've never once had to worry about making ends meet. That's a much better headspace from which to be making art, I assure you.

It takes a lot of time for many people to make a job out of their comic, have some patience when it come to it is a must. And you can still work on your comic outside of a job and school, which is what most of us have to do. Persistence and patience will be your best friends when it come to creating a webcomic.

  • Use Social Media
    • Post fanart every once in a while.
    • Post announcements when the latest chapter is uploaded
  • From my experience, here are social media platforms to get new reader from best to worst

    • Instagram (use a lot of hashtags)
    • Reddit (r/originalcharacters for example)
    • Forums like this one (make friends, give useful info if possible)
    • Twitter (try good descriptions and a few hashtags)
    • Facebook

If you want this as a job regarding getting paid, focus on

  • Getting more subscribers on tapas as when reaching 100 you get certain amount of money from ads (but not so much from what I've heard)
  • Open a Patreon/Ko-fi,

But usually, it all takes a lot of time

I see you are 17. I don't know what everyone's life and feelings are, but you've still got a lot to live.

Keep the comic, but also have a plan b; choose a career that fits the lifestyle you'd like to have when you are in your twenties, or that could compliment your comic (an art-related career for example)

This comes from another guy that thought he had his whole comic story ready at 18, only to re-write it for another 4 years.

I'll recommend trying other stories first to see how you do with time, schedules, engagement, etc, so later you can publish this comic with more experience (the story I uploaded here was my first, and I had to re-publish it with re-draw and re-write after 6 months of work because it didn't meet my expectations)

would you recommend i re-do this comic right now? because there are some things wi would want to re-do

Other folks have already offered good insight about making sure to have a safety net and such, so I'll hop straight into the main topic.

One thing to keep in mind early on is that you will likely have to do a lot of your own legwork off the site to direct traffic to your comic.Without being featured on the front page, there's a rather limited visibility that you can reach by just posting to the site itself, and getting featured is ultimately outside a creator's control, so it's not a good factor to count on, necessarily. Take a moment to think about the target audience for your series, then where those people hang out online, and then ways you can get your comic in front of their eyes with tasteful promotion.

Maybe it's building up an Instagram or Twitter following, maybe it's making short-form tiktok videos, maybe it's making long-form youtube videos, maybe it's using appropriate reddit forums in a clever way, maybe it's live streaming while working on your comic, etc.

Finding a couple of effective marketing methods and platforms is ideal for variety :slight_smile:

Other than that, the following two areas are also important.

First and foremost, always keep working hard to improve your content- both storytelling and art! While it's true that just having a good comic doesn't automatically guarantee results, it's also true that generally speaking a higher quality comic will more often than not outperform lower quality ones. This is a never ending journey as a content creator, though, so just keep working at it over time. Just be sure not to get complacent or stuck in comfort zones!

Lastly, and this might be a somewhat controversial opinion, but: I think it's important to approach comic making with a professional mindset if you want to do it professionally. This means on top of just having a high quality product that you also need to learn the market and find something that will sell. Also important is to not over-commit to your first, or even second or third comic, as the one that will "make it", necessarily. Most folks need to build up audience and skills over the course of several comics before they reach a point where they can put out consistent marketable work and have an audience base to help support them in the early phases. Doesn't mean that those first few projects should be half-assed (back to the previous point, always keep improving and go 110%!), but outside of extreme, stars aligning luck, the first comic probably won't be your first career or professional comic :sweat_smile:

Best of luck! I took a quick peek at your series and it looks like you're off to a great start! If you keep working at it over time, I bet you can make it :slight_smile:

Oh, I thought you hadn't published it yet.
In that case, just continue, but go easy on making it profitable soon, as it really takes time and more than a good story, good marketing.
If at any time there is a lot of stuff that you want to re-do, consider whether if it is worth redoing it for both you and your subscribers that follow the original story.

Dude, your time is not running out. I'm 31 and just starting out on a path to create comics full-time. I'm well aware it may take me another 10 years to achieve that goal.

Popular culture puts a ridiculous and unrealistic pressure on young people to be successful at impossibly young ages. It's unrealistic, and you will make yourself physically and mentally sick with expectations like that. You have decades to become successful. It's a slow path. Enjoy the journey.

Breh. I'm 32 and have a full time job. You are not out of time. Having a job is not the end of your creativity.