I really want to win the numbers game. I have been writing for a while and the success has been elusive. For me, being read is the Holy Grail. It is outside my control—I am not delusional, so yes, I understand that. I also do not begrudge others their success. But my body is ready for the Good Thing to happen to me.
Comments for sure! It lets me know that the person is actually reading the story, and as writers, the thing we want most is readers. If I could confirm somehow that views and likes counted as reads, I might be fine with them, but there are reasons why a person could be liking the story that have nothing to do with whether they actually read it. And views of course in no way count as reads.
I'm not a ghost subscribers at all. Mostly because I know how frustrating it is when someone is a ghost subscriber. Like, for pete's sake how much effort can it really take to pause for a moment, remember to leave a like, and leave a nice comment? Especially when leaving one or not can really influence whether a creator wants to keep making their story. The only time when I'm a ghost subscriber is when I bookmark something that I really want to read, and I just haven't gotten to it, yet (one of the reasons why I try not to get someone's hopes up by subbing willy-nilly).
Hmmm... I like subs, but subs are some of the most frustrating things on this site. I swear that there's a bug where, whenever I update, someone unsubscribes but then for some reason I get a new sub on the same day. There was a weird instance of that lately where someone had subscribed, and then a few days later, they subscribed again. I was just like, "Wait a minute, didn't that person already subscribe?" LOL
Hmmm, I say like most, it would be comments as there's more engagement to the story. It'll make me feel like either I'm doing well on my part with writing since usually when it's silent I get anxious to the point my thoughts go
"Either they're sunk deep and await to comes next"
"or they're like me and not sure what to say to avoid saying a similar comment from before asdf"
Likes are nice as it shows they've enjoyed it. It's the same I feel for views, since there are times either I give a like or not but I do often ready many webcomics. tbh i tend to forget to hit the heart ;;; so I'm doing my best to break that habit
Honestly, the more people view my comics, the better. Sure it'd be nice to get more subs, but getting attraction is priority number one for me. So I think views are more important.
The next would be likes, then comments (beacuse it gives reassurance that people are paying attention to the stories), and then finally subscribers. My sub game has been on fire recently, but I feel that's partly because I aim to please my followers by creating multiple series to pick and choose from.
For me comments matter the most because they can show you how much people apreciate your work. But I am happy about any kind of attention.
Also I read a lot but I like and comment very often. Still by some Comics/Novels I am a "Ghost subscriber" but mostly because I forget to like and have nothing to say... But sometimes I am a "Ghost subscriber" on purpuse because the Comic/Novel doesn't have enough chapters or I haven't read enough to judge and give it a like because I like it. Still thats very rare because almost everything that was ever created deserves a like.
Hmm hard to say and kinda makes me think lol.
On a surface level, comments definitely are my favorite type of interaction to get since they're comparatively rare and give me a chance to directly converse with the people who enjoy my work~
BUT I think a strong argument could be made for views and that might be what I'm inclined to go with tbh. After all, the whole point of posting my content online is for people to read it and a "view" is the most basic representation of that The other 3 types of engagement feel better and are more motivating but I'm not sure that they're necessarily the most important.
Part of this point of view comes from having talked to people during the run of my debut one-shot here on Tapas. One place I advertised my comic is on a facebook art page that I have, which has a lot of people I know irl who follow it. Something that always surprised when I would run into quite a few of these people (who I'm not necessarily good friends with but might wind up seeing a few times a year or whatever), is that a lot of them were actually reading my comic. Every few months when they would see one of my update posts, they would click over and binge read through the pages that had piled up. But yet none of these people actually bothered making a Tapas account to subscribe or whatever because... they just didn't need to, they aren't big webcomic people or whatever but just wanted to enjoy and read my content.
That kind of contextualized the nature of webcomics for me, a newbie who didn't really consume many of them prior to starting to draw them myself. The raw interaction numbers on a hosting site like this aren't necessarily the end all be all of your comic's reach. Those thousands of views carry some weight too, and that's pretty cool!
For me it would be comments because I like the feedback that I could get from the readers. Feedback helps me to reflect on my writing and let me know how to improve my writing as well. Coming behind would be subs and likes because it shows that readers are enjoying my writing then in the last would be views.
If I were to rank them, it'd be like this:
1.) Views - I promote my webcomic strips through Tapas forum, Twitter, and Instagram. Views help me show if I'm able to draw in readers through any of those platforms or not.
2.) Comments - I like engaging with readers through comments. In this way, I know I'm engaging with a reader who's a human, not a robot. Hehe.
3.) Likes - There are probably readers who are too busy to leave comments, so I guess this one's fine with me.
3.) Subs - They probably subscribed to my webcomic strips because they want to read more, they want to read later because they're busy, or whatever reason they have.
Because it's either I'm busy with work or I just don't know what to say in the comment section.
I can be a total ghost subscriber, though I try to say more on the comics I love that have smaller viewerships. On the big comics, I just don't see the point. They've got enough engagement to last for years.
As for my own comics, I think I watch the subs the most, because when those go up, so does everything else. Also, I'm struggling more in subs than the other categories right now, so that's just where my own focus/paranoia is
Comments! If only one person read my comic and commented on every episode I'd still be happy! I love to interact with readers. It's seriously the highlight of my week.
https://tapas.io/series/Ready-Spaghetti1 My comic!