LINE Webtoon - Opinions?

[keii4ii]

That said, I don't think adding a Fresh section like popular/trending on the front page is the solution. As it's been pointed out, that's not really enough. I like the Fresh thing having its own page, but it needs to be less hidden, and easier to filter (e.g. by genre).

[UbePie]

Thank you for sharing the location. I must have gotten it confused with trending.

[EnraEnraEnra]

Exactly my point, it's so hidden and mysterious...

Having a filter or even a different layout design would help so much.

On webtoon, the design layout on discover page and featured page is very different from each other and it makes it very clear for the audience to know what they are looking at.

[UbePie]

Yeah I like the webtoons design. Even though people say there is a bigger audience at webtoons I think that non premium comics do so well there because of the seperation they have and the ease of finding discover comics.

There are comics here with large audiences so obviously tapas has the people they just can’t find comics (like you and me) and don’t have the patience or time to go digging. And the gap is ridiculous. Currently i have 202 subs here but just hit 1k on webtoons yesterday.

I hope tapas makes little changes because I like it over here and the forum. I just don’t understand why the big difference in getting subs.

[paularruejo]

May I know the title of your webcomic?

[dawgofdawgness]

I don't know if I should continue posting on Webtoons since
1) i stopped posting like a month ago
2) For the some reason the Jpeg type makes my pages come out really grainy and blurry
3) Converting all my pages into Jpeg is a pain in the ass
4) The website is blocked on my school computer
5) I've had a slow climb in subs on Webtoon as compared to Tapas for some reason

[LordVincent]

And the gap is ridiculous. Currently i have 202 subs here but just hit 1k on webtoons yesterday.

That's actually a small gap! On average, considering webtoons audience size, any series audience on webtoons should be 6 times larger on webtoons than it is on tapas.

Of course it will differ on a case by case basis, though.

On one hand, you can argue that giving non-featured creators their own space on the site makes them easier to discover. On the other, you can argue that putting them in their own corner will make them less likely to be noticed at all.

Fact remains that tapas, unlike webtoons, showcases non-premium comics on the main page every day and promotes non-premium content in the daily snack and staff picks all the time; small and large creators alike.

I have a feeling the gap will become smaller and smaller as Tapas grows.
Regardless, the opportunities both sites provide to webcomic creators are undeniable.

[UzukiCheverie]

If I can make a recommendation, I draw in Clip Studio Paint, save my images at full size, and then size them down in Photoshop with the Image Resolution setting. 750 is the maximum width so I just use that and it's usually enough. I don't have as many issues with grainy images or anything so if you have Photoshop, try doing it that way, might get you better results. Then you can just save it as JPEG in the program without having to go through any weird conversion methods (and if that's how you're doing it already, maybe consider drawing your original files at bigger sizes, if you're forcing yourself to work small for image compression sake? It's much easier to start off bigger and go smaller than to try and make a smaller image bigger).

Also, I know it's unrelated, but the site being blocked on your school's computers isn't really their fault and so I don't think it really counts as a "con" What websites are blocked on your computers is typically based on the school's servers and what they pre-determine to be a blockable site.

Either way, so far I'm finding not only my traffic, but my reception better on Webtoons as well, in terms of user interaction and comments and such (which is ironic because comments on the episodes are the only way for creators and users to interact . . . there are no wall posts, no forums, no private messages, no profiles, even. Maybe that's the reason why people interact more on the comics themselves.

[dawgofdawgness]

Thanks for the advice and motivation! Right now I'm sitting myself down and getting back to posting on webtoons in hopes of better results

[UbePie]

There was another thread last month that noted that the gap in audience numbers between tapas and webtoons actually wasn’t that big. That because tapas was under a different name before that some of the traffic numbers got lost.

I don’t know how true that is but I thought their argument seemed sound.

I am not saying Tapas isn’t great in promoting and I do like their revenue and other opportunities. However it is hard to browse non-premium comics. Like others stated it is buried and most of the time I get my comic recs from the forum because it is so difficult to browse tapas.

Plus i have put money into ads that direct to tapas but not webtoons, so it is a more organic growth over there.

[UbePie]

My comic is entitled 9 circles, there is a link to it in my summary if you click on my icon, it links to tapas.

[Shanny8]

2) For the some reason the Jpeg type makes my pages come out really grainy and blurry

THIS. I've had people complain coz they would say my rez doesnt look great, but I tell them, "I have NO control over it". I really wish Webtoons would either accept PNG or PDF files that are better resolution. 800 px wide in JPEG format isnt good. It looks okay on my laptop, but still can see a hint of blur, so I know it looks worse on phones & tablets.

[paularruejo]

Ok, I'll check it out!. I've been lookin for somethin to read from the discover section..

[ella_mini]

Quick question - for the people who post on LineWebtoon and here - do you post exactly the same things on both? Or would you offer some exclusive drawings on one or the other?

[LordVincent]

No, the gap wasn't as big as it was made out to be. But according to my memory, the webtoons audience was still 6 times bigger. This means that any series audience gap that is less than 6 times larger on webtoons than tapas is actually doing better on Tapas when put in relation to the audience available on each site. If it is more than 6 times larger on webtoons, it is doing better on webtoons than tapas in relation to the audience available.

So in order for them to be equal on your series it should be 200 on tapas and 1200 on webtoons. But it's only 1000 on webtoons. Meaning it's still reaching a larger percentage of tapas users than webtoons users. Now that is something that might change. Maybe a month from now it will be 250 and 1500 subs. In that case, your series would be doing better on webtoons than tapas in relation to audience available.

Basically what i am saying is: looking at the flat numbers indicates which site is gaining you the most subs as a creator, yes. And in that case, you are currently reaping more benefits from webtoons.
However looking at the numbers tied to how many people use the site indicates how large a percentage of the site's traffic is actually being directed to you (i.e. How good of a job the site is actually doing in letting the small guy shine). Another way to find this out is to compare small creators on both sites to large creators while using their time posting on the site as a measurement tool to prevent unfair comparisons, and last time I looked at that it seemed that the gap between your average big creator vs your average small guy was actually a bigger gap on webtoons than tapas. The most likely cause for this is that tapas has the trending section on the front page (which was up top on the site not long ago. Earlier this year staff said on the forums that they would move sections around every few months to mix it up) which is a section that favors smaller creators and puts them right in the user's faces on the main site.

So basically, if tapas continues to grow in users and maintains a larger chance of being discovered for small creators (however there are exceptions of course as with anything. Some series do really badly on tapas, some do really badly on webtoons. I have one series like the latter and one like the former.) it means that when the audience available on tapas is larger, you as a non-featured creator will reap more benefits from that than webtoons.

However it would be cool if that percentage/possibility was even larger. The things tapas currently has that help small creators are Trending, Staff picks and the Daily Snack. If they worked on changing the Fresh section or the comics browsing section into something that is easier to navigate (especially for new users) since that is something many people here claim to have a problem with, then they would grab the one benefit webtoons has over them other than the audience size.

[scythe]

I post exactly the same thing on both sites, at exactly the same time. I've got 800 subs here, and 7.6k over there. Oh, and I started there over a year after I started here.

I think most of my subs come from being 'featured' on their front page and in their app as a recommended title.

So as slow as it's gone here for me, I have actually noticed I'm getting more subs on here lately than I have been for the past 6 months or so. There was a while here where it was just tumbleweeds for me.

[UbePie]

I guess we will have to hope tapas grows more. I just find the staff pick and daily snacks program to be great for those picked, but than what is the liklyhood of getting picked considering the large amount of comics on tapas. So that is why i would appreciate a system such as webtoons where it is easy for the audience to find and decide what they wish to read.

I for one have never had the pleasure to be in any of those picks, and therefore go out to try and advertise on my own and direct traffic to tapas. I haven’t so much as been in trending as I am still struggling with audience engagement here though I am attempt to work on that.

[69Michi]

Personally I found Webtoon to more likely to promote you than Tapas. They have a recommending section, a Weekly Round up, Facebook advertisement (I got picked to be one of the 4 Discover Fantasy that they gave a shout out on their official Facebook), random sponsored online advertisement (my friend sent me a screenshot of a random facebook ad that has my comic in there, I got a popup ad on Tapastic of Webtoon that advertised Boyfriend of the dead way back too)

Personally I have only been in Daily Snack once and I'm grateful for the size of my audience but obviously enough I'm growing way faster on Webtoon with x30+ audience gap.

Quick question - for the people who post on LineWebtoon and here - do you post exactly the same things on both? Or would you offer some exclusive drawings on one or the other?

I post exactly the same thing! Although I take out some "Thank you for 50k+ Subs" and the like that usually directs toward Webtoon rather than Tapas. As of lately however I also have to take out the fanart corner and some transitional pages on Tapas because of the 40 images limit. I draw my comic in long form but still page by page, my update sometimes goes over 40 images and I just have no drive to sit down and combine each image into a longer page to post on Tapas

[Shanny8]

Webtoon at least gives smaller comics an opportunity to pick up readers and become something more. I've trended a couple of times starting out here, but never seen a daily snack and I have this feeling I never will. I try not to get miffed about stuff like this coz it serves no purpose; I just keep trying to chop away at things, gaining new readers and spreading the word about my comic- whether it be here or on Webtoon.

Quick question - for the people who post on LineWebtoon and here - do you post exactly the same things on both? Or would you offer some exclusive drawings on one or the other?

On Webtoon I mainly post the comic, and nothing else. Here, I'll post little extras here and there- but mainly stay focused on printing the comic.

[rinfumochi]

I have such a complicated feeling to LINE webtoon. I cross-posted my comic (Divine Zero) there, but since the format is less friendly than the one on Tapas, I decided to post 2 updates in 1 post on LINE; 2 days after posting the regular ones here. So far I've got nice readers and supportive fans, but the first time I posted my new comic, someone gave me 1 star rating 2 mins right after I posted the prologue, idk what their purpose was but friend said they might be trying to bring my rating down... Fortunately it raised back to above 9 again after I got plenty of readers, but still it shows that the not-so-healthy competition exists and that the community is less welcoming than what I've had here (eventhough I've just joined tapas for approximately 2-3 weeks) :'D

But yeah, I think if you want to reach wider audiences, you should give it a try. then you can decide whether to stay there or not! :0