Little rant inside myself

69Michi 2016-06-13 13:34:20 UTC #7

Unless you are a featured artist or a company pays you for you comics, I don't think any free comic website would bother doing the "promo" for you. You have more luck of getting subs and views on Webtoon without doing any sort of promotion simply due to the large amount of readers and lack of content updated daily on there (speaking from my experience. Compare to Tap where people update daily page by page and your comic will get washed out of the Fresh section in the matter of minutes, Webtoon's audience prefers a longer update and 1 page per update can make them scream "TOO SHORT" at you)

So in conclusion, getting popular is not a matter of just sitting around and wait for people to come or someone else to do the promotion for you, don't put too much trust in anything and do it yourself!

sauropasquini 2016-06-13 13:48:16 UTC #8

Another right comment ... Thank you @69Erocento ...

I started with Webtoons, where it was a little faster to achieve some fanbase, then I discover Tapastic, that I like more.

The fact that Tapastic have more daily webcomics, against the weekly webcomics of Webtoons, can be the real difference. The Fresh section is washed up really fast and it's difficult to gain visibility like this.

shaneoid77 2016-06-13 13:55:29 UTC #9

I appreciate that this is the case, but I believe it is to the detriment of the sites that they don't. Surely their existence depends on the input from their talent pool? Not to promote something like CasaBase is surely financially detrimental. Even a quick little feature or questions and answers like Best Webcomics do could generate revenue for these sites.

69Michi 2016-06-13 14:08:37 UTC #10

Don't worry, most people upload on both Webtoon and Tapastic experience that (some rare people actually have more subs on Tap compare to Webtoon though) But that makes each sub you get on Tap all the more valuable!

But they do! Most not all free webcomic hosting sites have "Popular" and "Trending" section, but these work base on reader's input, not operate by the admins of the website themselves most of the time. (Tap has a staff pick section so that is neat) Website like this can't go out of their ways and promote every single comic with less audience out there. They don't have the time and financial for that. If they promote CasaBase, then what about A, B, C, D, E, etcetc series out there? There are too many comics out there for the website to promote each and everyone of them. So in the end it just came down to the creators themselves to promote their own stuffs until it gets popular enough for the website admin to pick up on it.

P/S: I hope I didn't misunderstand your point LMFAO ~~i literally had to google what detrimental means~~

Jrej 2016-06-13 14:10:43 UTC #11

Don't worry. We all go through this. I've been making my comic since 2012, posting it on Tapastic for a year and my following is growing very slowly.
I even feel it's plateauing right now...

When I just had my website, only friends and family would read it. That would be 1 or 2 readers per week max!

Let's face it, humoristic, one page self contained comics works better online. And a lot of artist spent year mastering their craft and building up an audience on other platforms.
But I believe there is a space for long form comics too. Just take more time for readers to get into it.

Two things that helped me grow an audience here:
-Interacting with other creators through their comic, especially the ones with the same or lower popularity. Find that hidden gem you can support. Help others and they will help you.

-Being active in the forums. Since you're here you know. But there are all kinds of events and game going on here. Just participate and don't forget to include your links and images when appropriate.

Hope that will help. Don't loose hope. It's normal to feel down sometimes. Happens to me too and to a lot of others I'm sure.

Draw comics for you first!
And focus on the few readers you have.

The only ones that fail are the ones that give up.
Webcomics is all about consistency and endurance.

shaneoid77 2016-06-13 14:20:57 UTC #12

lol Hi @69Erocento, that's fine. I don't think it would take any resources to do a random comic feature on the front page of these sites (not just Tapastic) , which would be a chance to showcase everyone's work as it would display a random comic from the site. It wouldn't feature one particular artist, and instead may catch the eye of a potential new reader. I've worked in sales before and I'm all about juxtaposition. From a business perspective I'd reckon it would be financially viable to expose as much of your talent pool as possible to generate maximum revenue. I'm not sure how much of these hosting sites are hobbies rather than serious business ventures :/

sauropasquini 2016-06-13 14:25:37 UTC #13

@shaneoid77, @Jrej, all of you ... thank you for your kind words and advices.
I'll start to work also on promotion, from now on, and to share the power of the Atomics (the junior baseball team my webcomic speak about)!

69Michi 2016-06-13 14:31:31 UTC #14

@shaneoid77 Yeah I agree that have a feature that would show random comic from the site would be great (every time you refresh the homepage maybe), but you have to keep in mind there is A LOT of troll comic that you really can't take seriously and some very unprofessional works that can (potentially) reflect badly on the site to newcommers :/ Then again I still like the idea of randomly feature comic on the site, not just the popular and trending one which never seem to change, like ever lMFAO

Kayke 2016-06-13 15:12:20 UTC #15

I feel like the other comics you are describing are gag comics. These shorter one off comic strips are a lot easier for people to read a few and decide they like them. Also, the art style doesn't matter as much due to the point of the comic being in the jokes.

When you're doing a long form comic with characters and plot, you are asking people to commit for a longer time and put more thought into your work. Also, people's taste gets more specific with narrative work. Like five people might laugh at the same Peanuts strip, but if you asked them what kind of books they like their answers would probably be way different.

sauropasquini 2016-06-14 06:09:44 UTC #16

Correct. I started also with simple gags, but I soon felt the need to start a long story, with a plot, a final sense and concrete characters.

However, to subscribe to a webcomic, I personally need more than a couple of funny gags. Usually I subscribe only to the ones that catch my attention more than once.

sauropasquini 2016-06-14 06:15:05 UTC #17

There is a way, I think, to resolve this problem. Someone from the staff, or a selected group of trusted artists, can simply flag which comics deserve to be "spotted" on the "Random box" and which not.

keii4ii 2016-06-14 06:19:50 UTC #18

That takes a ton of manpower. The panel has to essentially go through every single comic on the site for this to work! What if the front page features a comic that breaks the site's rule (maybe it has blatant NSFW content that's not even flagged)? Even if they spot it within a few minutes and remove it, that's still a significant blow to the site. They can't afford to make such mistakes.

It's simply better to do it the current way: pick the ones to be featured, instead of flagging the ones to not feature.

Now, you can suggest they re-examine their criteria for staff picks. That would be an interesting discussion, though off topic for this particular thread!

sauropasquini 2016-06-14 06:26:48 UTC #19

Yes, I meant that the panel decide which comics to spot. If a comic is not flagged, is not randomly picked, this was obvious for me, but I didn't explain it well.
But, thinking again, this is practically what happen now for the "Staff picks" section, so they are already doing it.

keii4ii 2016-06-14 06:28:40 UTC #20

Ohh, sorry for misunderstanding your post then! Yeah, that's definitely staff picks.

sauropasquini 2016-06-14 06:31:12 UTC #21

I read it thouroughly and here it is:

Tapastic Picks
Tapastic Picks will consist of hand picked content by the staff. This will update regularly as the staff finds awesome new comics that make best use of Tapastic.

StevenDacasin 2016-06-14 07:10:19 UTC #22

Honestly if you aren't a weekly gag based comic you won't gain any followers. It doesn't mean gag based comics are bad, it's just that that's what's most popular on Tapastic.

sauropasquini 2016-06-14 07:18:20 UTC #23

I realized that. I'm a weekly publisher, not a daily one.

Simon_M 2016-06-14 09:44:45 UTC #24

shaneoid is right. I think tapastic is very shortsighted in that regard; I get that they want to promote people with followers in other media so that they register here, but I think, in the long term, being the first promoters of comics will get them a lot more brand recognition and prestige than promoting already "famous" webcomics...

69Michi 2016-06-14 15:08:41 UTC #25

You know what they said, once you get recognition, more recognition will come your way, once you get popular and famous, you will just keep on getting popular and famous. The rich get richer they said, it's just the usual, normal snowball effect.

Simon_M 2016-06-15 08:52:26 UTC #26

Yeah, that's the rule of the Internet for sure.