Looking for solutions, not rant. How to fix the overcrowded Tapas?

[jensrichard77]

Go together with other creatos on Twitter and make some shared tags?

@TapasCommunityTeam is that something we can do?
Can the main Tapas account on Twitter support some tags?
Just like you tried to do with #TapasActionFantasyMonth

Just inform us some good tags to follow? When you promote a new series, just give os a tag on Twitter to follow.
When you are promoting a Boy Love Space Ship Goth series just tag it #TapasBoyLoveSpaceShipGoth and inform us. Then all creators with that same kind of series can be found via your tag and promotion.

The reader will see the Tweet and will see that you have a new fancy comic and that there are other creators doing something similar because there is a tag in the tweet and we will be shown to all of the 42k+ followers that tapas has!

[Rhonder]

How do we shine, when we are so many?

Citing this, since my post isn't going to talk about changes on Tapas per se (although I do like and agree with many of the suggestions others have already listed )

This year I'm going to take the approach of "taking the fight to another platform", so to speak. I got into art live streaming last year and found that a lot of the advice on "how to grow as a small streamer" had a lot of ideological parallels to being a "small webcomic creator". The primary grievances are lack of useful/comprehensive search functionality on the site, that the front page is mostly reserved for the top streamers, and that each category is sorted by popularity (viewers, in this case). So the average viewer doesn't bother searching, they just scroll through the top creators and pick something that strikes their fancy. The rich get richer, and everyone else is left to fight for the leftover scraps. It's basically the same as the community creator experience on either Tapas or Webtoons lol.

What people suggest, then, is creating content on other platforms that have a stronger focus on searching and thus greater discoverability. Use that content to get more eyes on you in general, then you can take those eyes and try to direct them to your other content. It may be in part because streaming is already video-based, but the biggie that most people in that arena suggest is Youtube (in conjunction with other social medias, like Twitter).

Sooo that's going to be my approach this year, anyways. Going to try and create and leverage some comic-oriented Youtube content to try and get more eyes on both my stream and new comic~ It's a significant amount of extra work but the logic is sound, and it seems more sensible than waiting for these other platforms to take baby steps towards helping their smaller creators. I'm grateful for whatever developments do happen on that front, but I want to tackle the problem actively rather than waiting around

I really like the broadway vs. local stage analogy in the OP- in this case I'm going to try and construct my own shoddy little local stage in my suburb rather than wait for the city to open up a community center to perform at, because who knows how long that will take, if ever

[skicoak]

It's a significant amount of extra work but the logic is sound, and it seems more sensible than waiting for these other platforms to take baby steps towards helping their smaller creators. I'm grateful for whatever developments do happen on that front, but I want to tackle the problem actively rather than waiting around

Super logical.

I'm of a mind that these platforms aren't going to change unless there's a fiscal benefit.

The Wild West Era of webcomics has passed and to survive in this next era requires solutions and efforts that exclusively promote yourself over the self/platform hybrid they rely on.

[Darth_Biomech]

Well, it's the problem that every oversaturated market shares. There's no way around that. Sadly the only way to "fix" it is by making the market less saturated. Taking out the competition. Not a particularly desirable option. You can try to split the comic pool into more and more specific subgenres, but IMO that will only result in a bunch of categories nobody will ever check, plus a headache for the authors to decide which genre their work belongs to.

[domisotto]

We don't all need to get 1mill subs just to be seen out there. Some of us just want to stay in the local town, on stage and having a great time. But we need to find them... the readers!

Personally, I just find myself more and more inclined to stay to my own circles—I find stuff I like, read it, make friends, read their stuff, if I like it, I keep reading it, not expecting reciprocation. On Wattpad, I do clubs to get the minimal amount of movement on my novels in hopes that the algo catches them. If it doesn't, I keep going.

On Tapas, I leave it to Fresh and cycle my novels between genre, to see where it will get most subs and reads.

In the end of the day, the stuff that could grow, does. There is no algorithm in the world that would make people read a boring book in an unpopular genre written in a heavy language.... so the goal is to write a fun book in a popular genre with a fluid/alive language.

[sevenstarsofeightIam]

How about a clean efficient (down-and-side-scrolling) search page like the one on Netflix?

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Battle royale it is.
Or a council that will decide your series's fate on Tapas.
I love democracy!

[KJWhitten]

Maybe we could make something similar to the comics feed but for novels?

[carloswebcomic]

Back in the old days, we used to link to our friends. That's how we got noticed.
I think we should be provided with a space to advertise our friends.

I don't want to be negative, but I doubt Tapas would do much to alleviate the situation as it wouldn't benefit them financially.

[danitasibert]

looking on the front page i mainly see Tapas originals or foreign comics to show on their site, i don't really see a spot for like newly added or something for newbie/ hobbyists. i know they have the community spotlight but there still have to be leaps and bound to get on there.

[kitkatxk]

I freaking love the badge idea or some sort of coins earned if you read through the story. Wouldn't even have to be a big thing. People want to spend ink. So maybe if they read a whole novel chapter they get like 5 ink or something like that. That way they earned while reading so not only did they get to enjoy something they love. They got a tiny reward to help them purchase something on the site. Then the Badge earned at the end would feel all the more fulfilling knowing you got to earn lots and read something you loved and everyone can see that.

This is a fantastic Idea. FANTASTIC! Just saying.

[kitkatxk]

I wish more of the suggestions were aimed at novels. Comics honestly already get such a bigger chance at viewership just by being a comic that people can read in seconds. It's fast food vs a restaurant you have to wait slightly longer for to enjoy it.I mean novels still only take about 5min to read a chapter because they make novel chapters bite sized on here. But honestly, the novel section is a mess. Finding anything is crazy. I can have my novel trending and be like on the trending list on day with like 300 views in a day then the next day it has 400 views but I could scroll through all of the trending and never find it.

Can we please fix the forever scroll on the searching too. It feels daunting and scary. I miss when we could click page one, page two, page three and see lists of pages. Felt a lot less like I could scroll until I create a black hole in the universe kinda thing.

And can we get some way to launch an ad that is clickable over to outside tapas if we have decided to create our own merch since tapas isn't collabing with any merch sites that I know of?

[likhoradka]

Yeah, a space to link to friends would be super nice! Or even something like the old school webrings. Like maybe a small space for 3-5 groups you're part of. Having a group cap would help keep it from being too overwhelming for readers and keep authors/artists from getting lost within another overly large group. Maybe even groups that are a mix of comics and books to help expose people even further.

[jensrichard77]

And can we get some way to launch an ad that is clickable over to outside tapas if we have decided to create our own merch since tapas isn't collabing with any merch sites that I know of?

Right here. In the frontpage if your series in the dashboard.

[thedude3445]

Advanced search options of all kinds, please! The more breadth of search available, the more ability for readers to find the stories they want to read (and then you end up with people like me with libraries of way too many stories, but still).

Steal a page from Royal Road and implement Ongoing, Completed, Hiatus, and Dropped tags for stories! Stories that go X amount of time with no updates are automatically put on Hiatus, and then users can toggle the rest (but can't remove Hiatus manually unless they post a new episode). This plus more search options allows users extremely easily to filter out stories that are canceled if they don't want to see that, or stories that are completed if they are only looking for ongoing work. In my time here, I've stumbled upon several really interesting, awesome-looking comics that just happened to have been dropped 4 years ago, which bummed me out when I started reading and realized that it was probably never gonna be finished. Now, comics actually leave hiatus a LOT more frequently than novels do, so I think auto-Hiatus would need to be something generous, like 3 months or something, but it would help with the perceived overcrowding quite a lot if implemented well.

[skicoak]

[domisotto]

I gave up hope that they would ever promote completed stories here. Tapas seemed to be enamoured with the never-ending stories model too much.

[skicoak]

Okay... This is going to sound a bit radical but bare with me... and maybe some of this is already in the pipeline...

Maybe don't lump all the creators and creative teams together as The Community.

Adopt the sports model and put us into clearly defined tiers. Have your Premier League, then your tier ones...tier twos and so on down to an entrance/beginners league. Remove the sub-based structures and link unlocking events like ink and ad revenue to reaching certain tiers. Subscriptions have nothing to do with how the tiers are chosen,

Tapas would assign the tiers in house. Sure, it would be a large undertaking but the benefits to moving professional level projects to higher tiers immediately and then having others work to move up tiers has psychological merit. It takes us all out of the subtle adversarial relationship we have with readers/fans. You'd automatically have a visible rating of Tapas's expectations of us for their site. We could decide if it was worth the effort to move up/improve in their eyes.

I haven't fully fleshed the idea out yet but it would shake things up at least.

[DiegoPalacios]

Tapas would assign the tiers in house. Sure, it would be a large undertaking but the benefits to moving professional level projects to higher tiers immediately and then having others work to move up tiers has psychological merit.

While your proposal sounds interesting, i think is neccesary to know how these tiers would be measured, because without a proper method, it would only favor friends of the Staff and encourage toxicity between creators if they perceive it as competing with each other.....

[kitkatxk]

Thanks I didn't realize you could lead to outside tapas. I thought you were only allowed to link onto Tapas. XD