Mestory comics (Scam?)

Yep, I got this message as well.
However, clicking the link didn't get me anywhere, just a site that didn't exist.

First Sixmanga, now this? What's next? CoolComics? lol

Same. No offers of having my comic hosted on a sketchy site either.

Hah...now that's a mystery for Mystery Inc to solve.

I just got the same message,i try searching for there site but found no result.

I got this message yesterday too. Assumed it was something "phishy" (lol at me) and didn't follow through.

Greeting to everyone here.
My name is Oleksandr. I am the person who sends all these messages to you. Let me explain myself:

1) MeStory is an official trademark registered in Hong Kong. We started the mestory.com platform for stories 9 month ago. We have apps for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sowocorp.mestory) and for IOS. However, currently we are doing major updates, so the site is inactive.
2) The link I send to you is a link to the demo interface. This is how it will look and work.
3) Probably you have noticed that the message is rather similar. Not everybody here receives this message. However, it contains all necessary information to start the conversation. I am sorry for this kind of universalization.
4) The release date is 19th of December.
5)The main idea of the platform is to create a working environment for comics writers and artists. Firstly, if you have a great idea you can post your idea using our post a job function and find the right person to work with. You will also be able to select the proposed profit split between the two of you, which is a part of the job posting.
The second idea is that readers, who are interested in your comics, would pay some amount of money to see the next chapter. Thus, your work will be paid. We are not going to charge you for anything.

Please, accept my apologies for possible misunderstanding. Ask your questions here or pm me directly on demchenko@mestory.com

Kind regards,
Oleksandr Demchenko

i find your reply hard to trust, why would an actual platform that is willing to dive into an artistic scene make itself look like a scam like that?

WHAT? are you f**kin kidding me? why give us the link then?
this raises my suspicions to Lv. 99 already, and in fact i'm kinda worried if clicking that link would've revealed any important info about my account
hey, @michaelson.. shouldn't Tap react to this joke?

There are two different links:
1) Mestory.com which is currently inactive due to major updates and
2) http://mestory.8foundry.com/help-page.php?page=help1 which is a demo version of the interface. We are not interested in any of your personal data. We can't publish anything yours without your permission in any case. What we want is to drive your attention to this opportunity. You will see the ready product on 19th of December and, I hope so, you will believe me.
One more time: I am not asking for any exclusive rights on your works. There is no charges for anything. We are just a comics start-up that wants to help authors receive benefits from their work. And to show these works to our Aisian readers.

Sometimes I really find it a pity that there is no "I don't like it" button on this forum.

If you're not a scam, do you find it normal to advertise yourself on the forum of a site that could very well become a major competitor?

We have different interests with Tapastic. Tapastic doesn't have the fundraising option and is just a good platform for self-promotion. What we are offering is more of a business approach to comics.

Can you further explain what you mean by fundraising options because I'm not sure if you know, there's options to earn some revenue on Tapastic as well.

Are you offering ad revenue or a Patreon like option directly on the site, like Tapastic's old Support Program?

I do find it hard to take Mystory seriously when you're scouting for talent on a competitor's platform site for your own platform site. The more professional method is direct emailing the artists which would of taken more dedication and work on your end to track and find everyone's email (perhaps off of their official webcomic sites) The last new comic platform site to approach the Tapastic community, Becomics, actually did it right and sent emails to artists instead of scouting on the site.

Granted emails from platform sites are also hard to take seriously and can come off "phishy" too, but it would of put Mystory in a better light. I think the best way to approach talent to join your site is to find a few series that appeals to Mystory's brand, approach them with genuine personalized emails explaining who, what, and why, and accept that it'll take a good long time to gain a trusting reputation in which artists would be willing to give Mystory a try.

Personally, I'm limiting the amount of sites I'm on so I can make sure I have the time to properly grow an audience on them. Being on too many platform sites can stretch the artist too thin and make it harder to engage an audience. My personal comic site, Tapastic, and LINE are all I'm willing to do. I'm not wanting or willing to join anymore than that. Thank you for the invite but I'll be passing on the opportunity.

I got a message as well. I was hesitant on answering cause the site looked so fishy...

but anyways, from what I'm reading in regards to "funding" it specifically says:

So in a sense its sort of like how premium comics are handled in the tapas app, but there's a quota that needs to be reached before the next chapter comes out as free to read. (but does the site even have such a large member count to do so?)

For now, I want my ongoing comics to be free to read so having people to suddenly pay/fund to see the next chapter will definitely push readers away especially the youngins who have been reading for a while and want to support but can't do so.

Oh gosh, it's a weird gofundme type pay wall...

Pay walls don't work very well for webcomics. Tapastic's old Support Program was the most ideal perfect system. The content was kept free for casual readers, never kept behind a wall that is only removed once a funding is meet. Support Program also gave the option for hardcore fans to chip in money every month for early access and a chance to get exclusive content. Like Patreon but built into the site. It was perfect...

Reading their funding description doesn't sound very ideal. Especially for a startup platform site and the artists starting up and growing with the site.

Hm, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Spamming unsolicited private messages is not allowed on Tapastic as it abuses the private messaging system. All instances of this should be reported to: support@tapastic.com

Due to the numerous reports we've received about the account prior to our awareness of this forum topic, the account and private messages were removed.

I'd like to thank @demchenko for clarifying what exactly MeStory is, and how it works. I hope that all of the responses in this topic serve as a learning experience for you to apply in the future. We here at Tapastic have also had our fair share of growing pains when it came to building our relationship with creators. If you ever want to chat, then you can reach me at michaelson@tapasmedia.co and best of luck on your December 19th launch!

I believe the underlying problem to all of this is the lack of policing options that creators and readers have when it comes to private messaging and even wall posts in general. Once we wrap up with the major milestones on the mobile app, I hope to direct more of our attention to going back and improving on more of the social features we have available. Making it easier to ignore or block messages that you don't want.

Okay. I'll be that person and ask. When you mean improving on more of the social features already available here on the desktop version of Tapastic, does that include bringing the app features to the desktop version at some point in the near future?

On topic, Having basic features like a "block" button or a "blacklist" feature would definitely help to prevent another Mestory from happening in the future or even just for example, bots spamming links to pirated movies.

Unfortunately, the monetization features within the app are restricted to being app exclusives due to the limitations of how microtransactions operate outside of the app. Because we relied on Stripe/Paypal in the past for our desktop transactions (and those two services remain to be the best off the shelf transaction management services) we aren't able to really perform transactions for less than a dollar. Many of the app's current monetization features rely on <$1 transactions.

Until we come up with a solution to this problem, we won't be able to transition the app's features to the desktop. Hope that makes sense. It's not that we don't want to.

Hello I'm Henry the owner of the Mestory project.

I'll just like to confirm with everybody we're not a scam, although it appears we're quite talented at appearing so lol. Doesn't help our company is based in Hong Kong and China, yes this place is scam central.

Wasn't exactly sure how to gather content without marketing, we needed some content to begin with and our mistakes has led to this post (apologies for the spam won't happen again but hell it worked lol). However I would like to thank the authors/artists that has taken a leap of faith and submitted their comics to our platform, we're truly grateful for your trust.

Our site is up but still has some way to go in development, initially the plan was to have the website up in combination with a comics game. The idea is to create a comics platform that feeds off a game (website/mobile) and vice versa, the game will use the characters from the comics as heroes or villans. The game is like those freemium mobile games but rather than in-app purchases they fund comics to get gems. I don't want to go too much into this so let's just leave it at that, as we're still in development.

Mestory.com is still far from complete I must apologize, we're constantly changing things, adding new ideas and any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. We'll continue to do our best, we're simply comic fans that wants to create something interesting. Thanks for your support!

Thank you for replying and clearing up the confusion. It's interesting to hear your plans for the platform and hope you the best in achieving the mobile game that can help fund creators.

Tapas recently launched their tipping program that lets readers watch ads, earn coins, and lets them tip their favorite creators with coins that turn into real cash. It's been a success so far, so it'll be great to see what a game version of it will lead to. Best of luck and feel free to share with us any news or announcements.