Places to Promote your Comic/Novel and Your Take on there Effectiveness

[sorible]

I'm not big on social media so I only have an instagram, reddit, and twitter. I actually posted once on the webtoons subreddit and got a fair amount of readers from it.

But tiktok.. I think it's better off if I stay far away from that app.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Yeah, I feel you there for real. I was so happy about how many folks I got looking at my art on insta, but of all those follows, maybe 2 have gone to look at my comic. I do wish insta allowed for external linking on posts though, not saying it would necessarily change much, but it might, bc folks lazy and would definitely random click a link over copy and paste an address.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Ok then! What kind of Discords do you post in? There are so many and I have a hard time keeping up with all the ones that I'm in tbh XD.

I've never heard of Medibang Artstreet :0

I keep forgetting about Wysp. I have a friend who use to swear by it back in the day, but i kept forgetting to post to it as it just seemed so soft and quiet over there. I might look back and see what it's up to these days.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Yeah I think the IMGUR would work well for gag a day type comics and one off pieces. But you are right, they are a platform!

[Lady_T_Musings]

The need for constant posting to stay relevant is such a buzz kill, but you ain't lying. I have seen more buzz around reels than anything over the last few months, but I have yet to even try with that so don't have anything to add on that regard.

I should probably get on that word blocking for Twitter >_>. Totally agree with it being a legit networking platform as I've found interest and readers from that so indeed credit where it's do. Everything is just so fast waves my cane .

I'm curious to see how tiktok use for comic artist will pan out in the long run too, but it is awesome to see that just by putting in a wee bit of effort and making a short vid, you can get a lot of eyes on your work.

Youtube is soooooo much effort hahah. I wanna do it, but lort that's a lot of editing and recording and just woof, I'm trying to make a comic on my lonesome, doing that is a whole nother job. Maybe if I didn't work full time already though...

[Lady_T_Musings]

That's what's up!

Well it's good to know yourself

[Llyrel]

So far, the platform that worked the best for me is ComicAd. Seriously, I can't recommend the place enough. It's best if you have your own webcomic site (a ComicFury website can also do the job), as it will make possible for you to host ads and gain some money, which you can either invest into more advertising or you can withdraw once you reach $25. I've been on the platform since late March 2021, invested into it a grand total of $8.76 and... my view count on ComicFury literally exploded. Went from roughly 7k views/1200 visitors to 15k+ page views and over 3300 visitors since I started. And... I even earned $1,52, which, judging from what I could read on the forums, is about 10 times more than whatever money Tapas ads give you? XD my webcomic site is pretty small, I only have 23 subscribers on ComicFury, BUT I could definitely see a big improvement in my stats ever since I started to use the network, with at least 10-13 visitors checking out my comic on a normal day and an average of 45+ visitors and 200+ page views on update day.

The great thing about ComicAd is that you don't even have to pay for ads if you don't want to! Once you register an account, you can simply upload banners for your comic and the site will automatically show them on comic sites that have available ad space. Pretty sure that's how I got one of my most recent subscribers on Webtoon (put a free banner on there, the banner got a click, on that very same day I found out that I had a new subscriber... and no, it wasn't update day). So yup, definitely recommended <3

As for other platforms:
Instagram is where I get the most interaction. Not sure how many people actually read my comic from there, but they DO like posts where I mention comic updates and my stats on Tapas seem to increase a little when I post on there, so there must be at least someone who actually checks my comic.
TikTok is... fun and easy to work with (even though I never had a video going viral XD), but I doubt I got any readers from there. Comic pages are the videos with the lowest amount of likes on there... yet illustrations featuring my characters tend to be quite successful, which makes me think that users are mostly there for the pretty pictures rather than finding stuff to read XD
Pillowfort is where I spam all of my comic updates. Got a couple of readers from there, but again, the great majority of my followers seem to be in for the watercolors and random illustrations, rather than comics. Not comic related, but I did get to make a bunch of sales on Redbubble thanks to the platform, though! (AND got a job offer, too ^__^)
Haven't tried posting my comic on Deviantart, but I had a little bit of success promoting my watercolors and Redbubble prints.
Twitter: a wasteland where nobody cares about what you post. Stopped even trying.
Tumblr: a wasteland full of drama and pr0n bots. Still recovering from the emotional trauma after 10+ years spent in a community of backstabbing cyberbullies. Not touching the place with a ten foot pole
Artfol: very nice, but... I kinda tend to forget that it exists :'D I'm afraid I have too many platforms already.
Reddit: got some really nice feedback on there and even a few new readers on Webtoon... but also got a 1-star rating bomb. Not looking forward to have my comic downvoted again (especially since the rating would probably drop down to 4 stars if trolls decide to downvote it again), so I'm either posting panels with no links or not posting at all
Youtube: posted a few speedpaintings on there, but can't say that I put much time into it.

[samiluu]

thanks for this post. I'll stay because honestly none of the social media works good enough for me. The only ones that seem a bit involved in my work are the pokemon fans I met through my fanart on instagram but still they are maybe 4 or 5...

[Kuma]

I'm just posting my first novel and I'm doing it more as a hobby than a way to monetize, so I'm not really getting into full-on advertisement mode. I just shared with a couple of facebook groups and friends. But your post is really instructive and if I ever get into full gear with this I'll surely use the information. Thank you.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Yoooo that's what's up! Thanks for sharing your experience with ComicAd. It's definitely a place I would like to try out, but I want to get my own comic site up and running, but yeesh is that a lot of work in itself. I want to try making my site using https://www.comicctrl.com/ . I mirror on ComicFury and it's pretty darn swanky, but I decided to focus on marketing my comic through tapas more, though being able to have a customizable comic site is pretty baller

Yeah, I could see that being a thing for pillowfort as I've had that same experience with Reddit when it comes to sharing my comic :0.

Congrats on the job offer!!!

Pft the wasteland comments just made me go straight to MadMax XD.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Your website is lovely yoooo!

[Lady_T_Musings]

That's what's up and happy to be of help through my little bit of learned experiences

[Llyrel]

Aaaah, thank you!
And oh, I didn't know about comicctrl, sounds really nice! Though I have to admit that I'm super scared about building my own website with Wordpress, in part because I live in Europe and the GDPR laws are brutal, and in part because I have zero idea how to make a website from scratch I have a backup of my comic on a Wordpress.com blog, but alas, the place makes you pay for the very air you breathe and apparently you need a $300 a year subscription to be able to put certain html codes on there (including ComicAd codes, sadly), which is... pretty damn ridiculous D: I was kinda hoping to use Weebly instead (since it's cheaper), but... it doesn't seem to be as easy to customize as I remembered? ._.

Either way, I was originally going to focus my attention on Tapas too, but I have to admit that my experience with ComicAd so far has been pretty good and, although I'm aware that I may never have a whole lot of subscribers/commenters on CF, I'm definitely considering investing a bit more into it

[Lady_T_Musings]

Yeah, I was waiting for a long time for comicctrl to come out. So much so that I pushed the release of my comic back bc I wanted a CMS to manage the comic site that I could easily edit, but I had to just move forward and worry about gaming a site later as it just came out this year. It looks really good though! I loved GetGrawlix for a CMS, but the support for it stopped and it just faded into obscurity sadly. I really do not want to use WordPress for my comic site as it just felt to bogged down when I first tried, It may be better now, but I would prefer to work with a cms that's built for comics. That's a dang shame that they price gouge like that though :/. I don't have any experience with Weebly :/.

That's what's up though! I love that it has been working out for you. Facebook ads are pretty trash, but ComicAd seems to be a step in the right direction since Project Wonderful went under. I'm still a bit sour I wasn't making comics in those early days where I could have capitalized on using it :V

[samiluu]

thank you very much your work is lovely too, I love your style a lot!

[crowstories]

Yeah, I always do the "link in bio" thing, but I don't think anyone leaves their feed to look at my bio.

[TheGentleArtist]

In a Tapas discord made by users here on the forums; and only that server tbh XD.

[spadedigsbutts]

I've mostly used instagram the past year and though the algorithm sucks, I think I've gotten maybe 5 readers from it? Tbh Instagram seems better for promoting Patreon then Tapas I think I've had the most success being in comic servers on discord with other creators since while you're not getting a lot of new readers from the servers themselves, they'll often help form support networks to spread your work further than you could alone.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I hadn't really thought about using it to hype up my Patreon so that's pretty cool. I usually use it for art and advertising comic updates. Yeah, support networks really help get you out there :D!

[Caro]

I abandoned Tumblr years ago and I miss it all the time. It was the first place where I gained a substantial following (I think somewhere 20k) and I don’t think it would be the same if I went back.

Now I mainly only use Twitter and Instagram. Twitter is kinda new for me. I’ve had my twitter account for years but only ever tweeted like once every couple months until a few months ago I started a new strip that made my follower count explode (now at 20.5k!!) and I’ve managed to convert a lot of those new followers into book sales and patreon supporters so that’s neat!

I’ve also found I get a lot more serious job offers from Twitter. I think maybe its because people exchange dialogue on Twitter more than they do on IG??? Maybe????

I’ve historically been very on Instagram and it works great for me too (currently @ 70.3k) especially for pushing to Patreon.

I’m honestly just lucky to make compelling enough, very sharable strips that lead people to my other works. I don’t think I’d have quite the same level of success just with teasing my longer, more serious works.