I think it depends on the reader's behavior, too. I won't necessarily say a page sucks for having lower likes, but I believe that a page is a little special for having more likes.

Some readers give a like to every page they read, some readers don't do it at all, and some readers give a like only for pages they found especially good. Some readers who give likes for every pages can even forgot to give once in a while. So, sometimes, I decide to look at the number of reads instead. It's a little too anonymous, but I can at least see how many people stay with my story, so I can get a rough idea of how many people keep reading.

Also, a comic consists of a lot of pages. Just because some pages are more interesting than others, doesn't mean other pages suck and aren't important.

Well, here's the thing...digital likes are exactly that: digital. They're not real, and they aren't equivalent to readers' actual emotions.

People can feel however they want about a page, but they have different motivations for actually clicking on a little heart...some use likes to encourage the creators and let them know they care, some like ALL pages of anything they're subbed to for similar reasons, and some use likes to signify that a page was especially enjoyable to them (e.g. me).

If I don't 'like' a page, it doesn't necessarily mean that I literally didn't like it. It just means it didn't leave a huge impression on me, and that's okay. Not every page is supposed to do that, so naturally I don't 'like' every page of a comic. A large portion of your readers could have similar thought processes...they neglect to 'like' pages that don't stand out to them, and that's really all there is to it.

I feel like I should note that on other sites, likes can have more than one purpose: for example, on YouTube and DeviantArt, things that you 'like' get added to collections and playlists...and thus, if you don't want them added, you won't 'like' them, even if you do like them. Just further illustrating my point.

For all these reasons, I feel like, rather than looking at a page that got fewer likes and wondering 'what did I do wrong', it's a better use of your time to look at pages that got more likes than usual and wondering 'what did I do right'. ^^

I wouldn't correlate how impressively drawn a page is with how many likes it gets personally. In my experience, the pages that get the most likes are either:

• The ones with the funniest joke punchlines.
  or (even more commonly):
• The ones with some kind of gut-punching drama or dramatic reveal.

So people love like... the page where Urien cruelly tells Rekki she'd be condemned to insignificance outside of an age of knights. They like the page where Urien suddenly betrays and stabs the bad guy it looked like he'd allied with, they love the page where a masked activist turns up and basically makes this whole speech on youtube about how Rekki is awful that leaves her stunned. Those are the pages that make people stop and go "oh s***." and click the like button.

Fiction has natural peaks and troughs of engagement though. If you try to make every moment a peak, you end up with a Michael Bay movie. Engaging in the moment, gets a lot of popularity, but nobody can remember what happened afterwards or tell you what the story was or what their favourite part was. Unlike say, a Miyazaki movie, which has long stretches of "Ma", or peaceful contemplation that make the intense moments more intense and emotional. Trough pages that aren't emotional high points may not get likes, but they do serve a purpose.

Really you have two choices:

• Try to make every page a peak (probably easier on longer scroll because not every moment needs to be a peak, there just needs to be a peak somewhere in there).
  OR
• Accept that some pages get more likes and that's how you know your peaks are effective.

Hey, I made a mostly comedy comic and I only got around 20 likes per episode, I must be failing epically.

Eh I don't think "liking" something by clicking a button is all that natural. I only do it because I'm a creator, too, and even then I tend not to. You don't always know where the like button is, if you're not used to Tapas. You just don't...think about it.

But while going off of likes is A factor in deciding performance, is it the only one? Far from it. You'll find out what Tapas readers in 2020 liked on that day. But will it do the same on other websites? Will it bring people in from links you put on other platforms or did they appear out of search? There's a lot that we don't know because we actually aren't given the metrics. Like I don't know the websites where my readers are coming from, I don't know if they read the whole thing, I don't know if they only read one page or many, I don't even know the page where my readers stopped reading...we have very few metrics so I wouldn't jump to conclusions.

Something else to keep in mind-

1. Not all readers have accounts and thus can't Like a page.
2. Not all subbed readers are "vocal" about their enjoyment.

I'm one of those readers. I have to remind and force myself to comment and like comic pages because it's very unnatural for me. When I get deep into reading a comic it's like watching a film, to even consider liking/commenting would jar me out of the comic.

Like metrics only tell what vocal readers enjoy.

Yeah, Doki is on the money here.

I went to a talk at Websummit a couple of years back by the hugely successful comedian David Schneider, on how to be seen as funny on the internet, and his big secret? It was pretty much (paraphrasing because I can't remember his exact words):

"Just make loads of content. Some of it will stick, some of it won't, but if you're making lots of it, it doesn't matter if some of it doesn't perform as well, because the stuff that does get tens or hundreds of thousands of likes are what matters."

So he basically said, just keep making stuff, because the big posts will be drive your following up so much it's worth taking a scattergun approach for the chance one of those posts in every 10 or even every 100 blows up, and you don't always know what'll be big until you post it.
When you watch a Monty Python movie, there are jokes that make you chuckle but you don't necessarily remember them for life, and there are jokes that are completely iconic, you know the ones everyone remembers and references like "It's just a flesh wound!" It's the same with all comedy movies and sketch shows.

I can see how this may be a struggle for Carlos' comic because most gag comics use very simple art so that a lot of them can be churned out quickly to allow for this, while Carlos uses very detailed and polished artwork. I guess my suggestions for @carloswebcomic would be either:

1. Try to move the comic in a more plot-oriented direction to become more of a comedy-adventure or comedy-drama or comedy-action type thing, like Slayers, Love Hina etc. This has worked out okay for gag comics in the past, like say Roomie! or Shortpacked! This way you might get more out of the high quality art and more detailed characters by having more character-focused drama and exciting plot to support the comedy.
2. Try doing something with simpler art, like 4-koma with much simpler panels and more limited or flat colour like Lucky Star or Azumanga Daioh. Do more pages of it so you can get through more jokes and the big laughs make up for the small ones.

Maybe just try both as limited experiments (maybe as spinoff series to the main comic) and see if one or the other is more effective.

I think the mantra of "make lots of content and something will stick" does not mean that you should just...make content really fast all the time without thought (because some content must be made slower--it's kind of like bread, some loaves take longer to rise, and I'm sure you've noticed that with your own art)

But from my experience with making a lot of projects that just never got off the ground, or maybe did for a little while, and then sank later, is that the saying is actually about how not every project is going to be a winner. Not every project is going to be the one that sticks. And, not every project is going to stay relevant and trendy (especially in humor comics where humor changes a ton generation to generation. Even the greats in humor comics...kinda had to either stop making their series or completely changed their series to match today's new humor).

And that's OK, that's just life. It's not a failure. It's not humiliating. It's just what happens when you roll the dice. It's not about becoming a project machine and timing how quickly you can push projects out, it's about how quick you are at being able to let go and move on when you haven't met your goals. It's about separating your sense of self from your projects or your style, so you can move on to a style or change your project or make a new project to serve you better.

And like we are talking about comics, so if you want to keep doing this comic this way forever--power to you, I have seen people do one project for their whole life, and they were happy as clams doing that. But, it does mean that you'd sacrifice numbers over time since comics have changed--just a lot, and are continuing to change all the time.

It seems to me that at least half of readers if not significantly more just don't ever bother to click the like button when they read a webcomic. I make sure the click like on every page I read, but that's because I'm a creator and get how much that feedback means to the author. Before I made a comic myself there were probably thousands of pages I read and really enjoyed, but never bothered to click the like button on. It's small, it's at the bottom of the page and most readers either won't look that far down the page or are just concerned with moving on to the next one if they're reading multiple episodes at a time.

I think views and subscriber counts are more useful than likes when it comes to measuring performance. If your views and subscribers are going up consistently then it means people like what you're doing and are coming back for more even if they don't hit the like button. I appreciate likes and they give me warm fuzzy feelings inside. I don't let the number I get tell me too much about how much people are enjoying my work though.