Quick Question About The Support Program

[WinterFall]

Okay, so I am a new creator here in Tapas, which means I don't really know everything about publishing. Right now, my understanding about the support program is that in order to activate it, you need 250 subscribers, and for ad revenue, you need 100 subscribers. Please do correct me if I am wrong, I'm a bit confused!

Anyway, here's the thing, I've seen quite a lot of novels that only have maybe about 80 subscribers or so in total, but readers can already support the author with ink. Does this mean they activated the support program even though they haven't reached the milestone? Is there a way to manually activate the support program? Or is there a specific event that enables you to activate it?

My novel currently has 39 subscribers at the moment, so I haven't completed the ad revenue milestone yet, and I don't think I can activate the support program. Even if I could, I think I wouldn't activate it yet, considering the number of my subscribers. I'm just really curious on how authors with subscribers less than 250 can activate the support program.

And I apologize if this is a frequently-asked question. I've tried looking at other threads asking the same question, but I still don't wholly get it. I'd appreciate any reply! Thank you in advance and have a good day.

[Eiranyx]

It's most likely because they had their ink support unlocked during events like inksgiving or Sprinksgiving (?) (I'm not sure if they still have that since I joined here around the time before inksgiving, so I only know inksgiving ^^)
usually before inksgiving they make a forum post like this one:

Hello everyone! In order to allow as many creators to join Inksgiving as possible, I will unlock creator's ability to receive support starting today until November 9th. If you are under 250 subscribers on your series, but want to join Inksgiving, please link your Tapas account (not your series) in this thread, like this: Important note: Due to not everyone using the support system as it was intended, I will be reviewing every account and may decide not to unlock support for some creato…

where creators who haven't unlocked their support yet can have it unlocked early during inksgiving in order for them to participate as the goal is to allow as many creators to join ^^ -- Also after you have it unlocked, it will stay unlocked even after the event

[WinterFall]

Thank you so much for your reply! So basically, they were able to activate their support program because they were participating in events like Inksgiving, right? However, does Inkgiving or Spring Inksgiving take place every year, or was it just a limited event?

[kitschensyngk]

Inksgiving occurs every year around Thanksgving (hence the name) and I think the spring version occurs in May.

[WinterFall]

Ah, I see! Thanks for your reply! At least now I kind of get the whole support program and Inksgiving feature of Tapas. I guess I wasn't able to participate since I've just joined the Tapas community in December!