If it hit 0 views, 0 likes, and overall zero engagement? Like it feels as if you’re walking into a void alone? Or in this instant, would you give up on your own comic as well? 
Mar '22
Apr '22
If an omniscient being came to me and told me it's doomed to never be seen by anyone forever, then yes, I'll give up. I'm not one of those people who do art 'for themselves' in the sense that even if no-one else sees it, they're happy just doing it.
But I doubt that scenario would ever happen, so I wouldn't know for sure that I'm throwing my work out into an endless void. So I wouldn't give up, because as long as my comic exists, there's hope that at some point, someone will find it, and that's enough for me 
Yes I'd give up and learn why it attracts zero attention.
And then make another one that i think would work better.
If no one is reading or liking your comic then there's a good chance no one is seeing it in the first place. Its a good idea to promote it both here and on social media for best coverage. On top of that, it takes time to grow an audience.
Trust me, I'm barely getting many views and likes but my comic is now very slowly gaining momentum.
Are we doing the comics to get attention, or for ourselves? -as in, we are just expressing something, and who gets it, get it. It doesn't matter if nobody does.
i'll probably just keep peddling the damn thing since i havent much else
like if i'm flopping on one platform i'm gonna go to another and so on as well as promoting it to the best of my ability (tho that process in and of itself is an utter pain in the ass)
like the stuff i'm workin on now (while not comics but still my own stories that i care deeply about) i havent done a ton of advertising, mainly coz of general burnout, fatigue and just not being in the best place in a variety of ways but i'm still popping in from place to place to find the one where i feel like it can actually get attention and engagement. PLUS its also very much for me i am my main target audience and the content is self indulgent as hell but the "it doesn't matter if it doesnt get eyes on it if ur doing it for u" mindset is kinda whack if you WANT to share that story with others while also catering to and creating for yourself. i can have my cake and eat it.
If you're so passionate about your comic, don't. Views, likes, and subs take time, no need to rush it and drop for the sake of attention.
If there is still very few attraction after months go by, then we must find out why.
Is it the style of the art or the way how the comic panels and text is instructed than we learn from the experts.
If it has something to do with stories, we learn stories from histories, mythologies, and other famous comics.
We will still be passionate on what we want but it doesn't hurt to make improvements.
In my experience, I would say no. Sometimes it takes time to find the right niche and for people to see what you're making. I just took a glance at your work, and it looks great! It might just be a case of being difficult to discover.
In that regard, I'd suggest looking at other places you can promote for free. Do you post a link to your comic on your social media? That's often an easy way to get a few new eyes on what you're making, plus it's easy for people to pass the link around.
Don't give up yet! Sometimes it does feel like you're just shouting into a void, but patience is key.
I didn’t have any engagement at all for a few weeks when I first started. I didn’t really expect any though, there’s a lot of competition. 
The unique and amazing thing about webcomics is that you can just throw anything out into the world and see if it works, and if it doesn't, you can try again with absolutely no penalty. So maybe it's best to treat this like a Roguelike game.
If you were making a print comic, before being published, you'd have to go through so many people who would be like "Hmm, I don't know if we can sell this concept" or "I don't think this art style will work..." or "This is too rough looking to go to print" etc. So print comics are practically always very safe and very polished. The downside is... you can't just try a thing to see if it works, and you can't prove the publishers wrong by actually getting an audience for a comic they were sure nobody would read.
As a webcomic creator, you don't have all those people to tell you what your work should be to succeed before you make it, so you kind of have to learn what works and doesn't work as you go. Sure, you can, and should read books about comics (like Making Comics by Scott McCloud which EVERY comic creator should read) and look for what your favourite creators have to say about their process, or successful people on a platform can say about how they built their audience... but platforms and audiences are always evolving; there's always an experimental element and always a chance that something that breaks all the established rules of "how to make a successful webcomic" will rocket to stardom.
So you had a bad run. You launched a comic, nobody looked at it. Bummer! I've been there when I started out! My first comic was a terrible attempt to copy Megatokyo, which was my favourite webcomic at the time.
NOBODY READ THIS. In retrospect... I am thankful (oh my god, did I write my name in comic sans? I hate you, teenage me 
)
I made about five strips of this, then stopped because...er... nobody was interested. But I don't regret making this (okay, I do regret the comic sans) because it was the start of my webcomics journey. It taught me so much about what I'm good at, and from there, each comic I tried was a little more successful. I mean, I think my journey would have been a lot faster if I'd had access to the wealth of resources a creator has now, like amazing books, youtube channels, tutorials and easy access to communities with more experienced artists to ask questions (a few years later I'd join a UK based small press comics community, and it made such a big difference). But still, the point is, this comic bombed, but it wasn't the end. It was actually just the start.
So, maybe writing this comic up as a failure isn't a bad idea or maybe you want to try it a bit longer, but the important thing is to now do a post-mortem. WHY hasn't it performed?
Did you maybe not promote it enough? Did the cover, banner or blurb fail to grab attention from the crowd of other titles? Did the start of the story lack a strong hook? Did you fail to make the protagonist easy for the audience to be emotionally invested in? Write down notes on what you can improve here and then look for ways to improve those aspects.
For further guidance, I wrote a massive document on this exact subject with links to resources:
Alot of authors write piles of novels before they finally write the novel that actually takes off. Comic creators don't have that luxury. We can't finish a comic nonchalantly, for practice. It takes way too much damn time. So I feel dropping a comic and starting a new one is the same as just getting a few novels under your belt before you start taking it seriously.
I dropped my comic last year to start my current one, I had been working on it for a year, and it was a tough call. But I learned alot, and I really like my current comic better. THe story is much tighter, and I fixed alot of my initial writing mistakes.
I also spent 3 months in between starting a completely different comic, that I still like, and I got alot of work done on it. But realized I wasn't as into. I really wanted to a fantasy comic.
closed Apr 8, '22
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