Should I publish more?

[Cade]

I'm relatively new to webcomics and I'd like for my audience to grow. I've been publishing two comics every weekend and they seem to be getting views, but barely any likes or subscribers. Should I publish them more frequently? I really need help here. I plan to make this my career. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My webcomic

[Kayke]

Your comic is still really new, I don't think it's a matter of posting more often but rather just a matter of sticking with it. If you keep posting regularly over a long period of time you will start to gain a following.

[eschaefges]

Agreed with @kaykedrawsthings - you may also want to consider delayed posting to weekdays instead of weekends - traffic is slower on the weekends, I've found.

[shazzbaa]

Ooo, seconding the weekday advice! Weekend traffic is so much lower.

And yeah, webcomics take a long time to build a following -- it'll probably take at least a year or two to build up an audience, and most of the people who are making their living off of webcomics now had been putting work on the internet for at least 10 years before they really "made it." If you want to really focus on webcomics, you gotta be ready for a long climb!!

[Kura]

Sure you can publish more if you can handle it and want to, but don't force yourself to do that, overworking and eventually burning yourself out is never recommended and bad for both you and your comic.

Also have to agree with the weekend advice, I do daily updates and compared to other days the week ends are the worst for gaining readership.

[UzukiCheverie]

As people have said already, weekends are dead times. Maybe try posting on like, Fridays and Mondays?

Also, I wasn't going to say anything, but argh it's bothering me so much i have to i can't keep it in

Your most recent comic, "Putting Safety First"... REALLY BIG MISSED OPPORTUNITY with the joke here. I mean the one you have is okay, but seeing as how the dad is delivering the line "You are so grounded" whilst Wade hangs from a tree? There was a dad joke in there you could have used. There was a perfectly good "No, I'm in the air, not on the ground!" type pun you could have made and you wasted it! WASTED IT LIKE THE OSMOND FAMILY WASTES WATER.

(I mostly jest).

But yeah. It'll take time to build your readership. Much like in anything else, there are a few comics now and then that explode in numbers right off the bat, but they're either a.) one of the very lucky few that struck a sweet spot, aka the one-hit wonders, or b.) they're coming to Tapastic with a fanbase built already through other places like their own websites, Tumblr, DA, etc.

Don't get discouraged if you haven't gotten 100 subscribers in a day. Focus on your work, don't overwork yourself, and most of all just have fun. If you're in it for the popularity and the fame, then webcomics is not the world you want to be in. Be in it for yourself and your enjoyment of making comics first and foremost, and your readership later when they finally come around.

[saeedfaridzadeh]

Building an audience will take time.

Most important thing you can do for your growing audience is to publish at the rate that you know you can maintain. Pick a schedule and stick it to it. Always post when you promise your audience you will post. If you try to post more than you know you can handle then you run the risk of missing an update.

So pick a schedule and stick to it. Don't burn yourself out by running before you just learned to crawl.

Crawl. Walk. Then Run.

The audience will eventually come.

[demthorshie]

As noted in this thread already, building an audience takes time. Updating your webcomic frequently is helpful in building your audience if you have the time, but I think that being consistent with your updates is also a good idea too. Be sure to stick to your update schedule so that your fans will always know when to expect a new page from you.

If you plan on turning this in to a career, you should probably extend to audiences outside of Tapastic as well, such as social media and other comic forums. It takes many years of promoting your comic and working hard before you can expect to make a living with it. Very few creators actually pull in enough to live off of and the ones who do have been at it for 7-10+ years sometimes.

[Cade]

To everyone, Thanks for the advice! I will now be publishing two comics a week, on Mondays and Thursdays rather than weekends. Any shares and subscribers would be appreciated. Also, Thanks @UzukiCheverie I'll remember that joke of grounded and keep it in mind for a future episode. Two new comics are out now. http://tapastic.com/series/Wade