Should you stop crossposting your story\comic if it doesn't gets much traction on the target platform?

[Darth_Biomech]

I've been crossposting pages of my comic to webtoons since march. Today four months later the series there have a whooping 7 (seven) subscribers (and one comment accusing the comic of being "space furries"), and I don't think that you can even find it unless you'll search for it. It seduced me with displaying tens of thousands of likes on comments and featured comics, but it seems that 99% of the audience don't even knows that "main" section is not all the site has to offer (I certainly didn't for a long time). Even I had to remember that all the non-featured comics are hidden behind a tiny non-descriptive "canvas" link. But, well, regardless of that the most popular non-featured titles have tens of thousands of subscribers, so it's still a large auditory there.

And I begun thinking, should I even bother? It looks like it does nothing but consumes my time, considering their stone-age uploading system that doesn't even have a scheduling functionality.

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I'll just say it: if you really wanna quit, quit. Leave 'em hanging. It's your right. =/

I'm all for branching out to new websites and staying in the game when things look bleak, but if making an extant piece of media available to a secondary audience isn't paying off at all, why waste the effort?

You're not obligated to make sure a handful of people on one site have easy access to your content. Leave a link, and if they care, they'll follow you to your home base.

[Kelheor]

Well, I'd say changing your comic for WT format is a must. I know many people will say the page format is doing just fine there, but at least this helped me a lot.
You are right, most people have no idea WTF Canvas is, I was flabbergasted upon seeing posts on official Inta and Twitter that described what Canvas is and people reaction to those.
Other than that 7 subs in 4 months is low, so maybe your comic just doesn't suit the site, which is understandable too. I would try cutting the comic in the format just for a chance, otherwise don't bother with it, supporting a lot of platforms is a pain and if it doesn't give you anything, why waste your time.

[MrTwennysebben]

I'm thinking of bailing on Webtoon as well. I spent a lot of time reformatting my strips due to their smaller upload sizes, and now every week I have to resize and chop everything, only to be stuck at 34 followers for months. I also don't like their lack of a scheduling function. Might just give up on that one, especially since I'm starting my own site soon. I say go for it.

[Cavechan]

I'm actually going to be taking one of my comics off of there. I have two comics and one of them is a sequel comic to a completed comic. I didn't bother uploading the completed comic there because it was all PNG format (back when they didn't allow PNG) so I just left a note at the beginning saying "You'll have to read the original on another site".

People either ignore that, don't care, or something. The comic has very few subs on WT which isn't a huge deal, I have about the same amount here. The bigger problem are the people who don't care, read it and then maybe because it's page format, maybe because it's a sequel and they don't get it, maybe both... they just rate it really low. It has a ridiculously low rating on WT. It also has a very low amount of comments. Like two comments on all 63 episodes.

So, whatever. I'm just going to delete it there and just have it on Tapas and Global Comix instead. It will help keep the small amount of readers in a smaller area.

[nostalgicroxas]

As a novelist, this applies to all websites I've been on.
Gauge carefully what is the definition of the site "working" for you. If you judge strictly on views, or WT rating, or number of comments, you will end up nurturing a defeatist attitude in many cases.
Many sites for my novel do not track views per chapter, or do not track them in a way that is easy for me to access (Tapas being unique). And many sites do not support the way in which my novel is written - either length of content - or hard content (italics, ect). This makes it hard to judge what is a success site, vs what is not, for me. DeviantART's been fine to update to for most of the last decade, but with their newest rollout, they somehow hard murdered italics and the submission/editing process. Booksie only allows a total of 100 chapters. Ao3 is not built for original works. Figment, Mibba, and many other sites, rely on what Tapas currently has done - showing "how many likes" are on a piece, which somehow garners how many people will future click in to read it.
Every site has their drawbacks for multiple different reasons - community, reading style differences, or just how the site's base UI is set up, vs how the search function works. My point being, that if I wanted to, I could say that Tapas "isn't working" for me either, because while I have consistent views each month since being here, I have virtually no comments, and the views on one work do not cross pollinate to another work.
I still cross post to Ao3 now and then when I think to, but I'm not certain if I'll cross post to dA anymore if I can't figure out what's happening with their italics system. I literally have submissions over ten years old back from when you had to paste, and go into editing and manually enter the HTML italics code to make it have italics, and how sick I was of doing that. In dA's current set up, that doesn't even work.

[DogshitJay]

I just pulled my novel down from wattpad. I don't have the energy to focus on promoting on both platforms, and I want to prioritize Tapas. When It's complete, I'll tackle posting on wattpad rather than just dumping my chapters and running which was all I had the energy for over there. So much goes into understanding a platform and cultivating an audience in that space, it's fine to focus on one at a time imo.

[snowy]

100 subs after a year of posting. At this point I'm basically doing it for this one cool person who keeps posting comments and engaging with the story. If I find out she has a Tapas account, I'm pulling it from WT and going tapas exclusive.

Yo, Clarissa ! You here too ?

[rmdooley]

YOU'RE ON WEBTOONS!?!?!

I'm on my way!

[snowy]

Lol, are you ?? I go check now.
(LOL!! My rating just went down! )

[rajillustration]

I think that WT has a different vibe than Tapas--and some stories do better here than there and visa versa. If your story isn't clicking then yeah, call it. I did the same when I started posting Alchemist Burn Outs there (in scroll format, no less) and was like "lol a whopping 4 subs for HOURS of reformatting work!" so I just took down the scroll format pages and I've occasionally posted a few pages although I don't care about it on there because again...it's 4 subs.

But, my short story that I posted there recently, Bardsong, has done way better and has gotten actual engagement and comments...so some stories click with that audience and others don't because they're pretty picky about the presentation and the themes and all that. (and honestly, the fact it doesn't have scheduling is what's kept me from using Webtoons more because I'm an adult and I work during the day, I don't make comic posts. I usually schedule way in advance. I'm hoping that one day someone will invent a 3rd party that can post for you on a schedule like tweetdeck for twitter.)

[ivanskilling]

If you want to format any literature on dA, you have to highlight the word(s) and a small bar will pop up showing the Bold, Italicize, Align options.

[nostalgicroxas]

You know what's so wrong with just leaving those commands at the top so I don't have to highlight crap to realize something is there. And that honestly is not better than manually entering in HTML italic command. Now that you say this, I'm also dreading that it'll have the same italic issue that tapas has where it makes it new paragraphs and what not. Why can't this super fancy thing that DA's changed to accept italics?! The one they just had as their built in stash-writer DID.

[ivanskilling]

I'm currently crossposting my latest novel in deviantArt and Ao3. It's a bit of a drag for me because I also wanted to experiment with converting it to a fanfiction (just a Replace of names) to see how much traction it would garner on those sites. I don't spend much time converting it to the required format but it's a pain on dA to copy the Author Descriptions each time and update the link to next/previous chapters. Ao3 is much more suitable for literature obviously.

I'm also thinking of stopping if I don't get much interaction with it after a while. But at the moment, it's still too early to tell. So I'll give it a few months first.

[ivanskilling]

Lol dA's Eclipse doesn't make sense on multiple levels. I've accepted its lack of logic by now.
The "best" thing of it so far is that they allow for easier discovery of Daily Deviations, so at least my two Daily Deviations are gaining more exposure. (Or at least I think that's why?? )

[nostalgicroxas]

If you're pushing an original on Ao3, it likely won't do nearly as good as it might on Tapas. Not that I agree with how Ao3 wants to cater to just fan** works, but I can tell from my views and readership that anything remotely fanfic has over 1000 views on a 800 word dump, where something akin that's original, is largely left ignored- even if it's tagged as a "one shot" "short story". Ao3 also seems to have no native organic way to find new works on it. It's all tag searching, and honestly, the overall way to find stuff on the site feels insanely archaic.

since Eclipse has been forced down everyone's throat, it's done something to the search engines. I've had at least 3 people find my novel/shorts on dA and read them. One is even commenting and I'm like, am I hallucinating here? I haven't had comments or likes on my writing on dA in nothing short of 5 years.

[ivanskilling]

Oh no, I posted a fanfic version of my novel on Ao3. I know originals don't stand a remote chance. I just wanted to see how people would respond to it even if the characters were slightly OOC. On dA, I post both an original version and the fanfic version. Of course all 3 versions link back to Tapas.

Oh wow that's cool though! Something positive is happening without us even knowing it lolol!

[nostalgicroxas]

I don't know hooooow but yeah. Eclipse is doing something.
I also gave up eons ago on "first chapter, previous chapter, next chapter" links in dA descriptions. Now they're even less seen in Eclipse. I've had stuff organized in folders in my gallery and journal. dA doesn't even show the journals anymore on the home page and I'm "eye twitch you just messed up years of organizing" and the folders are all.... //kill me now
Can we burn Eclipse yet or at the least FORCE FEED the old layout onto people.

[NickRowler]

I am also thinking about stopping one if my series in there. My views suddenly just dropped and I have some uploads with zero page views. I am not getting new readers on there so why put in the effort?

I don’t understand the formatting of the site. Why is my work so buried to the point where it won’t even show up when you type it into the search bar?

I don’t blame you for wanting to bail.

[nostalgicroxas]

If it makes you feel better, search engines on pro sites are utter garbage too. I couldn't find Black n Decker stuff on Home Depot's site by typing "black decker". It was only when I copied it's name from amazon, written with a + or something, that it showed up.