Show Of Hands, Twitter Giveaway

GoldenPlume 2016-09-27 22:28:04 UTC #1

Donate-to-series is not here yet. It's coming at some point. When it arrives people will be able to financially support comics on Tapas by watching video ads (or outright buying coins) and then giving those coins to the comics they like best. In an ideal situation Tapastic comics would receive so many donations that individual creators could switch to doing their series full time.

In order to help jump start that spirit of support, we're contemplating doing a give away shortly after donate-to-series goes live. The give away would be on Twitter and very simple. All readers would have to do is retweet the giveaway tweet and name their favorite Tapastic series in the retweet. We would then give 500 coins to the series named in the retweet.

By a simple show of hands would any readers here support that give away?

We only ask because most Tapas stuff on Twitter does not get much attention (10-20 retweets, 20-40 likes). We don't want to purchase a mountain of coins and then there's no interest.

The reason for doing this in the hope of having some Tapas related tweet that goes viral for a bit and gets people comfortable with the notion of supporting on Tapas.

Finally, in order to keep things fair, we would limit the number of coins any one creator can receive (4% of total give away) that way the super subscribed stuff here on Tapastic wouldn't take the lions share of the prize panel. Otherwise one creator could jot a quick notification to subscribers and fly away with the whole bananna. *

*(Kudos if you can name those series secretly to yourself.)

So in summary, 100,000 coin give away for 200 Tapas retweets, for example. What is the amount of interest in this?

(We can certainly raise the total give away if there's enough demand.)

shaneoid77 2016-09-27 22:36:17 UTC #2

To be fair, it should work both ways. There are many here crying out for help with exposure on Tapastic and to my knowledge it is falling on deaf ears. I don't think you can continuously promote and network with a handful of your talent and seemingly ignore the rest and expect them to get enthusiastic about it on Twitter.

keii4ii 2016-09-27 23:42:26 UTC #3

I hate to be that guy, but here are some doubts:

there needs to be some sort of verification process to make sure the retweeting account doesn't belong to the creator of the comic being retweeted, or anything of that sort. Even though you'd be capping the amount of coins per creator, no one should cheat and walk away with a prize.
And @shaneoid77 brings up a good point: will this actually help? From my observations, things that go viral seem to be self-contained entertainments. Here the tweets themselves are not entertaining; the comics are, and to get to the comic, you have to click an offsite link. That's a significant obstacle when it comes to going viral in this era of laziness and instant gratification.

I've actually seen things like this a lot an the Korean side of Twitter, usually in the form of raffles. Some of them get a good number of participants, but it still doesn't seem to be an effective way of advertising because the tweets generated by the contest/event are not interesting to the viewers.

I'm not trying to dissuade you. If you can find a way around the hurdles, by all means do it! It's just that there are definitely issues to be aware of before attempting.

GoldenPlume 2016-09-28 00:24:46 UTC #4

Actually that's a lesser concern right now. We're trying to just see how many people would even be interested in doing a single retweet in order to support their favorite comic on Tapastic. If readers aren't willing to do something as simple as that it speaks to other issues beyond a give away.

What we are referring to are the official @Tapas_app tweets. Tapas has 8K followers and nothing they do breaks past 20 retweets / 50 likes. We don't blame Tapastic. It seems that Tapastic followers are not motivated enough to respond.

Based on that and the lack of much response to this post, it would seem that there little interest in our giving away money (coins). There's a lot of cost and effort that would go into doing something like a give away and if readers/creators are not even willing to participate on a micro scale by doing a single retweet then it appears taking no action is the wisest decision for us.

WintreKitty 2016-09-28 00:59:42 UTC #5

I think one of the issues as to why Tapastic isn't getting more likes and retweets is because they are currently catering their twitter feed to the novel portion -specifically the app- and less so to the comics. I'd venture so far as to say the majority of their audience cares more for the comics than the novels. If this is true, then it kind of makes sense that they aren't getting as many retweets.

Of course I could be totally off. I don't know your stats

scythe 2016-09-28 04:10:41 UTC #6

Sure, I'll show my hands.

shaneoid77 2016-09-28 05:17:08 UTC #7

Well I had a scroll through the twitter feed, It all seems nice and vibrant, but there wasn't anything that jumped out at me to be retweeted, I'd be more keen to retweet specific comics or creators and support them (thus supporting Tapastic). Perhaps it's a problem with webcomics in general, they're incredibly diverse and as such can never appeal to everyone?

But I wouldn't give up, I think we'd all love to see Tapastic succeed

GesuGesu 2016-09-28 06:07:02 UTC #8

It's a bit sad since I've moved onto Twitter for a lot of my social platforming. Facebook is more of a real-life connections site, while Twitter is my playground for online shenanigans related to fan interest and art. I would like to participate in this since it won't reveal my webcomic activity to coworkers and classmates I know offline if I can use Twitter instead of Facebook.

AnnaLandin 2016-09-28 06:11:00 UTC #9

You don't need to be concerned about Tapas to use Twitter for your webcomic, though. If you aren't already, I highly recommend you participate in #ComicBookHour and #webcomicchat and the various other comics-hashtags that host weekly events. They're excellent tools for networking with other artists and promoting yourself.

GoldenPlume 2016-09-28 06:51:49 UTC #10

Since Tapas generates revenue from sales of e-books that's why all their focus is on that.

Louistrations 2016-09-28 08:16:26 UTC #11

Nice idea, but you'll probably get a better response to the giveaway on Tumblr or DeviantART.

GoldenPlume 2016-09-28 16:29:15 UTC #12

Given the low interest we'll probably just give some coins each to those above who have taken the time to respond to this thread and call it a day.

TrialAndError 2016-09-28 16:46:17 UTC #13

Maybe what you can do is theme your tweets and cater them to the comic styles here, since they are so diverse.

For instance
Monday - Action/Adventure Day
- Kick off your week by kicking butt! Retweet your favorite Action/Adventure comics
Tuesday - Comedy Day
- Belly busters? We've got em! Retweet your favorite comedy series here!
Wednesday - Romance Day
Thursday - Sci-Fi/Fiction
Friday - Slice of Life
Saturday - Satires

Something along those lines.

Rabbit 2016-09-28 17:07:42 UTC #14

I would love to take part in this!! XD Picking with comic I want to choose will be hard, though.. maybe I'll pick one that I feel is sorta unknown and may not get any coins by itself.

WakaXO 2016-09-28 19:18:33 UTC #15

I'd participate.

It goes without saying the contest will need to be well advertised, but I think one of the tapas twitters problems is its not very present. I follow the tapastic twitter account and I barely see them on my feed.