Struggling to Turn Readers into Subscribers. Any Advice?

[Leonotis]

Hey everyone,

I’m kind of stuck right now and wanted to see if anyone else has dealt with this. My comic’s views have been solid — every new chapter gets around 70+ views, which is great! But my subscriber count has barely moved. It’s been sitting at around 25 subs for a while now.

I could understand this if it were like my novel (where later chapters drop off hard in views), but people are consistently reading the comic all the way through. So clearly there are readers coming back but just not subscribing.

I’m starting to wonder:
Maybe the Sub for Sub ban is causing more damage than I thought it would?

Is there something else I should be saying to readers to encourage more subs?

Or maybe people are reading without Tapas accounts and can’t subscribe?

Not sure what I’m missing here. Anyone have any tips or insight on how to turn those casual readers into actual subscribers?

Read Leonotis comic | Tapas Web Community

[Aeneas1]

I am sorry to tell you this but it’s been difficult for all of us since the sub4sub system was outlawed. The problem is that people are naturally apathetic. Believe me, I know. I benefitted from that system too. If I hadn’t relied so heavily on it, my fanbase would not have made it as far as it did.

[jwabeasley]

Firstly, don't worry about it. If people are reading, that's good! Without Sub4Sub, we'll be seeing slower subscriber growth for a while for us smaller community creators, but it affects all of us more or less the same. On the other hand, you can be confident that your subs are more genuine.

I think most readers don't have accounts, so they don't 'sub' or 'like' comics. This is more true if you are doing the right thing and bringing readers from other platforms on your own. That's definitely true of many of my readers. For instance, I had well over 500 views yesterday, but no new subs or likes - that's probably from people without Tapas accounts.

[kyupol]

You uploaded starting July 2025. 3 Months in isn't too bad having those numbers.

Have you tried advertising off site? Like deviantart, reddit, Instagram, etc?

I'm one of your subscribers and I can't find anything wrong with your art or story. Maybe because it's grayscale and not colored? Only small thing I can find lol

[jwabeasley]

The one thing that would help his comic's numbers overall is increasing the posting tempo to weekly or less, but that's probably not feasible.

[Bokyongyo]

Honestly, I would just keep being consistent and uploading.

You already got a good chunk of steady views past episode 1 for a fairly new series as well as likes so people are reading your work so that’s a positive (Meaning folks aren’t just seeing the first episode and dropping it.) Also your art looks clean. I wouldn’t pay too much credence in the drop in sub growth; Those will come back to your work for sure.

Sub4Sub being banned will definitely play a part into maybe not getting a steady uptick of new subscribers but if we’re being honest, I think it’s all for the better.

From this point on you’ll be able to know the people who are subscribing to you now is because of a true interest in your work.

[ShidoDraws]

I will say sub4sub culture on Tapas is different now. Back then people did actually come back to read your latest episode even if most might just be pretending to have interest in the story. But before the limitations placed on sub4sub, too many people commented, liked and sub on my first episode. Despite me not really participating in sub4sub threads. I clicked on every one of their user profile and they do that on every story they stumble upon. It's really annoying and disheartening, wish I could tell every one of them how I feel about their actions. It's not a nice gesture, it's a physical sign that my story isn't even worth reading and the best they could do "for me" is see the first episode at the very least. Like if you don't want to invest your time into my story, you can view the first couple of episodes, yes, but don't interact with it.

Yeah, sub4sub makes their numbers look good, but does their writing reflect those numbers? A lot of the times, no. I know numbers don't represent the quality, because some really good stories out there deserves way more recognition than they deserve. This is why sub4sub is not a good way to get seen if nobody is genuine.

You can still do sub4sub, there's just extra steps to that now which is how things should be. Know that the minute you self published, you basically sign up to operate like a business. And businesses can not operate without knowing where their specific customers are.

[moontokkym]

Chiming in as someone who's never used sub4sub as a system because historically on other platforms I've always seen it used as a way to gain empty numbers... My question is why do you need subs in your case?

Like, seriously, subbing is so that people will be notified about new chapters and will come back to read your comic... Thing is, they're apparently doing that anyway? You're getting readers, around 70 views per chapter consistently which is pretty good especially if these are people who are just remembering your comic or keeping a tab open on your comic and popping back to read.

Like I get that it's easy to fixate on "number go up" but remember what that number's for. 1 loyal unsubbed reader is better than 10 dead subs every time. It's not like if every one of those 70 views subscribed you'd be making any money in a million years, and from what I can tell the algorithm works on views and likes as well as (if not more than) subs. You're not losing anything by people not subbing right now and yet you're not appreciating the success you're having because you're too focused on a number that you feel should be higher when it doesn't seem like it would influence much in your situation.

[jwabeasley]

it's easy to fixate on "number go up" but remember what that number's for

Hard agree here. No matter how big your number is, you will always want it to go up, up astronomically. And whatever new heights you reach, you will always want more. Don't let pursuit of numbers steal your enjoyment of the process.