Hold on tho, in cases of Sub4Sub it seems a lot of y’all just assume all they’ll be are dead subs.
Sub4Sub can lead to actual readers / fans for both comics. Will there be some dead subs? Sure. But it can also result in more readers.
It really just depends on the subscribers involved. Obviously organic subs are best because they’re people who liked genuinely like your work. But sometimes incentives can attract fans too. If you do Sub4Sub you could also get fans who may not have ever come across your work otherwise!
Not to mention if they have their library public then anyone who browses their library could see your comic and check it out. It’s basically free promotion.
And honestly even with organic subs you run the risk of them being dead subs. I’ve got like 35 subs and only 3 to 5 ever Like the episodes and 1 to 3 ever Comment. And they don’t even do it that consistently. I know the ones that like the episodes are my consistent readers at the very least - so that’s 3 people. Roughly.
I get a decent amount of views but only a small portion bothers to like my pages, fewer will bother to comment. I figure in Sub4Sub cases the polite thing to do is at least give the other persons comic a try. Maybe it’s not for you, that’s fine, but give it a chance.
But yeah everything has pros and cons, never put all your eggs in one basket. That’s one reason I’m always looking for places and ways to promote my comic. Sub4Sub is just another method. It’s a way for creators to help each other out.
I mean face it, we’re all small fish in a massive pond. Sub4Sub can allow creators to branch out to read things they might not normally read, or read comics that are a genre they don’t really search for stuff to read in. For example I don’t care for romance stories, I could do a Sub4Sub with someone who did a romance comic. Meanwhile maybe this person isn’t into fantasy comics, which is what I do. We wouldn’t normally hang out in each other’s respective genre sections so odds are we wouldn’t come across each other or would just gloss over and ignore their work normally. But with Sub4Sub we could give it a chance and discover we enjoy the comic.
And if we didn’t do Sub4Sub we might have never come across each other’s comics. Does that make sense?
They may not be organic fans, and yeah maybe you had to basically mutually bribe each other, but if they end up genuinely enjoying your comic that’s still great! And I prefer to be optimistic about it, tho realistically I figure most will become dead subs. It’s all a matter of how “worth it” it is to you.