Tapas traffic vs Webtoon traffic

[vworksart]

So some time ago started posting to Webtoon in the same frequency as I post to Tapas and I've been looking at my stats and I can't figure out for the life of me why it's played out the way it has.
My number of subs on Webtoon are almost double what I have on Tapas yet Tapas has about 300 to 400 more views than Webtoon.

Im still new to webcomics so I'm curious.
Is the type of traffic / market on these sites that vastly different from each other? Or is this just a coincidence that my comic is doing better on Webtoon? At first I thought it was because of the contest, but my traction hasn't slowed down since it's end.

Again, just looking for some insight.

Thanks!

[BobbyjoeX]

a lot of people on Tapas are Artists while on Webtoons a lot of traffic is from regular readers, Readers are willing to sub more than Artists so even tho you got more views on Tapas, there are more ppl who are willing to sub on Webtoons

[vworksart]

Ohh ok that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Fierce_Chai]

The difference is that once you post something on Webtoon, your comic stays visible on the "Newest" section longer than in Tapas what makes more people find your comic
As far as I know, Webtoon has more users and a bigger ratio to non-artist readers than on Tapas
This is the case for most comic artists, but for some reason its the other way round in my case and I have less readers on Webtoon than on Tapas, not sure why
I hope this helped!

[kytri]

I also have more than twice as many subs on webtoon. I do get more likes and pageviews there too though. I'm not sure how casual browsers are finding my comic though. I had to really dig to get it to show up in the search

I think some of it is just it's a bigger site? Also I suspect bots are a factor. Most sites have issues with bot accounts but I feel like webtoons would be relatively easy to make bots for.

Edit: another thing that just occurred to me is webtoons has no notification system. Tapas will pop up a little icon to let me know that a comic I'm subbed to has updated, webtoons will only tell me if I actively go to the subscriptions page and personally I often don't think to. That could cause some disparity in subs vs pageviews.

[Samuraiflame]

Are you sure you just don't have WT notifs turned off? WT normally sends a push notification right after subbed comics update. o_O

As for my own experience, WT has been really generous to my comic.

Tapas lifetime stats (Since March 2017)

Webtoon lifetime stats (Since May 2017)

Phew

I personally don't think there's that many bots on WT. The traffic is just that much higher.

[Pandastrophic]

Simple, Webtoon just has more readers, it's been there for much longer than Tapas has and people who aren't in the webcomic community would know about webtoons more so than Tapas because before the Discover section was made it was an app that had a lot of korean webtoons translated to english, I remember my friends used to read several korean webtoons on it.

another thing that just occurred to me is webtoons has no notification system. Tapas will pop up a little icon to let me know that a comic I'm subbed to has updated

It's the other way around, I don't have any tapas notifications (I think you have to manually turn them on for each comic) while on Webtoons once you sub you automatically get notifications unless you manually turn it off. Not sure why you don't get webtoon notifs but I can garantee a lot of your readers get them.

[kytri]

Maybe it's different on the app vs desktop, but I definitely haven't turned anything off and there's no settings on the desktop site for me to turn any kind of notifications on. I've never used the phone app.
They occasionally email about new comics they're launching and want to promote but I've never recieved a notification of any kind from webtoons related to anything I'm subbed to.

[Samuraiflame]

Yeah, the notifications are for mobile app only, but that's where the majority of readers are.

[ZevVeli]

I know that I, personally, read more comics on Webtoons versus Tapas simply because I hate Tapas' paywall system, in order to unlock a single page of a premium comic I would have to watch 23 advertisments, which if each one lasts 15 seconds on average is 5:45 of advertisements not including the loading times, not to mention that sometimes due to glitches or loading errors the coins aren't presented. This has turned a lot of people off of the Tapas platform.

[Jenny-Toons]

I don't really read the premium comics. I think it's just easier to read the free comics Tapas has and tip those coins.
Are you aware that Tapas has free comics? For a while, it appears a more people coming in think Tapas is just "pay-by-coin" comics.

[LordVincent]

The majority of comics on tapas are free to read. I have stated this very insistently and specifically many many times and there's always some people that, without taking a single second to check if maybe just maybe their initial impression was wrong, keep insisting that I am wrong in this statement and that "most comics have a paywall".

Fact still remains: majority of comics on Tapas are free to read.

This all aside, sooner or later audiences will have to learn to accept that professional creators need to be paid. I've noticed a tendency of some fans on one hand complaining about free comics' updates being "too short", and on the other complaining that long update professional comics require payment. This makes no sense. If you want good entertainment in comprehensive chunks and good quality, that creator needs to get paid somehow or they will have to get a different job to support themselves, which (as any reasonable person will be able to figure out) prevents them from providing updates so large and frequent.

Tapas offers an amazing alternative. A middle ground. Got no money? Collect coins by watching ads.

This should be celebrated, not whined about.
And lets be fair: what you unlock with those coins is not "a single page". We're talking about an average of 30-60 panels here which is more like 5-10 pages if measured in traditional pages.

And before anyone starts complaining about episodes being "too expensive", lets remember that the conversion rate is 1250 coins = $1. Many episodes are 250 coins. This means that $1 (except the added google or appstore fees which tapas can do nothing about) will give you 5 episodes, or by traditional page measures a full 30-35 page issue.

When was the last time you bought a full comic issue for $1, nevermind a dollar that isn't even from your own wallet but from the wallet of an advertisor?

Sorry for the rant but I find the complaints about Tapas premium quite baffling. Especially baffling since I rarely hear the same complaints about, say, Lehzin or any other paid comic service where you can't read much at all without pulling your wallet out to my knowledge.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[eleoza]

While I like the website, the app is.... well... not free-to-read comic friendly. It just promotes premium comics and free-to-read comics are hard to find, especially for new users, so it's not that surprising people think that tapas is (although cheap) pay-to-read. The 'community comics' tab just shows a few free-to-read comics, which are... based on what?

I wish tapas had an app like webcomics, with a 'discovery' tab.

While I totally understand tapas is a business and obviously wants/needs to promote premium comics, it gets harder for free-to-read comics. I think I read in another thread somewhere that Tapas is working on improving their app though, I hope it's soon ^^ Perhaps then the traffic might go up for comics on tapas.

[bakasama25]

I find you have to look at the "latest" to find something to read on the app.