First of all: You have nice art work. That is going to help.
In this second part, I am only offering supposition. WebToons has creators, readers, and critics. Critics follow many series just by looking for fresh updates. I am not a critic, so I can only infer their motives. I am a creator/reader.
You can gather dozens to hundreds of readers & critics on Webtoons. But you need thousands of subscribers to qualify for revenue. WebToons limits the number of subscriptions each reader can follow.
Tapas lets you accumulate revenue with a much lower subscriber count (and lets readers earn ink by watching ads), but you need a huge reader base to earn enough to withdrawal funds. On Tapas, you might find creator/readers on the forums. Helpful in reaching the subscriber limits, but not part of the devoted readership that you really need.
I suggest you post tapas updates in forum threads (use links to make it easy to find, and ask for subscribers). I think you will be successful because your series is high quality.
@Chuksi will be happy to hear that, thank you!
I already do that, but thank you again. I'm hopeful that we will be successful as well, we just need time.
Yeah, I originally picked Tapas as my exclusive mirror because I heard (and saw) that the popular comics here tend to have more LGBTQ+ themes (and readers seem more positive about LGBTQ+ content) and more varied art styles. A lot of my long-time friends from the UK small press scene have comics on Tapas and some have seen a fair bit of success. It just felt like I fit in better.
Wow that's actually pretty surprising! I would have expected BBS would be bigger on Webtoon where the comics tend to skew more action-orientated.
I totally get you on updating for like... the 1-2 people who do seem to be reading and liking pages on Webtoon. At this point I'm like "....well, better keep updating there I guess..."
I used Tapas for a few months before I started posting to webtoon, so I have more followers here. However, the ratio of views to follows is better on webtoon, and I get at least a few new subscribers with every update, even though I put far less effort into marketing on webtoon.
With that said, webtoon feels like a ghost town. There's no real connection to subscribers -- you don't get to see who subscribes or likes your episodes, and I have never gotten a single comment, whereas I have almost 200 on Tapas.
I've got 2 series on both platform
one BL, +18, heavily censored on webtoon and in romance genre there
tapas - started in august 2018 - slightly over 3K subs, webtoon - started in june 2019 - 2.3K subs
way more likes on tapas, usually around the same number of comments, sometimes more on tapas
second one - fantasy (with horror as a secondary genre on webtoon, horror and bl on tapas), started on both in september 2019
tapas - 947 subs, webtoon - 999 subs
harder to compare likes as I'm posting page-by-page on tapas and in 10 pages batches on webtoon but it feels like I get more likes here but more comments on webtoon
I also had the opposite effect for a while. Around a year ago, I had less than 100 subs on WT, but more than 400 on Tapas. I did differently tho. My episodes on Tapas are shorter, so I updated more times. I also "hacked" my way up on Tapas by using a BL icon in the thumbnail lol (I removed it). But since my comic was promoted on both sites it reversed, now I have twice as much subs on WT compared to Tapas. My organic growth is still way better on Tapas though.
Well i started with Tapas a few weeks before finally deciding to mirror it on WT (I started in 2020 btw).
At first, tapas has higher sub counts their gap was at least a hundred but then suddenly it changed after I reached 1k subs here on tapas, WT suddenly caught up pretty fast and surpassed my tapas subs. Now their gap is currently at 1.1k .
in terms of comments and likes, WT has more comments and likes though
My sub gap between the two isn't extremely pronounced; I've 344 subs on WEBTOON, as compared to 280-ish subs here on Tapas. That said, I got promoted on 'New From The Community' here on Tapas, while I've never been promoted on WEBTOON. That, plus the fact that I'm very active here on the forums, helps keep the numbers close.
I expect the WEBTOON version to pull further ahead in time. I put most of my marketing efforts into the WEBTOON version as well, since, like a lot of artists, I'd love for future series of mine to attract the right attention from the WEBTOON staff, and potentially become featured series.
I have 182 subscribers on WEBTOON and I have 165 here on Tapas. There's not much difference but I've been posting on WEBTOON since October last year while I'm only here for about a month. Well, I was a part of The Easter Egg Hunt and my sub count raised up to 100 in a day so I guess I just got lucky?