Tapastic coins, how they work?

[hisameartwork]

Hi! I'm pretty new to Tapastic and certainly new to the forum so if this issue has already been discussed please direct me to that thread.

Soooo I recently won 1k Tapastic coins and so have some of my friends that I called in to participate and we don't really know what to do with them.

The coins expire in January. We are all comic artists ourselves and never made any payed posts....like the ones with the green little key. And none of the big artists I'm interested in have payed content. I guess I could blow off the coins on something I don't care about...but seems like a waste.

I tried to make a locked/payed page today to test it with a friend of mine. But I wasn't able to find out how to make such a post. Do I need make a request to the staff for this option?
This is my comic page: https://tapastic.com/hisameartwork

Thank you,
Hisame

[Ringarune]

how the coins work: coins are only useable on the app, not the tapastic website. You use them to buy keys on specific series so that you can read more chapters of it.

As for creating your own paid pages like that, it's kind of unlikely. If you'd like though I know tapastic has posted a forum thing about paid publishing so if you wanna check it out here you go http://forums.tapastic.com/t/calling-all-creators/13958

If u have any more questions feel free to ask ^^

[GoldenPlume]

We'd recommend just hanging onto your 1,000 coins for now. Staff still has two months to get the donate-to-series feature going before those coins expire. If staff gets it done in say mid-December you can just donate the coins to your own series (or a friend's series and they could donate theirs to your series) and tah-dah you cashed out. In the meantime, watch as many videos as you can tolerate on the Tapas app. Those coins don't expire and you will be able to cash them out later via PayPal.

Currently there is no way to make a locked/paid page on your own w/out direct staff involvement. When donate-to-series goes live then any series can get income regardless of staff involvement, which is a game changer in webcomics. If you have hordes of dedicated readers willing to watch tons of videos and then pour the coins all over you like Scrooge McDuck, then blam you just found a money tree that doesn't cost you or them a penny (Tapas doesn't mind either since they get a commission on each ad delivered).

So if you have bought the coins, earned them via watching videos, or got them as a gift, it doesn't matter, you can just give them to yourself via the donate feature once it becomes available.

Details are still pending on the donate-to-series feature such as release date, coin to USD conversion rates, etc. The conversion will be at least 1,715 coins per $1 USD, if not greater.

Currently $100 USD = 120,000 coins w/ a 30% take out by Google/Apple. Therefore 120,000 / .7 = 171,428 coins.

But Tapas also does coin sales at 20% off, so the conversion rate could be even higher, 214,285 coins per $100 USD.

Otherwise highly enterprising creators could buy Google Play and iTunes gift cards at a discount (Black Friday is coming up, 10 to 20% off many prepaid gift cards), put that money into Tapas, then wait for a 20% off Tapas coin sale, then buy up big amounts of Tapas coins, then give all those coins to themselves and cash out via PayPal at a profit. Tapas will likely schedule their coins to USD conversion rate such so that this sort of process does not result in a net loss for the company.

[hisameartwork]

Thanks yeah I submitted there already, hope it gets a look. I have some patrons on Patreon but more of my fans wanted to support me on Tapastic as well. I used to be on Tsu which had tip jar system, but it went bankrupt T.T

It's hard to get people on Patreon so I'm really looking forward to having a tip jar on Tapastic. Do you have any idea when this key-coin system will be available for all creators? Have they ever even expressed a desire to make it general?

[hisameartwork]

wow O.O you're a wiz at this, I never thought this so far ....but thanks for the info, I'm going to pin this
Hope Tapastic staff do it before our coins expire...I haven't watched many ads since I'm busy with work. But it's a good idea to give community members the option to move funds around and have a fairly low cash out threshold. That way they can support better their favorite artists. Patreon is nice and all, but not many know and use it. Too bad, it's a great platform.

[GoldenPlume]

Staff has expressed a desire to make at least some things available for everyone. In the future, new series by any creator can be opted-in to be wait-or-pay locked. For example, you release 10 pages but have only the first 5 available with the next 5 coming out one a day thereafter. If readers want to read them all right away they pay in coins, otherwise if a reader waits, those pages eventually all become free.

[hisameartwork]

Aha I see, so they do plan this to be available for all. That's nice.

I have patreons only content on Patreon, but people are reluctant to use Patreon plus I think they forget to go to the page so it would definitely be easier to have things centralized on Tapastic.

I'll hold on to my coins for now and have some bonus content made for when they launch this feature site wide.

Thanks for answering my questions