The Earned "Free" Tapas Coin Discussion

GoldenPlume 2016-08-05 16:24:25 UTC #1

Now since coins can be earned on Tapas (iOS coming soon), so begins the discussion on how users feel about this new feature and how it can be improved.

Has everyone tried this yet?

We've been diligently watching video ads since the feature went live. So far we've only be able to earn 12 coins at a time. Each ad is followed by a 5m waiting period. Things have been very smooth other than we were asked one survey question which we answered truthfully regarding buying breakfast out, which seems to have excluded us from higher earning opportunities. It's either that or all the higher paid ads have already been watched to the point that they have been exhausted and all that is left is the unlimited pool of 12 coin options. Yes, our understanding is that advertisers put up a pot of money for X number of ads and once they have all been watched, that better paying opportunity ends. Then what remains is the lowest level earning ads until a new advertiser comes along. Hopefully as time progresses, more advertisers come on board.

Some may be wondering, "I have no use for coins because . . ."

We would like to remind everyone that each time you watch an ad, Tapas earns money. The advertiser who paid for the ad didn't pay 12 coins. They are paying XX coins and Tapas is taking a portion for themselves to recover all the time and effort of adding the feature and finding the advertisers. The more ads everyone watches, the more income Tapas generates. As more income comes in, Tapas has more resources to expand its development team so features get added faster. It also has more resources to spend on promoting Tapastic. Everyone says how they like LINE Webtoon because it advertises so much and has such a large reader base. Well, with more and more stable income sources, Tapastic will be able to as well. Isn't more readers what everyone wants?

Consequently, everyone should try watching ads to help out. If you don't want to buy any keys, just horde your coins. Eventually some amazing feature will come out that you will want to support and you will have a massive pile of loot to spend on it.

Now, the donate coins to a series feature is going to be coming next. This will allow readers and creators to support creators. But as argued by some, Tapastic "seems" to be mostly read by creators not readers. So will creators just donate their coins to themselves? Should earned coins be allowed to be donated to yourself, or should they have to be donated to another creator?

We've thought about this for a while and think that coin donations should not be allowed to go to yourself. By doing this, it will push creators to connect with each other more and help put aside some of the subscriber competition going on. Now, some creators will likely do deals like, "Give me 100 coins and I will give you 100 . . ." but it would be better to just see people spreading coins around with no strings attached. Generosity like that can be really infectious and a big moral boost.

How do you feel feel about this? Should creators be able to donate to themselves? Or should they be required to spend on others?

For those not interested in supporting other creators, another option would be to donate coins into some kind of Tapas promotion pool. Whatever coins ends up in this pool, Tapastic uses to promote the creators who contribute. However since one creator may choose to only put in 1 coin and the next puts in 1000, it would probably have to be some sort of set minimum. For example, say Tapas is going to be at XYZ Comic Convention and is willing to print fliers. For 1000 coins you can be in the pool of comics featured on the fliers. Tapas gets their printing costs for $0, creators get to build their audiences which means more revenue through ad views, donated coins, and additional revenue streams when Tapastic adds them.

What do you think about this?

Discuss away.

sushy00 2016-08-05 19:33:06 UTC #2

I am not really into the coins yet. How can creators earn coins then? I thought the coins were only going to a select few now?

lukas3 2016-08-05 19:43:49 UTC #3

How many coins do I need to make a dollar? Please let me know.

PotooGryphon 2016-08-05 19:44:29 UTC #4

That's the point of this newly released feature. Users of the app can watch ads to earn coins to spend donating to their favorite creators.

Currently users can't spend on creators though. That will hopefully be launch in 3 weeks or longer. Next week they're hoping to release the feature where creators can earn ad rev from the app.

sushy00 2016-08-05 19:50:16 UTC #5

I use the app as well but I did not see any feature where I can watch an ad

(maybe I missed an update or something?)

PotooGryphon 2016-08-05 19:54:24 UTC #6

I think it's in the same menu where you buy coins.

Also you have to make sure you've downloaded and installed the latest version of the app.

Kura 2016-08-05 20:45:08 UTC #7

I have not really used the ap in forever so I have not tried this feature or noticed it's existence the few times I have been on for quick checks on comments.

GoldenPlume 2016-08-05 23:59:41 UTC #8

To earn coins, first make sure you have installed the latest update. That you can find by doing a Goggle search for "Tapas app". Once you have updated, go to the "coin shop". From the initial homepage of the app, there should be a small profile picture on the upper right corner. Tap that and your profile will enlarge with your coin total shown. Tap the + to get into the coin shop. At the bottom of the shop will be the option to watch an ad to earn coins. You may get a survey question in order to make sure you only watch ads that are relevant to you.

Feel free to stock pile coins. In 3+ weeks the option to give coins to creators will become available.

STAFF 2016-08-06 00:18:12 UTC #9

This. There is nothing stopping everyone in the comic/webcomic/entire world from going on Tapas and stockpiling coins until the donate feature comes online. It could be a huge way to get some of the billions spent in advertising directed towards creators. If you're not telling everyone you know with a smartphone to help you out, you could be missing out.

GoldenPlume 2016-08-06 00:21:17 UTC #10

Considering that the "coin shop" sells 5,000 coins for $4.99 USD, it stands to reason that 10 coins equal $.01 USD. So a creator would have to receive 1,000 donated coins to get $1 USD. This might not sound like much, but for creators with 80,000 subs, should each subscriber give them 100 coins, that's 8,000,000 coins or $8,000. Not so shabby, for a tabby.

So yes, watching ads gives you 1.2 cents a pop to spend however you wish. Remember, Tapas has an invisible fee going on as well, likely .8 cents, in order to recover the cost of all the resources that went into making this happen. So watching an ad benefits Tapas in order that they can grow and do even more things for creators down the road, perhaps stuff like LINE Webtoons is doing like paying featured comics or supporting Patreons. Plus you get some "coin power" to wield on the comics you like best.

Everyone should realize that it makes perfect sense to participate in this at least some. If there's a poor turn out of ad watchers, Tapas won't recover their resource investment into this feature and will be less likely to do something more for creators in the future. This is called negative reinforcement. Its the start of a negative cycle in which Tapas stops doing new features because they lose money on making them, so Tapas starts to stagnate, so creators start to leave, so the site starts to shrink, so Tapas reduces even more features because they don't have enough participants to support them.

However if everyone participates, Tapas quickly recovers their investment and so plows the money into another new feature, which in turn makes the site even more popular with creators, so even more creators come, even more comics, so even more readers, and the site continues to grow and grow. Eventually some creator comes up with that PERFECT VIRAL webcomic and kablooey, suddenly TONS of new readers for EVERYONE as Tapastic is inundated with new readers who spill out from PERFECT VIRAL into other series.

Help yourself. Help your Friendly Neighborhood Gryphon Rider. Watch ads. Everyone wins.

lukas3 2016-08-06 19:34:17 UTC #11

Thanks! That really helped!

TheAmazingTacoWitch 2017-03-07 02:49:09 UTC #12

Is there any way that Tapas could increase the number of coins received for each ad watched? Because it's a little bothersome to spend 20 - 30 seconds watching an ad, only to get about 12 coins. It used to be that you watched a 30 second ad and got about 30-40 coins. Also, it makes it really hard to get enough coins to tip creators freely, because of how long it takes to get, say, 100 coins. And not allowing us to tip with bonus coins is a pain too, because unless you're making a note of how many bonus and regular coins you have, you're likely to get carried away and assume you can spend more than you're really able to. I really want to support as many creators as possible, but it's difficult to do that when I feel like I have to spend real money to get a good deal out of this.

PotooGryphon 2017-03-07 03:06:04 UTC #13

I honestly had a harder time earning 100 coins from the 30-40 coins ads the last few weeks. Personally I was only able to get about 10-20 of them in the morning, then limited to two 12 coins ads every five minutes. I was not able to collect much and freely tip at all during that. Today I noticed that i'm getting only Crackle ads that give 12 coins, however they appear to be unlimited. For the first time in weeks, I was able to grind about 7k coins in one day, just by running the ads next to the computer as I worked.

When's the next Tapas tipping event?! With all these coins I'm able to now get I'm ready to toss coins like a crazy person!

MidZM 2017-03-07 03:09:03 UTC #14

I think at current time this is a glitch or there are no more ads, being that the Crackle (Or if you're lucky something else... CRACKLE!) ad is either the only ad left in the pool of ads or the system is tweaking out and can't find other ads to show. As for getting only 12 coins that is most likely due to the fact that the Crackle ad is a Survey Ad, Survey ads normally give about 10-50 coins each depending on the time you wait to view it (In hours), but because the Crackle ad is the ONLY ad left in the ad pool (If that's the case) if every one were to watch that ad and get 30-50 coins per ad with unlimited ads turned on (Even without unlimited ads and it was 2 per 5 minutes) it would hurt the Tapas app more then help it, but because Surveys Ads are now set at a limit of 12 when 12:05 EST comes around it carries over into the MUCH longer Survey Ads, which is just down right annoying af...

GoldenPlume 2017-03-07 06:28:19 UTC #15

Well we watch the national news with one eye on the television and the other on the smart screen, grinding out the coins each night. Or during mass transit. Or while sitting on the throne. (Just don't drop your phone down the commode.) There are lots of times to watch ads, but preferably when you are doing something else because just sitting there and watching ads at $.02/USD a minute isn't really a good use of time. (You can take surveys on Swagbucks that pay better than that.)

We've also found if you click the ads from time to time look over the next page that pops up and then back out, it helps raise payment levels back up. We were able to go from 12 to 40 for a time. It's now back to 12 again. We're taking @CyndiFoster's advice and taking two days off to see if that helps get the payments back up.

Staff has mentioned that they will be adding more coin earning opportunities in the near future but they haven't provided more specifics than that. Given that Peanut Labs has their HQ less than a mile away from Tapas HQ, the chalk is that Tapas will be adding Peanut Labs to the app. Peanut Labs offers surveys for points, in this case they would offer Tapas Coins. The surveys take longer to watch than an ad and you have to be engaged in them to answer the questions accurately but you will get way more coins. Some time ago we did a survey on Purina horse food and in about 10 minutes got 150 points or 1,800 Tapas Coins. Peanut Labs also offers various micro tasks like visit a website on diabetes or smoking to earn some coins (12 to 36) hopefully raising public awareness about avoiding these major costs to the public health system. They also offer points for signing up for stuff but some of the offers are a bit sketch.

Bonus coins aren't tippable for the sole reason that it would become very expensive for Tapas if they were. Right now 250 bonus coins seem to be given out on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. That'd be $.20 USD in tippable money, times 52 weeks, times 10,000 creators. That's $104,000! Can you imagine how many creators would make multiple upon multiple accounts just to get all those bonus coins and tip them to their fellow creators? Remind you the "margin" on tips for Tapas is only 15%.

However the margin on premium books and comics is 50%. So those 250 bonus coins being spent on "A King's Daughter" actually only costs Tapas 125 coins or about $.10 USD. They've probably also run an internal audit and determined that a lot of the time more than 250 coins are spent, for example if one episode is 300 coins then 50 coins are either earned or purchased, or those 250 coins go towards a multiple key package. Also, a lot of coins probably expire unused, so the cost to Tapas starts to approach a negligible amount, which is why they can offer bonus coins every week or other week.

At the end of the day Tapas has to be profitable otherwise they would go under, so that is why bonus coins are restricted.

Unfortunately the money has to come from somewhere. Either it comes out of your own pocket or it comes out of an advertisers pocket. Hopefully as more coin earning opportunities are made available there will be one or more that will be more appealing and better rewarding than the current opportunities. Rome wasn't built in a day. Just give it time and Tapas will probably 1-UP itself.

April 1? Given that the bonus coins have to be handed out on March 28th, and as far we we know its a manual process, anything sooner than that is probably unlikely. Just save up for it. "Ren Pillion" is what staff was talking about as being their Next Big Event (TM) after the conclusion of the 50% Bonus Event.