Yeah, I agree with you. Long-form rocks. Will come and check your work out. 
16 days later
I wouldn't call my comic "great" or "a hidden gem" but not a lot of people have seen it hero on tapas.
8 days later
I originally thought that's what the tags were for and it kind of confuses me that they don't do something as simple as that instead of showing everyone the same comics. For example, if I've shown 0 interest in romance comics but I'm always being shown romance comics in my daily snack that's just a waste of everyone's time. but if they would just automatically show you comics with related tags from the get-go there is a much higher chance of the reader seeing comics they like artists being discovered and tapas getting to profit from it (everyone is happy). to me, it seems like common sense but I'd like to think there is a reason they haven't done it yet.
TL;DR
It's a great idea, it just needs to be executed well. Staff doesn't have the time right now.
Tags are currently not functioning so we just use them to put in gags and other Easter eggs for the hard core fans to look for. At some point they probably will have a use, it just seems very low priority... 2020?
Something far more simple would be just to do 30-50 genres that creators can select on their dashboards. "Romance", "Science Fiction", "Boy Love", "Superhero" etc. Creators get to select up to five per series. Readers select as many as they want or "All". Then their feed is automatically curated to fill based on that reader's preferences.
It all sounds very simple but it's not. It takes a lot of back end work to make this happen and staff already has a to-do list a mile high which is why it's going to be a while before it happens. Monitization stuff that makes the site and creators money are much higher priority and web tipping and coin purchase just got added after months of creators requesting it.
Also the Daily Snack at that point would have to be automated because right now its all done by hand. Someone on staff picks the series in advance and does their thing on the back end. If you start excluding certain things then the Snack becomes very challenging to do. Let's say they pick four things that you're filtering out. So your snack would have only one thing in it?
Also what if a reader only selects "Mystery". How many "Mystery" comics are there on Tapas? The snack would quickly run out of content to provide or it would have to dig deep down into the MS Paint drawn stuff with poor grammar, no story line, and only five subscribers. Staff probably doesn't want that sort of stuff to be featured by the system.
One other concern is that the system could make the community very segregated. If someone selects "Action" only they could miss out on some really great "Romance" stories, and vise versa. How many times have you accidentally stumbled upon something outside of your "likes" and ended up finding something new you enjoyed?
I have a feeling the daily snack, along with many of tapas sales and direct marketing attempts, would override any recommendation system. Otherwise it wouldn't make sense to have a tool like it. However a recommendation system would also, on top of their current marketing methods, allow them to target some direct marketing to the audience that actually wants it. Possibly also get an idea of if a certain genre has readers that are more active during a certain part of the day. If they can figure that out, they can schedule direct marketing targeted at people with those preferences to be sent out at a peak hour so more people see the notification.
Regardless, it's all stuff that takes a lot of back end effort and needs to be done well. If done wrong it can straight up break the site for everyone. Or it could be as shitty as youtube's recommendation system, which heaps of people have done their best to deactivate just so youtube will stop putting toxic or annoying content in their faces. I wouldn't want that for tapas.
And as you said, it's not top priority. Top priority is making sure creators can benefit financially off of the site. It's pretty much been one of Tapas' absolute main goals for a long time, after all. And we should be happy that this is the case, because considering how unlikely the young webcomic audiences are to buy print books or support a patreon, it is the thing that can make or break a creative living for many of the site's creators. It is good for small creators too. The better the revenue tools become, the less popular a creator has to be to make proper income (assuming they are ready to make use of the tools in a profitable way).
17 days later
I agree with most of what you said but you really think it's ok for them to keep a system where the cherry pick what does and doesn't get to be popular based what they decide is "good content" I get that it's not gonna happen overnight but this reasoning for why they haven't done it yet is the entire reason this discussion is happening right now.
if your reasoning is actually correct then that confirms all of our concerns on this thread. those concerns being that the staff doesn't really care about allowing smaller comics to gain exposure because they want to prioritize the content that they consider is good.
I would like to think this isn't true but if that's the case then the majority of creators on this site would be better off just creating their own site with Wix or uploading it somewhere else and they would probably have a higher CPM as well.
Never have been able to figure out why staff doesn't make CPM a priority. Hiveworks has a $1.25-$2.00 CPM and Tapas is $.08 CPM. Imagine how much happier creators would be if they were earning 20x more from ad revenue. Plus Tapas gets 30% so there's something in it for them as well.
Yeah, that's another thing that I really don't understand. there was another forum talking about why ad revenue was so low but it seemed like their best answer was because there are a lot of creators's on this site or something. That sounds completely made up to me though because there are a lot more platforming sites that have much bigger audiences but still have way higher CPMs like you said.
I think it's just that they haven't been able to create enough demand for their ads because whenever I watch videos for ads it's usually the same 4 or 5 different companies. it would be a different story if they were to take advantage of this real niche market to try and convince advertisers to do business here, just off the top of my head I can think of at least five major companies that would benefit from this market.
and also they could just open up advertizing to the users that are already here because that would literally solve both of these problems at the same time. users can spend on ads to increase their traffic and then everyone would have a higher CPM as demand for the ad space goes up.
but I don't know it must be more complicated than that for whatever reason.
I was just wondering why sites like Tapas and even LINE, don't bother to offer opportunities for creators to pay for advertising. It would make them more money while creators who desire to be on the front page or in a sponsored content section for similar products can have a chance to reach an audience they wouldn't get normally. I also think it would be nice if they created a system where creators can bypass Patreon by offering early access on our comic pages for tippers or the ability to lock a comic behind a paywall to offer exclusives to supporters. If not many people are willing to leave the site to go somewhere else, as it seems hard to get people to leave Tapas or LINE for Patreon then integrate those systems and take advantage of it.
Staff is against creators directly buying ads on Tapas. We've tried to on multiple occasions.
The last inquiry response we received some months ago is that staff desires an equal playing field. The example they gave was if there is an impoverished creator hand drawing a series and posting to Tapas they want them to have the same potential for just as much success on Tapas as a creator with a Wacom and money to burn.
While it's a great concept in theory, how a creator can rise from nothing, with the deck stacked against them, to become one of the most popular creators on Tapas, is that still realistically possible?
Perhaps when Tapas was small and first starting off that was the case, but now? One could argue given how the readership demographic is, what it has grown into, with certain genre having a significant edge, other series have a disadvantage.
Also, considering how the app is currently set up, with many things hard coded in, what staff chooses to feature gets a huge leg up. Take for example the tipping section. It's been static and promoting the same series for many months. If it was dynamic and rotating through whatever series were doing well by the tipping algorithm then yes it would be more fair. Also the fact that the app homepage is mostly about premium content now puts free series at a disadvantage unless they get some sort of feature.
It would be nice if Tapas would allow creators to take out ads on the site in order to counteract some of these disadvantages. Each page has a total of four ad positions plus the Tapas ad box. We're fairly certain most creators would be more than happy to see one box turn into something that promotes paid series if it was paying a higher CPM than the other positions.
However, with all that being said, it's slowly becoming our conclusion that it's all pretty much a moot point, for creators advertising on Tapas that is.
Since Tapas wouldn't let us take out ads we went to their ad provider, Google AdWords to do so. It was a nightmare trying to get ads established on Tapas through Google. But it worked... kinda. Here are the numbers for January:
If you can't see the numbers, we're bidding $.08 CPM which is more than the average CPM on Tapas right now. Some image ads are showing. The issue is the CTR (click thru rate).
The bottom line is the image ad we run on Tapas for a Tapas series is simply not being clicked. Tapas.io is giving a .25% CTR (1 in 400 impressions) vs. the .50% CTR the exact same image ad is averaging across all other locations that Google AdWords is displaying the ad.
The CPC is also significantly higher, $.05 for Tapas.io and $.04 for the mobile app vs. a blended rate of $.028 CPC averaging across all other locations that Google AdWords is displaying the ad.
Data like this has taken a lot of our interest out of advertising on Tapas for a Tapas series even though it would benefit Tapas by keeping creators' money in house vs. taking it to Project Wonderful, TopWebComics, Google AdWords, etc.
Ad revenue is super low because of readers. They largely do not click ads on Tapas, most likely because they ignore them. After all, when was the last time you saw an ad on Tapas? Like your brain actually sent it your consciousness for a moment. "Oh, that's an ad for XYZ." Days? Weeks?
Because of the low click-thru-rates, Google Adwords automatically lowers the bidding for ads on Tapas for advertisers. After all what good is 1M impressions of an ad if no one actually sees it?
Since the quality of click traffic on Tapas is poor, CPMs are poor.
The last inquiry response we received some months ago is that staff desires an equal playing field. The example they gave was if there is an impoverished creator hand drawing a series and posting to Tapas they want them to have the same potential for just as much success on Tapas as a creator with a Wacom and money to burn.
I understand the thought behind it but when visibility is depending more on a daily snack recommendation, staff pick, or premium status I kinda find it hard to believe. It seems to me as if you're stuck at the bottom with a very slow burn to the top without these boosters. At least offering a chance to pay for ad space could give creators unlucky enough to get noticed by the staff a chance to be noticed by the users.
Since the quality of click traffic on Tapas is poor, CPMs are poor.
That's why I try to click on ads while viewing a creator's page to help out. So many people have ad blockers and don't even see ads. Perhaps a good idea would be to force users to turn them off?? Though that could back fire. lol!
A labor-intensive alternative would be to embed the advertising in the content. Like make your characters use a product in a non-canon strip, or personally endorse the product in the description.
Iāve been thinking about this for awhile now and itās so weird to me that āsponsorshipā type advertising hasnāt taken hold in the webcomics community like it has on YouTube, in podcasts, and even some good olā Fashioned text blogs. The only two comics I can think of that have done sponsorships are Penny Arcade and Oā Joy Sex Toy. And both of those are effectively product review series so they make sense to advertise through.
But other comics with huuuge followings donāt have any sort of sponsorship? I have no idea why. They are podcasts with like, listeners in the 5k range that have sponsorships so why not comics that have ~10k readers?
Maybe if there was enough creator demand for this, staff might reconsider. However, so far, there hasn't been more than a handful of creators who have expressed interest.
Probably because the CTRs w/ ads preform so poorly with webcomics. Why risk the cost of having a creator draw your product into their series?
A podcast it's fairly hard to skip a product placement. If live, you can't jump ahead. If on demand, you can jump ahead in the track, however you risk going too far ahead and have to go back... and it just becomes too much of a chore so for short ads you just listen.
In a webcomic it's just an image that the eye is going to look at for a moment and move on. The momentary impression it makes is not as strong as your favorite podcaster talking about a product for :30 and during that entire :30 your conscious is fully captive to it.
Yeah but that's not making to the front page. You're only advertising to the ppl who already found you. But it is good for using an already popular work to draw attention to another.
They don't have to be huge if they market themselves as a group. "Work with us and we'll all endorse your product, all at the same time."
Alternatively they could do product-placement strips.
well if that's the case it makes absolutely no sense. the playing field is already very much not even. they claim they want things to be even but then promote the same 30-50 comics over and over again. and then they don't let us advertise because that would be unfair? I don't think so if anyone with ten dollars to spare could at least make themselves visible on this website.
the majority of comics on this site you have to really hunt for in order to find. and then once you are found you aren't making any money anyway. I feel like at this point you're better off just making your own website and patreon account. the tipping feature is really the only reason that I'm still here but even then that's only worth anything if you have either a massive amount of followers or a few extremely loyal fans. both are hard to come by on this site if nobody can find your comic.
I feel like it should be simple enough for them to randomise it and just have one of their employees review the randomised results to make sure it's not inappropriate. But for whatever reason, it's made out to be some kind of epic ordeal that it would take some computer genius to solve.
The art was done by a non Tapas staffer which is why it features series that are mid lists rather than the most popular.
8 days later
I hardly ever looks at the Tapastic homepage, but it's interesting how the Trending section's been moved further down.
2 months later
soo....nothing new happened over this subject right?
i still see the same comics being featured all the time.
The daily snack is a push notification Tapas sends out daily around noon your local time zone. It features 5 to 6 episodes, usually many of them premium series to help boost key sales.
At one time we were actually keeping records on what free series were getting featured in the daily snack. After we voiced some concerns that the same series were being featured too often (e.g. GamerCat received 5 daily snacks in two months) staff made a more conscious effort to try to feature things that have never been before including B&Ws, long form, and non gag-a-day.
There is no way to submit yourself for the snack. You have to be noticed by staff and they decide whether or not put you in. In the past, we've tried nominating other series by creators we like, with little success.
Ultimately after about 13-14 months since joining Tapas, and raising concerns about repeated series, we received our first snack (nominated by an intern! Thank you intern!). We incorrectly thought that it would create a huge following for our series. The impact was not as meaningful as we had hoped. The snack only generated 14k views with the vast majority of the readers reading only the one featured episode and nothing else in the series. It also generated 921 subscriptions, many of which dropped off in future updates.
At the end of the day, while a snack is nice, it's not a cure all for a series that is having a hard time gaining a following. We've had three snacks to date, two spotlights, and we're standing at just over 7,200 followers. 
As @Elgenar points out, a lot of people are skipping past the Tapas homepage, so spotlights don't have the same impact that they used to. We jump right to the creator dashboard so we're just as guilty.
Tapas reports approximately 2M monthly users. SimiliarWeb reports approximately 10M website visits. So this means that the average desktop Tapas user is only visiting about once per week. A spotlight only runs for three days and a snack for one day. This is why they aren't having the sort of positive impact that you would expect it would.
We wouldn't get too excited about trying to chase down a daily snack feature. It's just not worth the anguish.
The snack is largely ignored by many. The app boasts 75,000 daily users, but on our first snack we only received 14,000 views for the entire series. This indicates that there is a very low read thru rate on the snack. When was the last time you looked at the snack? We haven't for months because it's just not relevant content. Since we don't read romance, which makes much of the snack non applicable to us. We have a feeling that many others feel the same way. Staff should consider looking into letting readers set content preferences to make finding things easier and the daily snack more meaningful to the individual. This would most likely dramatically increase the read thru rates. Unfortunately this would require a massive amount of coding and we're not anticipating this happening any time soon.
As @ilustrariane points out, the few times we've looked the snack the last few months, the content appears to be highly repetitive. We stopped keeping snack records in 2017 so there's no way to quantitatively confirm this, it is merely an observation.
In our experience the best way to increase views is to look into running ads for your series. TopWebComics offers a $1/day sponsorship which is hands down the best $1 you can spend on ads anywhere. Google AdWords does cost slightly less per click, but the time investment to learn and use the system makes it where you need to have a large spend to make it worth the extra effort.
Hopefully in the future we can share some way to rapidly increase series growth, but right now it remains a very allusive creature.
Unfortunately only 2.5 to 3.0% of subscribers will support a series financially. So 7,200 * .025 = 180 print copies, which is far below the 1,500 copies to make a print run viable.
Also, we're paying our artists per page, and advertising heavily, so the losses are becoming quite substantial.
Oh! I understand... maybe Im being too innocent, but, have you tried patreon or ko-fi to help with printing costs? I noticed many people on Tapas are more inclined to give this kind of support to their fave creators! 
I think it's been like three months since I read the snack thru. I look at the first one sometimes and guess I won't like the rest since they're themed similarly for the promotion. I actually haven't subbed to much of anything recently. Think I might have just leveled off where I'm happy with my library and aren't looking for more.
Patreon would be a good idea if we created the art directly. Since we don't, it's hard to create all the bonuses you need to offer to people to get them to subscribe monthly. The cost to commission the bonus content would likely outweigh the pledges generated.
We haven't looked into ko-fi much, but it appears similar to just tipping on Tapas, which largely hasn't caught on with readers. Admittedly it's a lot of work for readers to try watching ads at 12 coins ($.01) each. At 120 ads per hour that works out to $1.20/hr. It's just not a good use of reader time.
YouTube charges advertisers $.10 to $.30 per video ad view so not sure why Tapas is only getting paid $.01 per view by its ad network.
Have you tried making tipping incentives? And not just making them but actively changing them up/adding new ones? I was experimenting with a monthly semi-customized badge that I would post to the top 10 tippers walls. Other folks offer exclusive minicomics/spinoffs or other art, or use tips as an alternative payment method for the digital content they sell on gumroad (or similar places).
On Ko-Fi I use their goals system as sorta a soft-kickstarter for new zines/spin off comics. Every $10 and I make a new thing, and the people who donate get a thank you. (this hasn't really worked out yet because I haven't had a good opportunity to promote/explain my system. However I did a reader survey and of the people who responded, donating through Ko-Fi was a prefered method of supporting compared to Patreon & Tipping on Tapas. I suspect this is because my audience is a bit older, and has more disposable income than disposable time.)
Could it be because Tapas is taking a cut from the ad revenue before its delivered to users as coins? Or does Tapas take their cut when payout happens?
We would if it was easy to find relevant content. Unfortunately it's not. Recently we tried to find something new to read via search and that did not work well at all. Type in "super heroes" and look at what you get. Type in "manga"... again look at the results. These are huge selling genres in the real world, but on Tapas they seemingly don't exist.
We're not sure why there aren't more genres on Tapas or at least a way for creators to set their series on the back end as a wide variety of genre. Then when readers search "super heroes" they not only get what they want, but then the system sorts it out by popularity/trending so you can find relevant series right away vs. things that are no longer updating or are of marginal quality.
The issue with growth at Tapas is it's too much work to find content beyond what is on the homepage. If people can't find what they want, with relative ease, then they go elsewhere. If our content search experiences as highly loyal Tapas uses is dissatisfying then certainly a potential new reader won't stick around. Consequently you end up with a revolving door where new readers come because of some sort of advertising/marketing effort promoting Tapas, but don't stick around because they can't find what they want to read.
Look at how YouTube does things. Watch a video and the algorithm gives you a list on the right of more videos to watch. It would be great if Tapas did something like that. Instead it only offers are three suggestions at the end that are already in your library, which is self defeating for discovering new series.
It shouldn't be hard to spend all day on Tapas... but it is.
We're not staff so we don't know what happens on the back end, but it seems to reason that Tapas gives the viewer all of the value up front and then takes their cut when the coins are spent (buying premium / tipping). If they are taking a cut both when the ad is watched and then again when the coins are spent, that's double taxation.
A proper tagging system really would fix a lot of the visibility problems for new creators and readers. If you search "superheroes" you get about 16 pages of results, if you search "super heroes" you get over 180 pages, some of which just have "heroes" in the name or author without any reference to the content. There's no consistency so creators have no idea what to tag for, and readers have no idea what to search for. Letting people tag whatever they want isn't super useful if there isn't enough structure for the people doing the searching.
I've had a few people (and family) tell me that they didn't read my comic because they thought Tapas was only per-to-view comics. Just thought I''d mention it~
1 year later
I agree with you, in fact I have difficulty getting myself noticed ... here is my last comic, I have few people ...
1 year later
unpinned May 13, '20