Ooooof okay this is a really sticky subject...
So as I write this my comic is on the front page in Staff Picks and has passed 400 subs. It's barely a drop in the ocean to comics that have multiple thousands, but it's pretty decent for a comic that's not in Tapas' main audience group and launched in September last year.
I started my comic knowing I was a bit out of Tapas' usual wheelhouse; you know, an action comic where the main lead is a female character who isn't drawn in a male gazey way.... yeah, I knew that wasn't going to be easy street. But that doesn't mean I launched in with an attitude like "I'll just make exactly what I like and based on no evidence I'll assume I can succeed and if I don't, I'll just keep on doing the same thing til I do!"
In actuality, I decided to make a comic now after several years taking a break from comics and working more in Games, because a bunch of things with similar vibes to my work have been successful in recent years in both comics and other media. Steven Universe, Lumberjanes, Netflix She-Ra, Legend of Korra, Rainbow Rowell's revival of Runaways, Ms Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Rat Queens, Marvel Rising etc. I could actually see a market for a manga influenced but also kind of cartoony action story with a wholesome tone and themes of female strength and friendship and LGBTQIA+ representation. I had a definite feeling of "people are ready for comics like mine now. Let's do this".
I also knew that my work was now a hell of a lot more professional looking than my old comics because I'd spent years in between working as an illustrator and games artist refining my pipelines and polish, and then there was that final special ingredient; I'd actually learned to write. During my time away from comics, I have sunk hours and hours into reading books on writing and watching videos where writers and editors talk about the craft of writing and story structure, I spent a lot of time talking narrative with the lead writer while working on games as we sorted out story problems and character arcs. I'd also been working behind the scenes in an editor-like role at my day job and writing copy, and getting feedback from editors by doing that. I also having had the experience of making a webcomic for over a year and even making and selling a printed volume, had lots of info I could look back on about what worked and what didn't. Errant is a reboot of an old comic, and when you read it, you can see how I've gone through and just kept the things that were working. Like I made notes to myself to make sure to address all the things that excited or put readers off "People like Rekki and her design, but aren't vibing with her backstory. People like the sword draw magic but they think the battles are anticlimactic. People like the British flavour but the cultural references and slang are making it hard to relate to and inaccessible for a lot of people. People like the humour and action but they feel like the villain is un-intimidating and the plot lacks focus..."
I have used social media (less effective than I hoped, in spite of a large following, it turns out most of my following followed me for my D&D content and they're only interested in that), the forums and light cross-promotion to get seen. Whenever I do this, I pay close attention to what gets me readers. What times of social media post? What formats? What kind of imagery? How do I sell this?
And with all that in mind... I was completely ready to dump this project if I failed to hit 250 subs in a year or two. I was ready to do that post-mortem of my project, to look at what the audience reacted well to, to get feedback from people about where it went wrong and to try a change of tack. Hell, I have legitimately discussed with people whether maybe I should actually try making a more long-scroll format cute looking GL-focused comic on the side to build an audience because of concerns about the slow growth of my Action series. Because I'm not in a popular genre, I know I need to work harder than other people to make sure people can find my work and that there are no barriers to getting into it. That's why I went as far as even testing the size and spacing of my fonts and I'll obsess over things like the 180 degree rule and worry over my comic's slightly slow opening. I keep track of all these things and I look for ways to improve on them in future.
Making a good product is an iterative process, and if your aim is popularity, you kind of have to think about your work as a "product" and to balance that market viability angle with your artistic integrity and vision. It's the reason really starting out with a smaller project to learn from mistakes first before launching into your dream project is best. Webcomics and serialised web fiction have this really bad tendency to have the first draft be the final draft that goes live. Forever. No reworks, that version is it and it's canon. You wouldn't get a novel published where somebody had written the chapters one at a time in order and sent them one by one to the publisher and then they just printed it immediately like it's ready to go. If you've done a bunch of pages and somebody says "this comic is really hard to read on this platform" and you just shrug and say "well, I've made it now, I can't do anything about that", then you know exactly what the problem is that's preventing people reading your comic, but you're choosing to disregard it yet somehow still expecting people to read. It's like there's a moat around your house and everyone's going "umm... getting over the moat is hard" and you say "Oh yeah, I know, I know haha... but you're still coming over, right?"
To me, dropping an under-performing comic doesn't have to mean giving up. Trying again and iterating to make a stronger version of what you want to make based on user testing is normal in all other industries.