I'm still fairly new, but thought I'd share what I can.
For Tapastic, it's all networking; looking at others works and getting to know the folks here. For my website the deducers5, I've had the best luck posting on reddit. Share your work wherever you can, Imgur, deviant, you have to build your audience one fan at a time.
I must admit it's really a hard job. There are people out there who are paid to do network communication as a full-time job for a reason: it's excessively time-consuming.
Personally I really have issues to track more than one thing at a time, so it's hard for me to do more than working on my comic. Even reading other people's comics that I subscribed to can be tedious because I'm that disorganized.
I can already tell that deviantART isn't the easiest place where to grow a fanbase, unless you're doing fancomics, then it's the perfect place. Growing an audience for an original work is always hard, and if you have lots of watchers thanks to fanarts, they still won't look at your original stuff because they only care for the fanarts. It's a bit like you'd be a sushi shop and suddenly start selling churros instead. Churros might be good, but if people want sushi they'll go to another sushi shop.
I would second that IRL network is the best. We're still being made of flesh and so we care more for the people we've met for real. Conventions and book fairs can be a nice place to showcase your work or just talk of it.
I've never considered Reddit before, I always thought that was for news and blogging.
How might you say it's become your best networking site (any pros about it not found in other sites? 9w9) Imgur I also haven't gone to yet, I may look into that as well...
I agree with you completely 
. Deviantart has the lowest fanbase for me of all the sites I've posted on, though I have my primary hubs: Facebook, Tapastic, and Smackjeeves (Tapastic doesn't seem to have a good statistics tracker like smackjeeves and comicfury though so I can't tell what days are the most successful to post)
I always considered that perhaps by doing fanart I could amass more viewers, though you make a good point about them not looking at your original stuff. I recently went to a convention and distributed my comic to a lot of people, though I don't expect much from it, I suppose that's a good start.
Oh, this question just popped up in my head. How often would you say you network in person? Have you found any places you've networked best at? (conventions, coffee shops, meetup-organizations?) I know you used to work as a cg artist (i think?) I'd imagine your co-workers would be interested in your work. (You ammassed 100 followers so quickly! Though your comic is pretty awesome so that shouldn't be a surprise 
)
Reddit brings a lot of undiscovered fans your way. Post in /comics, plus /webcomics. Use good titles and you will see results
So let me see.... You don't actually post your entire comic on reddit? You send them to other hubs through links, or you just post some comics and talk about pages here and there?
(If you have an example of what you do on reddit (or your reddit page) that would be great help 
)
I'm going to have to try the Reddit/Imgur stuff this weekend. As far as meeting people in person goes...are there webcomic conventions? @MylCreates, what convention did you attend, if I may ask?
Here is a link to my reddit page.
As you see, it's just an archive of all my postings of individual comics. It's pretty simple really, go to the comics page, click submit a new link, then enter a title and the link, and click submit.
I usually link directly to my website, but I link to Tapastic as well. Reddit does not like links to reheating sites as they want to drive traffic to the creators site, but if its my content, I don't see the problem.
Most people only look at your link, then go right back to reddit, but still, you're reaching potential fans you didn't have before.
Hopefully this helps!
I attended ACen not too long ago, largest in the midwest US. I'm not at that point that I'd get a table, but I was looking into it as I talked to the comickers in the artist's portion of the dealers room.
I don't think just talking to convention goers seemed to help much (gave flyers to everyone I met), then again, most of the people I talked to were comic makers themselves so they likely did not have time or interest to look at my own content. If I had a table, perhaps I'd have better luck, but I've yet to experience that.
Most of my success so far has just been talking to people online through Tapastic and giving it to people who were already my friends.
Thanks for the advice :). I'm kinda cautious before I start posting original content on some sites, for example, whatever is posted on Facebook essentially becomes property of Facebook, so it's not always smart to post your original content there. I suppose I'd have to look into Reddit's policies, but so far, links look like a good start.
None of the sites would take your copyright though; they only reserve the right to re-use if necessary, and that's just so they can "show" your post in your friends' newsfeeds. These sites aren't going to steal your stuff, so don't let that stop you from spreading your comics.
Sorry for delay, but well I just left some stacks of promotional bookmarks in a library and a sushi shop in which one of my friends is working, and gave some to a few other people. I'm not sure this brought me much readers, though. Most of them surely come from the period when my comic was in the New and Noteworthy section.
I think I'm going to start uploading on other websites too, but always keeping two weeks behind Tapastic, so if people want to read more they have to come here.
I was told to make a tumblr too but I really have issues to just understand how that works. And Reddit is even worse, I just don't even understand what kind of website it is. Those places seem so chaotic, random and scary...
On Tapastic the best way I've found is to comment on everything. The more people see your name and that you're a real person the more people will make it to your profile page and then your comic. The user Amet6 as an example has a not so great art dump comic that has amassed over 900 views from his frequent chatting.
Some other people have mentioned Reddit, but that tends to be very capricious and you may get people disliking you for simply self posting your work.
For other sites I can't advise.
i would like to share this video i found 3 minutes ago about how to establish brands :3
also if you ask me, collaboration with already established people is the best way to get your name out! especially if they ever feature you! (i got a spike of 100 watchers just because of one little feature from a well established name XD)
That's a cool idea :). It took me a while to get the hang of tumblr (thankfully one of my friends walked me through it).
Excellent video! I should spread the word 
I've yet to find some established names to collaborate with... *ponders
the trick with collabs is that you start off with smaller or equal people you'd find and help each other out first! also, its best that you know the person well or at least by a degree before you start collabing! (cause nobody would just go out and collab with everyone they've meet!)
also, join group collabs! the more the merrier as they always say! and you don't need to know the people here as much to do it :3
