Viewership drop last week

[MrKyleRose]

Hello Tapastic community.

I wanted to take everyones pulse to see if I am alone in this or if anyone else noticed a similar effect. Last week during the Tapas update my strip, The Working Stiff, had a significant drop in views. By significant I mean I normally average around 130ish first week and my last strip just cleared 30. I'm thinking this probably has to do with the fact that my last one went live about 2 hours before the site went down for the upgrade, which admittedly was poor planing on my part.

So has anyone else experience a similar effect and if so are your views starting to bounce back?

Thanks

[demthorshie]

I think you're right in your assumption that the view count of your comic went down drastically due to Tap being down. I'm pretty sure a lot of other creators have seen a bit of lag in their view count as a result (I have.) I posted a comic the day that the site came back up again as well as one today and I am seeing some improvement with this latest page. I think things will go back to normal with a little more time :D.

[CaptainUfo]

I can't really tell because I wasn't able to upload anything untill the end of the week (then I still didn't upload anything untill yesterday because Easter :P), but I guess that, given the troubles with the update, it's reasonable to assume that both some views weren't counted and some readers decided to wait for things to return to normal before using the site.

[MrKyleRose]

Thanks for the insight, I'm glad to hear you are seeing things return to normal. I'm posting my next strip tomorrow so It'll be interesting to see if the views are closer to what I was getting. Transitions like this always seem to disrupt things but are always better in the long run.

[niinasalmelin]

Happened to me too so no worries. (I also put a new page the day tapastic ran the updates.. )

[joannekwan]

Yeah things should get back to normal soon. Though I did notice a lot of lesser known comics showing up in the first page of the popular section while this was all going on, so that was good for them! haha

[nocuddletime]

My viewership couldn't possibly be lower.

[J.Lovelace]

Yea I noticed that too XD
(the popular section had even only 2 pages available at some point instead of the usual 5)

[serenitysquirrel]

I had an unusual increase in new subs last week. Was so weird.

[SamNoir]

I guess it just goes to show how regular habits and updates of content are important to a webcomics momentum in both the long and short term?

[bouncyegg]

Well this gives me hope because I definitely noticed this right after the site went live again. It was probably just me, but I'll make myself feel better that it may be a site issue.

https://tapastic.com/series/thebouncyegg
https://tapastic.com/series/slavicmonsters

[Sanz]

same aswell very low views...and mine weren't that high to begin with lol

[MrKyleRose]

@SamNoir I hadn't thought of it that way but yeah you bring up a really good point. I think this does serve as a good case study re: the importance of consistent posting. If readers expect a new comic on X day and it's not there they do they check back a little later or wait until the next post cycle. I'm really interested to see what my views are like tomorrow when I post at my regular time.

[Louistrations]

Yeah this was lovely, apart from the crushing guilt. If everybody could refrain from updating their comics every Thursday, that'd be great!

[starlightcityentert]

I ended up getting less views, but more subs ^_^ thanks to all of the new subscribers of R:ILPERSONA

[carloswebcomic]

My viewership and subs on update day was tiny (about half my normal numbers). But through Thursday to Sunday, I picked up tons of subs.
Go figure!

[PixyByte]

You have to understand, though, it wasn't just an update and the fact the site was down. It was a holiday, and most people were too busy getting together or traveling, to be on Tapastic. I got the same drop around Christmas. Views will pop back up, hopefully.

[MrKyleRose]

Another really good point, a holiday will always impact readership and definitely accounts for a portion of the drop in readership.

Ultimately I think the larger question is how does any outside factor or disruption in publishing schedule affect readership? As mentioned earlier I think this is a really great case study for the necessity of a consistent schedule.

This is a really great conversation.

[AnnaLandin]

Yeah, but I figure it's definitely due to the Tapastic update - I don't know about the app, but the website was behaving quite irregularly, so people might have had trouble seeing your strip.