And here I was thinking that I did a positive thing to help out the veterans and hard workers to have a promotion thread for us, but all I did was adding some swam....
I think your idea of a targeted thread is good.
Too many sporadic threads to promo comics that are all over the place..
Right now it's total chaos. I think some order and structure is what is needed.
Personally I don't really know what to think because I don't usually look at the first page of Tapas, but after looking at the first page for a long time (like a year and a half?)
I actually find it more difficult to find small or new authors (those with less than 1000 subs).
But from my little experience, I am very grateful to Tapas, it is thanks to them that I was able to share my comics, and it is also thanks to them that I wanted it to be my job.
Tapas allowed me at the time (at the end of 2018) to express myself when why I was nobody and my drawings were really really horrible ( don't you dare judge i just started drawing 🤣)
I also wanted to say that even if there are people who are there for premium comics, a good number are there for free to read and discover hidden talents. (If some people are interested in my bookstore I have a lot of little authors that I find incredible) I think there will always be people for these little budding authors .
You appear to believe that the people here seeking greater visibility for indie comics are doing so because they are proud and obnoxious, and envious of premium series.
This is wildly incorrect, to the point that is borderline offensive, and demonstrates that you have not been reading the conversation.
You have not been labelled as malicious or mean spirited, you have simply misunderstood.
Yes, we all create because we love to, but it is very rare that that be a person's only goal. For example, a closeted LGBT person creating a comic anonymously in order to explore their identity online, where they would be unsafe to do so irl would probably very much benefit from a regular cycle of one or two new followers every few months who comment semi-regularly.
This is a fair and reasonable expectation, and it should be simple enough to achieve on Tapas without frustrating people on the forum, or risking discovery by publicising widely and loudly on the larger social media sites.
I've already made a case for a relatively low-effort, low-maintenance solution that would address this issue.
If I might speak up on behalf of "Those People" being called out...
I want to be very clear here. I don't think I'm intrinsically better or more worthy than any other person here. I know we're all working hard. I have no intention of insulting anyone by pointing out a simple thing which is that most of "those people" (ie. people who believe that if Tapas is to promote community works more, there would need to be means to make sure the content getting seen was fairly professional looking) are in our thirties with professional experience and/or training. It's not a difference of being a better person or more determined to succeed or more talented (talent is a myth), it's just having been at it longer and so having knowledge, resources and time, which any of you can and will acquire if you just keep at it, I just happen to have been alive since the mid 80's and making webcomics for going on twenty years so my career is further along. Assuming that this ire is primarily aimed at Joanne and I, I should flag the fact that both of us are clearly keen to use our experience and the knowledge we have gained to help others. It's practically a forum meme that if somebody needs advice or critique I'll turn up, and I'm always seeing Joanne giving out great advice on threads. I genuinely do want every single one of you to succeed in your endeavours, and I don't think anyone should feel bitter or ashamed about not being there just yet, or for being a hobbyist who makes comics for fun without compromising their artistic vision to make it marketable.
The reason I'm saying that the changes should be ones that help high performing works with a high level of polish get organic visibility isn't because I'm like "ONLY I MAY SUCCEED" like I'm the villainess queen or something; it's because Tapas is a business and anything we pitch needs to be shown to be a worthwhile financial investment for them to consider it.
Tapas tried community picks... and I heard through some contacts that the reason we lost community picks was because a number of very unpolished works got put on the front page (because the community staff did take the very well-meaning, fair and open-hearted approach of putting pretty much everything the community suggested with little to no vetting), which resulted in app users losing faith in the quality of the recommendations in that section (which also corroborates with reports I have from friends that the later a week of Community picks you were in, regardless of how nice a cover you had, the lower the overall sub gain was) and stopped clicking works in that section. So obviously after that, Tapas are a bit scared to give that valuable front page real estate to anything that isn't thoroughly vetted for quality or directly picked by the staff who can curate the selection based on it fitting in with the front page.
If we are to sell the idea to Tapas that it's worth making more room for community comics or tweaking algorithms or the UI so that community comics get seen more, we have to sell community comics as an investment worth betting their money (in this case, the loss of revenue from giving up space that could be given to more immediately profitable premium comics) on for a return. If people can see more free comics, it means they're seeing fewer paid comics, so it is vital to try to explain it to Tapas in terms that these free comics can become paid comics if you give them opportunities to build an audience, can earn significant ad revenue or donation money, or could be the next Tapas Media TV adaptation. In other words, we can't sell it as "you should show people my comic because I'm a nice person and I worked really hard on it!" even if that is a lovely sentiment, we have to sell it as "give these comics a chance for the best performers to rise to the top, one of them might be the next Moonshine or Heartstopper." To us artists, our comics are works of art dear to our hearts and labours of love, but to Tapas, they are products on a shop shelf, and you might be the kind of admirable person who doesn't judge a book by its cover, but most app users aren't, no matter how much we wish that'd change, and they're the ones who are bringing the money.
I use my own comic as an example not because I think I'm better than anyone, but because it's an easy example I have stats for that back up the theory that it's under-performing and could grow more under a system where comics can gain more organic visibility, and that based on its earnings, it's worth investing in for potential financial returns.
I know Errant inside and out. I know all the stats for it. I know how much it has earned, I know how it performs, I know my social media strategy, like how I've taken part in every Tapastry event and had the misfortune to never have them share my work (I would really like to know if this is just bad luck or being in the wrong timezone or if somebody at Tapastry doesn't like me for some reason. If somebody on the staff doesn't like me, can we please just talk about our feelings in DMs and straighten things out? Sometimes I upset people without meaning to because I'm autistic and can be overly honest and blunt or misjudging what's appropriate tone for a situation, so I have concerns...) and since it has been featured before on the front page a few times I can safely hold it up to Tapas and say "look, you've featured this before, right? You feel like this is polished enough to be on the front page, So it wouldn't be so awful if stuff like this turned up on the front page or in a trending list on a good update day, or if it was easier to find content like this." I don't even think my comic would benefit the most from the changes I'm suggesting because it's an odd comic in a less popular genre, the biggest gains would likely be for comics like The Princess Beast, Hollow and the like; comics that have over a thousand followers and which fit the Tapas aesthetic and audience pretty well, but seem to not be climbing up into those 10s of Ks like comics of comparable quality and audience appeal used to a couple of years ago.
Honestly this spiteful attitude some people have of "WELL. If MY community comic can't get seen and make money with or without changes to the site, I don't see the point! Especially if it benefits that uppity cow Darth Mongoose who thinks she's better than me!" is pretty unhelpful. If we convince Tapas to improve organic visibility by selling the benefits of investing in community comics, it will benefit the majority of community creators. Some of you it may not benefit immediately if you still need to build up your polish or marketing game, or your product doesn't suit the platform, but some day, maybe not so far off, your work will reach a professional level of polish or you'll hit on a great premise or capture the zeitgeist and you'll get a few hundred subs and then find yourself stuck in the donut hole like I currently am, popular enough that people tell you on the forums you're a "big creator" and not allowed to complain about popularity or visibility, but nowhere near popular enough to make viable money from the work you're making and unable to grow the audience fast enough for that to look probable any time soon.
What I'm trying to convince Tapas to do is to give us a ladder to climb so that higher performing community comics can viably turn into premium or "wait for free" comics. Some of you may not be tall enough to reach that ladder just yet, but when you are (when, not if, and I'm always happy to give advice to help you get there), you'll need it. Overall it would ultimately benefit all of you though, because if a polished community comic jumps into premium, it both proves that they can be a worthwhile investment overall, encouraging Tapas to foster community comics growth with resources, promotion and tutorials and means that person is no longer competing with smaller comics for eyeballs in smaller promotion events, which means more attention for everyone.
Likewise. This is why I have been proposing an 'Undiscovered' tab, that need not be on the front page.
Its existence alone would draw people to it on account of it showing a very different selection of pseudo-curated comics that wouldn't appear under any other heading. On account of people being drawn to it it would trigger a distribution of attention that would immediately appear 'predictive' - things that do well under 'Undiscovered' would very likely go on to do well in other, more conventional places soon after.
This combined with the ability for whoever controls the Undiscovered algorithm to forecast what is due to appear on it in advance would make it an invaluable tool.
It makes sense to want a following, but engagement is not a guarantee, because said engagement is done by people who follow content as a choice and not as an obligation. If they like a story is up to them.
Is fair to ask for visibility, but that in itself will not guarantee results.
I wanna be fair with you darth, you’re stats are normally decently cited but this time you’ve irked me a bit
I noticed you used your “total revenue” which includes ink gifted to you. Now I hate to be a negative Nancy but tapas really dosn’t and shouldn’t care about your ink revenue, especially when inksgiving is on the table.
There’s plenty of people I know who can make 20 to 50$ in ink revenue because they’re well known in the >creator< community. So they can make a lot of money during inksgiving- problem is we also don’t know how much they are >spending< during inksgiving. As that event tends to be a give a little get a little, your more likely to spend more money on inksgiving then you receive unless your already in the 2000 sub tier.
Now for an example I’m gonna use my own stats here
My total revenue is 59.78$
Not anything compared to your 200$ but as a hobbyist who dose this for herself and makes most of her money through nsfw commissions- I’m pretty proud of it. But now let’s look at my AD revenue
$5.58
Oof a much smaller amount. Yet this is the amount tapas should be looking at, because this is the amount that matters. Tapas is not getting payed by you through Patreon. YouTube dose not boost the people who have the most patreons on their page- they boost the people who have the most >veiws< and make the most >ad revenue< for them. Why? Because those are the people who are actually paying YouTube. They, like tapas needs to make their investors happy. This is just how companies work. Unless you’re getting a lot of Veiw (not audience >views< ) and these people are not willing to turn off their ad blockers for you, then these platforms really don’t have a need to invest in you. It’s sad but it’s what business is.
I agree that we’re loosing a lot of ground with visibility for the little guy but when you put down “fresh” and “community picks” because one or two of the entires are not “polished” then it’s your own loss
The original one punch man is not a “polished” comic. And look where it is now. So it’s really a self fufilling proficiency that were working with. Either you allow some unpolished things to seep through so everyone can get in, or you start having vip codes.
The problem I’m seeing is that there is still a ladder.... but it’s a ladder that can only be climded if your willing to play the game. I have seen PLENTY of artist and creators that made comics years ago with under 100 subs that now make comics with over 10000 subs. You wanna know what happen? They didn’t get more “polished” they just went to the romance and BL genre. Cause that’s where the money and veiws are.
As an authors of Bl genre i 'm saying that , please don't change your story to Bl or romance if that's not what you like to draw it's surely reflect on your art and story!
This is true and I have not contested this.
We are agreed on this as well. It seems we are at a misunderstanding.
...
Allow me to explain my thinking:
The only means by which one achieves engagement is through sheer "volume of eyeballs". Marketers will talk about "conversion funnels" - at the easiest-to-get end there is the 'impression' - a single view by one person. At the hardest-to-get end is the paying customer, or whatever goal it is that you want to achieve. A certain percentage of impressions will 'funnel down' between each level - this is the 'conversion rate'. For example, the average conversion rate for Facebook ads is apparently 9.21%.
The conversion funnel may have any number of steps in it (though obviously shorter is better) until eventually a very small number become paying customers, or whatever the highest goal you want to achieve is.
In the end then, if engagement is your goal, it is a simple numbers game to get as many impressions as possible, so that as many as possible 'funnel down' into people who say, click and read nothing, which funnels down to people who stay to read, which funnels down into people who become 'fans'.
Marketers draw conversion funnel diagrams so they can work out which steps 'on the road' to a paying customer/to some other goal aren't proving persuasive enough.
You are right - impressions are no guarantee of achieving a higher goal. But, they're an essential first step.
This is why I have proposed a solution that rewards impressions to people who work hard, where popularity metrics have the opposite effect - they make a person descend down an 'Undiscovered' ranking. It prioritises those comics that have no functional funnel at all, because no one is entering full stop. As a high placement in the Undiscovered ranking rewards a series with impressions and various metrics of popularity, a funnel forms, word of mouth (the single most important form of impression there is) begins to spread, and a person who has worked hard with no reward is helped along their way.
I see why you are frustrated, you put a lot of time \ money in your project, I also understood that you know your comics by heart and that you are confident to be able to bring back to Tapas. :
So I think you should submit your project to them as premium comics and see if your project is accepted ^^
This can only be beneficial on the one hand you will have real feedback from the staff and therefore from a professional in this field and on the other, regardless of the answer, you can either be accepted or improve what is wrong 
Just wanted to chime in -- I think you misunderstood what Darth was saying (or replied to the wrong person). 
Darth is already a professional in this field: more of a veteran at this point. Their post was more or less about the general atmosphere around these types of threads, as well as the conflicting results and responses that come with them.
hooo i'm so sorry !!! English is not my first language i tends to misunderstood !
But If she is an professional why isn't she able to live from it ?
( i don't wanna be rude or aything)
i just thought it would be a good idea if he wanted more views and, if the views are with the premium comics then become a premium comic ?
Firstly, not a he, easy mistake, I'm a she.
I do make my living as a writer, games designer and artist for a kids edutainment company, which is my day job while I try to launch independent IP comics. Prior to this, I worked as a freelance comic artist, illustrator and games artist, with clients including Nintendo, the BBC and Square-Enix, but I was tired of always working on other people's IP full time and never having any time for original works, so I went into working part time as an employee while the rest of the time I develop my own original works.
In my country, the UK, launching new IP is pretty hard because we have comparatively few publishers who do it (most comics produced here are based on existing IP) so I had hoped to build an online following on Tapas, which friends had recommended to me. My readership is growing, but not as fast as I'd hoped, particularly since the algorithm changes last year. This is why I want Tapas to improve visibility for free to read works, to make this more viable. Tapas requires pitches for premium to have 2000 subscribers and to be in longscroll format, or to be pitched as more like a group project for studio development, so it's not as simple as just pitching there.
I am working on a pitch, but not for Tapas. There's a big demand for print comics for children right now, so I am already making plans assuming Tapas may not work out as a place for me to make money on my original work, but print might.
And as I suspected, most of the new ones are made by people who just joined this March, or 2021 at least. xD
Like I said in my first reply way up in the thread, a lot of these promo threads are just made by new creators excited to share their work and find new things to read. They may think coming here to the forums is the best way to start networking, and it can be! I've seen a lot of "Hey I'm new here, just wanted to meet fellow creators and share my work" threads that get some replies. So it can be beneficial for them, even if it means it clutters up the forum for us veterans.
@Eyre If you would like to make a new topic with your Undiscovered idea, I won't stop you! Usually it's easier for staff to see and reply to specific points if they aren't buried under a mountain of other replies in a thread not specifically tailored for it.
Thank you!
I came up with the idea while reading this thread, and have mentioned it in response to a few people now, in the hope of giving folks with different views something to agree on, but also in the hope that people would challenge the idea and point out its flaws.
If people are interested, I'll definitely put together a feature suggestion thread together with a more in-depth analysis of both the business and technical implications. But, it would be good to know if folks are actually interested in seeing that - would they contribute to the thread to voice their support, for example?
Or, if anyone has any suggestions for that thread/analysis?
I realise suggestions for the suggestion may seem extreme, but I want to present it well, taking into account as many views as possible, first off so that I can judge whether it would be worth my time making the suggestion at all, but also hopefully if I do go ahead and make the suggestion, I want to give it the best possible chance of being seen and respected.
As a business owner and a developer myself I take the Tapas' team's time very seriously, and wouldn't want to waste their time with what you'll have noticed is quite a wordy writing style. But also I wouldn't want to ruin the chances of anyone who could do a better job suggesting it.
Say if in three years time someone makes the same suggestion after mine is a complete disaster, the first reaction that person's going to get it "oh you mean like that idiot from three years ago suggested that we completely dismissed?" when actually they might have a point.
So, while I appreciate that you "won't stop" me, I think more needs to happen before I make a suggestion.
First off for example, this thread is laden with tension and misunderstanding, and if my suggestion is worth anything at all it should at least be able to alleviate that and bring people together in agreement.