We don't have enough promotion threads

[carloswebcomic]

I'm probably going to cop it for this, but this whole promotional thread thing is getting out of hand.

Now, what worries me is, why is this happening?

I could have the memory of a rather forgetful goldfish, but I'm sure it was never this prevalent.
Obviously, people feel that they are not getting exposure and the only way to get eyes on their comics is by repeatedly posting them on this forum.

Now, call me Carlos Crazy McGee, but I feel that Tapas' drive to remove smaller comics from the public eye may have something to do with this.
Obviously, people are not getting enough exposure... No, let me rephrase that....
Most people are getting absolutely no visibility whatsoever since Tapas removed the Fresh section and other avenues of exposure from the front page.

Like I said, I could be wrong about all this, but something needs to be done.
This community has a need and Tapas is not helping to fulfil it.

So, what can be done about this?
What does this community think could solve this issue?

[MovieNut14]

Well, for a start, the front page could promote some more diverse projects (read: they don't look exactly the same from each other). Also, they could stand to promote non-premium comics more often. (I'm broke so I can't really afford to buy ink so I can read them.)

[carloswebcomic]

Also, they could stand to promote non-premium comics more often.

Well considering that there are people who have no idea that there are free to read comics on Tapas, I'd say that's a fair point.

[darthmongoose]

I do agree this is indicative of issues. I think to an extent it's reasonable to expect promo threads, but the sheer number of them does suggest that people are really struggling to get discovered organically through the site right now.

Tapas' solution to this is Tapastry... I expressed concerns and doubts about Tapastry when it was launched, and I was really hoping Tapas would change my mind on this by showing just how great it could be, but at this point, having engaged with pretty much every single Tapastry activity; the meme templates, the contests to win a feature, the colouring activity, and tagged them into most of my update posts on both twitter AND instagram, they haven't shared my work a single time. They haven't even given me a like. I feel like I'm being punished for having expressed concerns, and I really hope that's not the case and I've just been unlucky by being in the GMT timezone. All I wanted to do was to have a polite, constructive discussion and to try to improve my favourite webcomics platform and if I'm being punished for that by not being promoted.... I don't even know how I'd react if that was the case, that would be a very depressing state of affairs.

My solution would be to look to the site itself. I'm glad to see that after being moved down the site and then removed, Staff Picks has returned to the front page. That's a good start. Other things I'd like to see would be:

• A more visible toggle for Free to Read / Premium comics. It's a bit subtle and hard to find right now, and with the large number of premium comics added to the site and the marketing behind them, they now dominate the top of Romance, Fantasy and Action if you view all comics. This is fine as the default view, I have no issues with it, but my comic managing to trend in the top few rows of free to read in my genre on update days due to good audience engagement because I'm working super-hard on it feels a bit meaningless and disheartening right now when the UI setup means a lot of app users probably don't even know they can look at free to read, or won't scroll down far enough to see even the highest free to read performers in genres like Action. This would be a pretty easy change, just make that toggle some nice coloured in buttons so they stand out more.

• Make it easier to trend or tweak the algorithm for what trending means. Most days there aren't enough trending action comics to even fill the screen. To me, trending and popular should both exist and be easy to find because they fill different niches. Popular should show what consistently performs well over a longer space of time, while trending should be what's getting a lot of attention relative to its size in a short space of time. This would mean that solid performers like the best Tapas originals, or just really solid free to read comics like say Animal Heads, would consistently stay high in the popular ranking, while a new comic that was really great looking that people were all pouncing on would jump up into trending. Basically, I just want there to be more organic visibility for works on here, rather than what gets seen being based on what the staff pick out to show people. Staff picks and other categories are a good place for the staff to provide curated suggestions for app users, but I believe for a diverse library of works to flourish, they need to exist alongside good organic ways for works to prove their ability to gain readers through organic visibility driven by fair algorithms.

[DiegoPalacios]

I understand the incentive for promoting premium content, that's where the money comes, and all business, big or small, need to profit.

Is unrealistic to expect Tapas to invest resources in something that doesn't pay off, so the suggestions need to be a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

Well considering that there are people who have no idea that there are free to read comics on Tapas, I'd say that's a fair point.

This is a solid point and something @staff needs to consider. Overly promoting the premium content gave many potential readers the wrong impression about Tapas.

I suggest more emphasis on the fresh section.

There is a group big enough of curious people who love to check for new content and encourage independent creators, which can lead to more ink donations and in some cases, consuption of premium content and increasing the chance to be a step ahead of the competition.

The fresh section exists, but is not noticeable enough to get rid of the misconception about Tapas being paid only and to appeal to readerships that look for content different to the "trends".

If someone from staff see this, as an advertiser, i would gladly have a conversation with you and people here on the forums to search for a solution that works for this site.

[ArhyaM]

This increase of promotion threads is something I've noticed during the last months and has somewhat been bugging me because (to me) it floods the forum with threads that have very little variety of content (and use).

I remember years ago that I used to get into promotion threads looking for new stuff to read and these links actually had a lof ot traffic (you know, that little number telling how many times it has been opened), well not A LOT, but way more traffic than now. To me they were useful before precisely because there were less.

Now I don't do it anymore, there are too many threads, most of the time I find the same titles that I have already seen before and I rarely discover anything new. Although I sometimes find threads fun/interesting to join (like, post X scene of your series that do Y and link!) and I just skip the posting link part when I feel bad for constantly being promoting instead of talking about more creative stuff.

Why have promotion threads increased? No idea. It might be the consequence of tapas frontpage promotion system? I coincide with you, probably. But I'm pretty sure that there are more reasons apart from that.

[crowstories]

Something I've seen several times is that sometimes people looking to promote will dredge up a half dozen old promo threads, which brings them up to the top of the forums, and gets more people posting to them without paying attention to how old they are.

[DiegoPalacios]

Now I don't do it anymore, there are too many threads, most of the time I find the same titles that I have already seen before and I rarely discover anything new. Although I sometimes find threads fun/interesting to join (like, post X scene of your series that do Y and link!) and I just skip the posting link part when I feel bad for constantly being promoting instead of talking about more creative stuff.

Personally, i enjoy the promo threads with creative themes or fun challenges......But a flood of generic ones may sink in the sea of threads and be annoying......

[Leverance]

Honestly, I think we need to be smarter regarding how promoting is done, even on the main site. A potential reader could be reading and find interest if you play your cards right. Instead of constantly putting links in an endless loop of promotion threads, we could have scenes we've written or drawn in a context to explain what we did to help others.

Also that we should be more open to either feedback of our work and in that way catch the interest of more readers. It's a tough world for creators and helping each other out can help a great deal.

Personally, I prefer creative threads where we say something about ourselves or the work(s) instead of just slapping on a link in a thread where you easily get blended with a hundred plus others. Though, advertising on social media can do a huge difference when done right.

[rajillustration]

Yeah, I feel like Tapas relies on us to do 99% of our social media at this point. It might be nice if they like...did some sort of tutorial for people starting out so they won't jump over here expecting this forum of like 50 regulars to somehow make them seen. I'm not even sure what Tapas could do to serve the sheer number of new comics being started and regularly uploaded every day other than just fixing the search engine issues already.

If we could search more specifically and if those searches were more relevant, you can find more comics. But, as of right now most of my tags are useless.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I feel bad about not creating as many open discussion threads about art stuff. We really need more things to talk about to keep us engaged and interested as community.

[joannekwan]

From what I've noticed as a mod, most of the recent promo threads are generated by new creators who have joined Tapas within a week or so of their forum debut. They don't realize it takes more than simply advertising here on the forum to gain an audience, since most people who post here are creators themselves.

Like I'm pretty aware of who the regulars are on here, and the regulars regularly don't make promo threads unless they're supporting a bit more discussion (like share your protagonist) or more niche subject matters (like share your monster bfs/gfs).

[Rhonder]

I don't have any high level insights, but I'll air my personal (recent) grievances. I'll say up front that I'm not sure that any of these would have influenced a recent influx of promotion threads, but are more in line with discoverability in general.

1.) I'll get the most niche and least applicable one out of the way first- I was disheartened recently to learn that the app had a mandatory update to a version incompatible with older phones. Consequentially, as someone with an older phone, I haven't really done any tapas reading since December. I'm well aware that I'm over due for a phone upgrade, but it's... curious to me that a comic app would be spec'd so high that it would exclude phone models I'm almost certainly in an extreme minority, but I've become a near exclusive Webtoons reader as a result since... you know, their app still works on my phone.

2.) I was reminded upon my recent new comic launch that the Tapas app hides series with fewer than 15 subs from the Fresh section of the app. As I cannot use the app myself (as discussed above), I had a friend help me test this to confirm and sure enough it's the case. I hadn't had a new series since October of 2018 so I also dug back through some old forum threads to verify that I/we weren't just crazy xD

Like, sure, 15 isn't a massive threshold to cross by any means... but with the majority of readers being on the app (you know, for a site focused around vertical scroll phone-friendly comics), it can be rather difficult to pass that threshold without a prior/external reader base. This factor indirectly likely drives up the perceived need for advertising in a place like these forums, whether or not an author is aware of this quirk. Like at least you know users of the site have a chance to see your series in promo threads.

I know that Sub-For-Sub is generally frowned upon as a poor way to boost your series with meaningful readers, but I do wonder if newer authors were aware of this threshold, if something like "sub for sub to 15" would become a more common/accepted practice Obviously your work still has to stand on its own to continue growing beyond that, but it would help to at least have a fair shot.

2.a) Another entirely personal grievance, but for whatever reason it seems as though the typical "Hey, Rhonder has a new series :D" notification didn't go out for my new series lol. Part of why I looked into the sub threshold again was because I was shocked that... virtually 0% of my readers from my first series migrated over to the new one over 3 different upload days, and it also got very few "fresh" views as well. The first several subs that I had on the series were friends who have been watching me work on it on Twitch for the last several months lol.

It wasn't until I went back to my prior series to make a "hey I have a new comic, check it out :D" post a few days later that I had some turn-over, including at least one person confirming that they didn't get the usual notification, after which I passed that 15 threshold. I wish I had been over that for the Fresh viewership those first 3 days/uploads @ u@;; Alas, there's always next month's update...

3.) consequentially, my only suggestions I guess would be to remove that 15 sub threshold for App fresh, and perhaps find a way to integrate fresh into the front page, even if it was tabbed by genre and only displayed like 10 results per genre or something. Would it cycle through quickly? Yes. Would there at least be a chance for many new readers to see your thumbnail/title though? Also yes.

I grabbed these to comment on as I read through the thread as well:

Something I've seen several times is that sometimes people looking to promote will dredge up a half dozen old promo threads, which brings them up to the top of the forums, and gets more people posting to them without paying attention to how old they are.

Very much the case, yes! I know that the promotions category has a timer that says "thread will lock 1 month after the last reply", I wonder if something similar should be considered for the promotion category? That way people could still look through them (if desired, I guess) but wouldn't be able to necro them...

Honestly, I think we need to be smarter regarding how promoting is done,

Taking this bit admittedly slightly out of context, but big agree! While I do think that these forums are a great place to seek out an initial readership (and maybe even climb beyond that 15 sub threshold ), I think a lot of newer creators fail to realize that oftentimes effort would be better spent trying to get their work in front of more reader-readers rather than creator-readers... of which there are many more of, and often have more time for reading There's nothing wrong with promoting here, but a lot of us have limited time to read in addition to working on our own comics, and whatever other hobbies or obligations we have in our personal lives. Social Medias and such are fickle too, but if one can find a platform that they gel with, that has potential to be more fruitful

THAT SAID I do think that external promotion generally works better for series hosted on Webtoons than Tapas tbh, at least in my experience... I prefer Tapas as a platform from a creator perspective, but I've found it's difficult to direct traffic here and get them to actually engage with your work if they don't already have an account. The same goes for Webtoons as well, but many more people have a Webtoons account than a Tapas one lol. With my first comic on the site, I talked to a lot of friends and acquaintances during its run who would always surprise me by saying that they were reading my comic (explaining my large-ish amount of views relative to my comic size) but, you know, views count for very little compared to other forms of engagement for the algorithms (seemingly at least). I have yet to do any hard promotion for my new series yet, but I'm planning to swap from a Tapas focus to a Webtoons focus consequentially for external marketing.

Okie, this was long, I'm done rambling

[carloswebcomic]

From what I've noticed as a mod, most of the recent promo threads are generated by new creators who have joined Tapas within a week or so of their forum debut. They don't realize it takes more than simply advertising here on the forum to gain an audience, since most people who post here are creators themselves.

I do wonder what's going on, though.
I could be wrong, but I do feel like this is more prevalent than ever.

You've been around here more than me, is this the case? Are there more promo threads than ever before?

[joannekwan]

You've been around here more than me, is this the case? Are there more promo threads than ever before?

There certainly has been an uptick in promo threads, but there has also definitely been an uptick in new forum users, particularly in the past year. I guess they aren't too noticeable since many just stick to promo threads, but several have joined us a regulars and contribute to good discussions!

[crowstories]

I blame the pandemic.

I am one of those users lol

[Leverance]

Taking this bit admittedly slightly out of context, but big agree! While I do think that these forums are a great place to seek out an initial readership (and maybe even climb beyond that 15 sub threshold ), I think a lot of newer creators fail to realize that oftentimes effort would be better spent trying to get their work in front of more reader-readers rather than creator-readers... of which there are many more of, and often have more time for reading There's nothing wrong with promoting here, but a lot of us have limited time to read in addition to working on our own comics, and whatever other hobbies or obligations we have in our personal lives. Social Medias and such are fickle too, but if one can find a platform that they gel with, that has potential to be more fruitful

THAT SAID I do think that external promotion generally works better for series hosted on Webtoons than Tapas tbh, at least in my experience... I prefer Tapas as a platform from a creator perspective, but I've found it's difficult to direct traffic here and get them to actually engage with your work if they don't already have an account. The same goes for Webtoons as well, but many more people have a Webtoons account than a Tapas one lol. With my first comic on the site, I talked to a lot of friends and acquaintances during its run who would always surprise me by saying that they were reading my comic (explaining my large-ish amount of views relative to my comic size) but, you know, views count for very little compared to other forms of engagement for the algorithms (seemingly at least). I have yet to do any hard promotion for my new series yet, but I'm planning to swap from a Tapas focus to a Webtoons focus consequentially for external marketing.

Okie, this was long, I'm done rambling

From a writer's point of view (at least in my experience) these forums aren't that effective, considering most creators are Comic creators. And making us writers in smaller numbers than them. For a fraction of the time you get more subscribers than us -- often we've to constantly double our efforts. And there aren't that many yet interested readers in our work. It's quite unfair but it's the reality we face. Even though I use a fair time creating novels, I make sure to consume things that I can use in my work. So, really, I find there is no excuse for creators to not support each other. Many mistakes writing on here as the ' easier craft ' when in fact it's not. That's an attitude I've observed quite a lot around here, unfortunately.

As a product, Comics tend to be promoted differently. Writing isn't that easy, you've no pictures to use other than what you can take from other sites like Canva. Some of us, even with years of experience on our backs won't get much of anywhere without help. And it's common knowledge that the writing community is bitter and very competitive orientated and there is no united front. Hell, I feel I'm often on my own, though I promote others I rarely if ever get anything back. This is why I rather rely on Instagram for my promotions. Some sites treat us badly as well, and we get bruised by that, sometimes for years. So, unfortunately, I don't have the same faith as you. Been lied to one time too often by sites before.

[crowstories]

From what I can see, it appears that there is a supportive writing community on twitter. It might take some research to track down the right tags, but they exist.

With that said, we still come back to the problem of promoting to other creators, who are busy creating and don't have that much time to follow all of their creator friends' work. I think this is especially true with writing, which takes more time to consume than a comic strip (though relatively less time to produce, at least for me).

[Rhonder]

Ah, that's a shame. I definitely agree that I lack the relevant experience to speak with confidence about a novelist's experience on these forums When I say "initial readership", I was speaking to the scale of like... maybe 1-10 folks that you could become friends with via discussions here and get to support your work? Trying to gain many more readers just from here isn't a sustainable strategy, though, even for comics xD I see there are novel-oriented threads but maybe they don't yield similar results to the comic ones? 'Tis a shame if so.

[littlelilylee5683]

I am new to Tapas (started publishing in December). I like the threads on writing help and collabs and writing jams and such, but I don't see a ton of those among the rest (other than people looking for an artist/writer for their specific project). There seem to be good discord communities, so perhaps people have moved to places like that instead?

I will say, though, that I have apparently had a unique experience as a new novelist here... I had one of my update posts on Instagram shared through Tapastry and am currently on the staff picks list. And I'm a total nobody. So I didn't know this wasn't working and now I feel kinda awful that there are people who have been on here a while and never had Tapas help with promotion.

I hear everywhere about fixing the genre/tag system and 100% agree with that. The biggest problem is that outside of a cluttered front page, readers have to pick a single genre and scroll through a list. And even in the free to read, there are still the always popular folks with tons of subscribers, so they dominate the top of popular and trending lists anyway. Which they completely deserve. But diversity is good too, so maybe in addition to staff picks move the fresh to the front and have "new creators" (not just new comic/novels) or "close to 25 or 100 or 250" or feature some genre combo's (GL Action or LGBTQ+ Fantasy). I liked the black history month and women's history month groups.

I also love the idea of some kind of promotion and just overall tutorials. Publishing tips, faqs, common mistakes, what readers look for... an actual creator resources section. I have actually had a good experience as a novelist here with other writers... Many of my readers are other free creators, not just subbing but reading and commenting, and a lot of times the promotion threads here are creators helping creators. I've had the overall feeling that creators want to help each other but it isn't always easy. Many are students, many are working full time... Maybe find a better, easier way for us to support each other.

And about the comment vs novel - true. But in comics' defense - isn't Tapas mainly a comic site that added novels? I could be wrong. But most promotional novel threads are "I saw 20 of these comic ones, let's do a novel one" or "this started as a comic thread but I added novels later so join us!" ^^

Sorry this was so long!! Just couldn't stop once I started...