We don't have enough promotion threads

[jensrichard77]

@TapasCommunityTeam sorry for the ping but people keep trying to ping @staff and I’m not sure that works anymore.

[carloswebcomic]

Maybe it got overused XD

[starry-sea]

in staff's defense, I don't think the ones who moderate the forums are also the ones who call the shots for tapas' front page and comic visibility. and if they somehow are - I don't know if they're even allowed to talk about it either

[jcmraz]

I don't know if Tapas has monetary incentive to do this. Not saying you're wrong but I think it's probably more monetarily feasible for them to push premium content to the forefront since they make so little money off of most of the rest of us

[darthmongoose]

I don't know if Tapas has monetary incentive to do this. Not saying you're wrong but I think it's probably more monetarily feasible for them to push premium content to the forefront since they make so little money off of most of the rest of us

I would say in response to this that yes, I see where you're coming from, and this is why I didn't suggest changing it so that Premium comics don't have top billing, but to just create some for the rest of us to get seen.
My reasoning is that we should be considered an investment. Tapas allows higher performing free to read works become "wait for free", and I'm 100% on board with this. I would LOVE to grow my comic to the point where I can monetise it like that, but I can't do that if I can't get seen. I am 100% confident that if I had a bit more visibility, I could be making more money for Tapas, and here's why I think that:

My comic has under 1000 subs and has been around less than two years and there's my earnings. This is far beyond the amount of money my one comic would cost to host even if I hosted it myself with a unique website and URL. I made over $80 USD last inksgiving without even advertising I was doing inksgiving or offering any incentive. I am motivated and very keen to make money here and more than happy for Tapas to take a cut of that for doing me the solid of hosting and promoting my work.

I'm not asking Tapas to start giving valuable front page real estate just any rando who scribbles a comic or mashes keys to make a novel. That would be absolutely ridiculous and I agree, not business friendly at all. In fact, if anyone remembers last year, I expressed concern about community picks precisely because I was worried putting poor quality, unpolished or amateurish works on the front page would damage Tapas as a brand.
But I'm not a hobbyist. I have years of professional experience and I take my comic very seriously. I hit close to the top of the popular rankings in my genre, especially in Free to Read every single week when I update. I put in the work to promote my comic on twitter, instagram and Tumblr, hell, I've even purchased instagram ads! Last week, I made a really cool video ad for my comic and even paid to try promoting it on instagram (I tagged in Tapastry on both twitter and Insta. It's a shame they decided not to share it, me and my partner put a lot of work into that). My comic makes money. I think it could make more money and that it's a worthwhile investment, which is why I've used my own money to promote it. I believe that based on my earnings so far, it is reasonable to extrapolate that if my comic had more readers, it could be making significant money because my readerbase is so active and invested.
The suggestions I've put forth would just slightly improve how easily people can find high performing free to read works. They wouldn't reduce the visibility of the big imported premium comics that are keeping the lights on.

[ArcisOne]

I do think the Tapas staff makes a good effort to promote non-premium novels as well. The Staff Picks section has a good number of free-to-read comics in there every week or so, and I've even found my comic in there a few times. I also like that they make forum posts to collect comics to feature for special promotions on their front page like Women's History Month or Black History Month, so that allows community users to post their comics for a chance at getting picked up.

Another thing I've noticed on Tapas is that I randomly get subs every few days or so and I think it's some feature of the algorithm recommending the comic somewhere, because it happens even if I don't promote the comic for a few months. While I have a bigger audience on Webtoon than Tapas (9.9k subs vs 280 subs), I think I get more subs outside of features on Tapas with people randomly subscribing to the comic.

But of course, the experience may vary per person, but that's how it has worked for me so far. I feel like the content teams are doing a good job of finding new comics to feature, and I've seen several of my friends' comics show up as well, which is always fun to see. Overall, I've seen the Tapas team be very active in the community, and they even respond within a few days (even within hours in some cases) for Premium program pitches, which is super fast imo.

[starry-sea]

I'm not asking Tapas to start giving valuable front page real estate just any rando who scribbles a comic or mashes keys to make a novel.

you could just say "indie comics can work" without shitting on other stuff...

[darthmongoose]

Okay, very sorry to people who were upset by the facetious wording. I just wanted to make it clear that just because I'm advocating more visibility for free to read comics, it doesn't mean I expect Tapas to drop their support of premium comics, since it seems people often misunderstand this.

[joannekwan]

It should be said that a lot of premium series are made by creators who used to be regular old working-for-free members. While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forums.

[DiegoPalacios]

While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forum

An understandable concern.....personally, my worries are more related to Tapas's promotion methods than on the content itself.

[DiegoPalacios]

Gotta say, promotion is not about quantity, but quality.

An excess of ads is spam after all.

@redfrombluelife is one of the most creative advertising stunts i've seen on this forum, and is entertaining in itself, which makes people want to watch him and your work.

[ryoko]

I'm wondering if some of the visibility has been lost because of all the spam comics that are advertising game hacks keep popping up. I report at least 1-2 of them every other day when I'm scrolling through the fresh/free-to-read section on the desktop/mobile version. Maybe Tapas had to change something in the site's code to try and counter these fake comics to prevent them from popping up on the app. And then this counter measure has inadvertently caused series with under a certain number of subs to also not appear on the app?

[Rhonder]

Preventing spam is the likely cause for the app sub threshold, but it still raises the following questions for me:

• I wonder why they're only hidden from the app's fresh section and not the websites? Logically if new series were hidden on both they would have practically no way to gain traction but it's still curious.

• I wonder why it is that a larger platform like Webtoons can afford to not have such a restriction in place then? That may very well just come down to them having more staff to catch problematic content, or maybe more users who consistently report it (thus making it easier to find)?

Either way wish it wasn't in place so newbies had a little better shot at finding their audience I was lucky and managed to pass the threshold with both of my series relatively quickly via forum networking (the first time) and having a previous readership/other social media networking (this time), but Tapas is small enough a platform that getting over 15 can be hard without outside marketing if you're also not getting your chances on Fresh Obviously a lot of creators know that outside marketing and networking is a good idea anyways (hence all of the promotion threads, per this thread's topic), but as this threshold isn't detailed anywhere on the website I would imagine a lot of creators are left scratching their heads as to why it's so hard to grow beyond like 5 or 10 subs lol

[skicoak]

While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forums.

For my part, the wide majority of the animosity I partook in, or witnessed, was because of the outdated advice that was repeatedly being offered my first few years here. It didn't reflect any of the changing situations at Tapas at the time...or now.

Being told, over and over, that being active on the forums, doing jam comics, and such was the key to success was no longer working then and it isn't working now. Even the shrinking front page space we're fighting for now isn't as effective as it was a few years ago. These are modern problems for small level creators...and we're not finding modern solutions.

[DiegoPalacios]

I think this happens because these creators shared what worked for them, which may not always be viable because of the changes in the industry. Some of these creators that reached the top "the old way", may not know the new way, or that the way changed at all......

[skicoak]

I think this happens because these creators shared what worked for them, which may not always be viable because of the changes in the industry. Some of these creators that reached the top "the old way", may not know the new way, or that the way changed at all......

Which was the basis of most of the strife. An insistence that what worked for them should still work for everyone just wasn't practical.

And remember there was also a tangent of folks that didn't believe being promoted on the front page regularly was a factor in their sub-counts.

It didn't matter how often it was articulated that the commentary wasn't on the quality or effort of those creators that reached those levels...it was about the changing system/environment.

Just saying.

[carloswebcomic]

It should be said that a lot of premium series are made by creators who used to be regular old working-for-free members. While I can't directly speak for them, I imagine it's threads like these that put them in an awkward place and make them less inclined to interact on these forums.

But in the end, it is Tapas that created this situation by removing the one visibility opportunity for smaller comics.

I don't think that people are blaming the premium comics. People are just looking for a chance to get their work out there snd Tapas has been making this harder and harder.

[joannekwan]

But in the end, it is Tapas that created this situation by removing the one visibility opportunity for smaller comics.

I don't think it's that simple though. Even if premium series (the imports and home-grown ones) were separated into their own home page, the community comics would still be populated with algorithmically picked popular and trending titles, ones that often stay perpetually so because the audience votes with their views and interactions. These series are most likely popular elsewhere and bring those numbers in to propel them to the top of Tapas' charts. And staff-picked community creations would still have to meet certain standards, good grammar, art, legibility, episode minimum, nothing outstandingly graphic, etc. People would still be asking for more categories to add, which due to Tapas' staff size would require an immense undertaking.

I talked about this a bit more a year ago (before I became a mod) in this thread when Tapas had their site redesign. Some things have changed certainly, as the context of my old post was a little different, but many things still apply.

So it's a matter of contention seen time and time again brought up on the forums, particularly whenever Tapas rolls around a new update. As a creator that's been using Tapas/Tapastic since 2015, I've seen a LOT of changes. Though I will admit I wasn't around from its wee years when it was just starting, I've still experienced very much of its growth from the launch of its app, to starting the novels section, to acquiring international titles and offering premium content, to the support progra…

[carloswebcomic]

I don't think it's that simple though. Even if premium series (the imports and home-grown ones) were separated into their own home page, the community comics would still be populated with algorithmically picked popular and trending titles, ones that often stay perpetually so because the audience votes with their views and interactions. These series are most likely popular elsewhere and bring those numbers in to propel them to the top of Tapas' charts. And staff-picked community creations would still have to meet certain standards, good grammar, art, legibility, episode minimum, nothing outstandingly graphic, etc. People would still be asking for more categories to add, which due to Tapas' staff size would require an immense undertaking.

Well, I think thst issue here is not one of staff picks and features.

Remember how newly updated pages would show at the bottom of the front page?
That was enough to get eyes on comics.

People could pick up readers on its own merits, not at the whim of an algorythm or if they caught the attention of staff.

It didn't take much real estate and it's not rocket science to implement. It's a simple "These are the latest updated comics".

But that's gone.
Why is that? Why did Tapas remove the one reliable method of visibility?
Was it really that much work to implement amd maintain?

At best, it seems like a strange oversight. At worst, it just feels mean spirited.

That feature has a massive impact. For many, It truly means the difference between building an audience and total obscurity.

[joannekwan]

The little Fresh section on the homepage, as far as I know, was part of a rotating collection of categories like staff picks and community comics. I don't know if staff plans on putting it back in or are holding off because of the prevalence of spam comics and are working to better weed those out. But every so often the homepage does change and categories are switched up in display and placement. Tapas tracks the numbers and, I would assume, tune future layouts accordingly.