What do you think is more important marketing/advertising your artwork or the artwork itself?

[rajillustration]

This a thousand times. It's a job. These social skills you've listed are part of how jobs work, and are necessary at any job let it be art or no.

I also like that you mentioned that people are looking for prices to fit their budget, because especially in illustration, a lot of artists actually draw simpler so that way they can be the perfect match for clients with smaller budgets and shorter time-frames. Part of having skill is knowing how much technique is even necessary for the job. It's not that they're even hacks at all--they just know exactly what the client needs, which is sometimes design over illustration.

[rajillustration]

Ya you are so right. on how I do think it depends on the type of job for how simple or how hardcore the art needs to be. Like for concept art or for book covers (especially comic covers) you can't get hired if you aren't at a certain level. That's not to say there's no work for people that are still learning though. I got jobs out of college when I was pretty bad at this, and it was through marketing to magazines and small local businesses through word of mouth. There's an art job out there for nearly any level, but it's definately easier to find when you're better.

[skicoak]

I went through this debate a few years back with various creators.

You're not going to find a ton of success on any particular app without a degree of that app marketing you to their wider reader base. And strangely, that reader base is being made up of people who have been brought to the site in totality by all it's creators. Until recently, these apps were very reliant on the creators to market for them above any marketing done by the sites.

Sure, there's a few handful of creators that have a traveling following but those are STILL dependent on that fan base being willing to sign up for these individual hosting apps.

[JRHoch]

It may very well be difficult to get success on one of these external apps--that's a whole other question. My point is that I've seen, recently, several examples of people coming over from them to Webtoon. They mention it in the comments.

[JRHoch]

I've seen the same for fantasy/horror comics too. However, I've yet to figure out how to get a large following on Instagram.

[JRHoch]

I'd love to hear from @vanderteal. They have tens of thousands of followers on Instagram for their horror comic. Now, I know that's grown over time, but their current Instagram account was launched around the same day as the comic on Webtoon. Unless they advertised on Instagram.

[JRHoch]

Are you giving up on semi-porn?

[vanderteal]

hey man thank thank you so much for following my stuff I always see your likes on IG (also it's a one man project at this point​)

As for popularity on IG or any other platform nowadays, well ...I'm gonna be honest, it's all down to luck .

Personally most of the success of the comic was from going viral on imgur at the very beginning (since then all my posts there have been a disaster...), webtoons took notice and put it as a recommended pick, and from there things pretty much snowballed, some anime featuring IG account kept posting it and the followcount grew from there...
You can try to pay a couple of those account for a feature (some are pretty cheap, like 4$ a post), although, it doesn't mean it'll connect with their audiences. The same post (on similar sized accounts) can get 40k likes on one and 3k on the other so once again no way to predict anything, much less who's gonna actively follow your account.

As pessimistic as it sounds unless you have thousands of dollar per month to spend on ads it's almost impossible to increase your visibility in a meaningful way, and even with 50k+ followers in less than 6 months I can't say that my situation has really improved financially or otherwise, just doing my best so that webtoon senpai can notice me and give me one of those sweet sweet contracts​.

My only advice would be that if you're a webcomics artist just post your whole comic on any platform you can find. Behind the scenes, sketches or character art aren't cutting it anymore (unless you're REALLY REALLY good), and the fact that my Instagram account is solely for that purpose makes it stand out a bit, and engagement remains pretty high; around 20% (while ig average is around 2-7%).
So yeah treat IG as your mainhub and you might reap some exposure out of it.

But unfortunately it's a rough world out there for original content creators and we're all at the mercy of algorithms and the people who pick what's gonna work for their platform the best. There are no ways left to game the system...I myself still have no idea how any of it works or how I got where I am, I can only focus on my work, which I already have so many insecurities about, and I probably wouldn't be able to deal with obsessing over numbers if I just kept looking at IG or webtoons stats all the time.

So yeah that's my experience so far...to make it short organic reach is almost dead on all platform unless you get lucky, we're all fucked...

Sorry If I brought very little to the conversation....

I'll try to be diligent and monitor this conversation, so if any of you have questions just go ahead!

cheers​!

[JRHoch]

Hey, thanks for the response and glad you saw lightning strike. You deserve it. I remember being there from the beginning when you had like 10 followers on Webtoon.

@skicoak and I have debated this a bit, but almost everyone I've seen gain a significant following on Webtoon or Tapas has, as you mentioned, had followers find them on a third-party app. You need the influx that comes from that kind of visibility for the algorithms on WT or Tap to kick in and spotlight you in some way. Relying on the Fresh Tab is just a slow grind. And you pretty much need to be working in a manga-based or gag-strip style.

[sketchbooksage]

I'm reminded of something a motivational speaker named Les Brown said, "People buy from those that they like, know and trust". They also buy products/brands that they like, know and trust. Marketing/advertising is introducing producers/products to potential buyers to build a relationship where buyers can get to know product/producer, like product/producer and eventually trust product/producer. Marketing/advertising is building a relationship between producers and consumers. Selling is capitalizing on the marketing/advertising through trading your product or service for money. There is some selling in marketing and some marketing in selling.

To answer your question I think a combination of both marketing and artwork, artwork that can market itself and marketing yourself and what you do.