I regularly check out on how well my manga Blood Stained Snow performs in its category. Today I saw that it's on page 5 of 72 of all action comics sorted by subscription numbers.
I was astonished since I don't have a really high sub count. So I invested more time to see how others perform in other categories. In the end I had so many numbers I put them together in this diagram ^^
- The blue bars are the approximated number of comics in each category (I looked up the page count and then multiplied it by 30; all in all we have around 30500 comics on tapas! )
- The red line is the sub count for the comic with the most subscribers in its category (the avatar of this comic is at the bottom)
My interpretation:
Comics like Gamer Cat, Silent Horror or Sarah's Scribbles perform really well because it's easy to share, relateable and evokes emotions with only one episode (humour or horror). Or in three words: short time entertainment.
Long form stories have a harder time. And no wonder: the reader has to invest time and attention to the story. Things that are precious these days in the internet. The best performing long form comics are in drama, romance and sci-fi (I was surprised that only so few actually do romance comics. I thought there would be more). Maybe romance and drama are so popular because most of the readers on tapas are women? (BL and romance implicates that) The sci-fi thing could be due to Yuumei's popularity (who doesn't know her : D ) ... all just assumptions
Even though people here enjoy creating action and fantasy, their sub-counts are the lowest with mystery. To be honest I didn't recognize the avatars of the action and mystery comic (shame on me ).
In my opinion those are also the most difficult to create (including sci-fi): you need patience to build up the story and excellent skills in writing and drawing (if you can't see what happens in an action scene, people won't like to read your comic; you need to draw amazing backgrounds for sci-fi comics) and I think a lot of them cancel their projects because of those hurdles and end up in the "low-sub-zone"
My conclusion:
My thoughts about short time entertainment and long form stories are supported by these numbers. I shared this graph with you because I think other creators should know this too: Don't get disencouraged because your comic doesn't play as well as the top popular comics you find on the start page. We have over 30000 comics on tapastic. That are SO MANY comics. Now imagine the reader choosing a comic to read next with such a repertory.
If you do long form stories: your path is harder because you mostly don't hook readers immediately. Keep going! We all struggle to reach our audience, even the "big guys"
In the end enjoy what you're creating. We are here to share our love and we are A LOT of people. Don't let that disencourage you : )