What To Do When Things Feel Stagnant?

[crosswarrior7]

So, I posted my first story on Tapas October 3rd. I posted my second one on Tapas on Monday.

First story got, like, 25 subscribers in two weeks.

I've gotten maybe 3 in the last week.

The second one got maybe five.

Is that considered doing well on Tapas? And what does one do when things start to feel stagnant? I post every M/W/F. How do I know if maybe my stories just aren't overly meant for Tapas and when it's just a slow period? I dunno xD I will admit, my self esteem is just kinda whack right now and I may be over worrying.

[ninjashira]

I think 25 subscribers in two weeks is excellent, actually. The thing with Tapas is that initial growth is very slow. The first couple hundred subs may take months to come, if they come at all. After that, once you get into the popular visible area of Tapas, and you keep updating regularly, more subs will start coming in. But it can take months or years to get any significant number of subscribers.

You need to ask yourself, are you writing these stories because you want to write them, and you're going to continue to write them whether they're popular or not, just because you need to get the story out? Or are you writing this story exclusively to get subscribers and popularity? I think figuring out your own motivations, and adjusting your expectations accordingly, might help out.

If you're writing your story for yourself, just because you want to tell the story, then it doesn't matter how many people subscribe to it - every chapter you put out, your are accomplishing what you set out to do!

[Legendofgenii]

25 in two weeks is great!

I usually only get new subs when I update. I updated yesterday (tend to do Thursday mornings) and I got 6 new subscribers.

[crosswarrior7]

@ninjashira Honestly, I'm more just trying to learn what is the "norm" for Tapas. I came from Wattpad, so I'm more used to how it works. I'm just, like, figuring out how this place works, what is stagnant, when I'm not exactly doing something right, etc. Also, like, I want to make my place here on Tapas, but that doesn't alleviate the worry maybe my stories don't work as well on here as they may Wattpad >.<

@Legendofgenii How long has your story been around? Like I said, I'm updating every M/W/F, and haven't really seen an influx with updates.

[Rhonder]

A few thoughts:

• I wouldn't start worrying in full until at least a couple of months in tbh. A few weeks is just too short a span of time to draw well-informed conclusions, even if you are updating multiple days per week. Discoverability especially when you're pretty new can be rough tbh- you're really counting on getting those first several views through getting your story in front of the right eyeballs in fresh basically, and while uploading often helps with that... sometimes your audience might just not be checking week 1 or 2 in October... maybe they'll be around in November, y'know? You can start to get a better feel for how your stats are actually averaging after having a few months of data though. If your series is consistently underperforming your expectations over like 3+ months then it may be wise to step back, evaluate, and see what to alter (be it upload day/time, or whatever else).

• Re: agree that 25 subs in a few weeks is a good start for a first project especially! (at least in comics, novels are probably different... but I can't speak to that sadly ). The 2nd story that's not catching on as fast could be for any number of reasons... but basically see the above point lol. In 1 week you'll have even less solid data to draw conclusions from than 2 weeks... give it a few months and see what happens.

• One thing you may start to see as you release more and more individual stories over time too is that some of your readership will follow you to the new project and so that one will start stronger. users get a notification when the author of a series they're subscribed to releases a new series so that's a particularly handy marketing tool lol.

I know you may be thinking "then what gives, why isn't my 2nd story doing better than the first one??" Well... again, point number 1 above, but also who knows, maybe your readers haven't checked the new project, or it's not their thing this time, or whatever. But even if you have 25 subs on one story and 5 or whatever on the 2nd... then when you go to do story 3 that still means 30 people will get a notif about the newest one and that's still to your advantage! Even if that one winds up with 10 new people... then story 40 will have 40 notifs, and so on.

The creator grind is a slow one but consistent effort over time will more than likely pay off

[crosswarrior7]

Thank you so much for all your points! Maybe the first week just really threw me off and I got way luckier than I know xD I just found the sudden drop off really weird and maybe worried to quickly

[domisotto]

I find that posting daily works better. Well, I skip Sundays...