What website(s) besides tapastic do you use to post comics?

[vocaloidno1fan]

I had a friend ask me a really good question: "What sites, besides tapastic, are good for posting comics?"
I told them "Besides tapastic, the only ones i can think of off the top of my head were deviantart and tumblr"
Im sure there are more but i cant think of them right now.
Anyone got any other sites they know of that are good for posting/promoting comics?

[Aloredd]

I know there's another site called smackjeeves that does webcomics, but I don't use it so I'm not sure how friendly it is to the creators. The reader's interface is pretty good imo, but I only follow one comic there so don't take my word for anything relating to the site

[UzukiCheverie]

I've stopped posting art on deviantart simply because the community just . . . sucks. Plus the staff is awful. Most of the art on the front page these days is fetish bloat art and other softcore-porn stuff that hasn't been marked NSFW, when it really SHOULD be, and none of the staff members are taking strides to stop it when it's clearly a problem and so many people have been complaining about it.

The same artists are showcased and loved every day, and with such a large userbase, it's very difficult to actually get your foot in the water let alone get your feet wet (unless you're one of the artists that caters to DA's community, in which case, all you draw are adoptables, crappy teenager-quality sonic art, bloating fetish art, and high-quality pics of your ass in lingerie u o u).

Tumblr's alright as long as you know how to properly use it and don't sell yourself out to the "I'll follow you if you follow me!" trend. I think the only artists I actually follow on there are Min, Sarah Anderson, and Rickard Jonasson. It's also really easy to get caught up in the drama and bullshit that is everywhere else on Tumblr if you're not careful But it can be a good place to host your stuff, so long as you don't associate with the wrong crowd and know how to take full advantage of the filter system, and are willing to update often.

I used SmackJeeves shortly before coming here, but was just never satisfied with it. It's got a very . . . how do I put it . . . juvenile set-up to it? As in the actual website's layout and design doesn't really make your comic look too good in hindsight. Plus it's a lot of BL and yaoi comics, 'cause that's just the audience they happen to cater to, so if they're not your thing, you might have a harder time making an influence on readers. Also, some functions on the website require payment to use if you want to use them, vs. Tapastic which will actually pay YOU just to draw and there's nothing locked off (except for supporter-locked content, which is reasonable because it goes to the creator anyway).

I haven't used any other comic website since finding Tapastic, but before then I used DA, SmackJeeves, Tumblr, and my own website. When I found Tapastic, I slowly started to just stop updating on other sites, starting with Tumblr (never was really active with it anyway), then SJ, which wasn't bringing me in any readers or views at all in comparison to Tapastic when I joined, then eventually shut my own website down cause it was costing me more money to own than it was actually making me, and then eventually, DA, when I realized that the community and atmosphere didn't have anywhere to go but down.

Tapastic is my favorite place to be and I hope it stays that way for a long time

[ErithEl]

I'm currently posting on Smackjeeves as well, but will probably pull the plug soon because it's not really worth it.
To be honest, the only comics that seem to do especially well on SJ are BL comics. Not a bad thing because there are some really good stories there, but not good for you if your comic is not BL haha!

I think Tapastic has the best options for exposure – and definitely the best community of creators because as far as I've seen and experienced, they are all supportive and even willing to promote other creator's work!

[vocaloidno1fan]

yeah thats for sure! especially when it comes to upcoming/new comics! and the concept behind the support program is amazing! im honestly glad a friend of mine told me about tapastic :3

[GFalconDX]

Before I started posting on Tapastic, I've been posting my comic on Deviantart and Tumblr. Right now, I think Tapastic is the go-to for webcomics from the top of my head. Deviantart has become a place for nothing but furries, weird stuff and other things. And Tumblr, well, I'm not sure if anyone is reading my comic on there.

[jecie]

---

I tried tapastic a while back when it was new.

Didn't really get much exposure then.

But I'm back to try again

[infectedbloodcomics]

I have my own website and I paid a couple of ads on both Facebook and Twitter. Good results, but not sure is it helps retaining readers. We'll see once the ads expire.

Besides Tapastic, I am on Smack Jeeves, The Duck and Comic Fury. I recommend Comic Fury, as it's a very nice community, but I'm not sure about either SJ or The Duck. It's either juvenile stuff (SJ) or stats not working and a vague sense of abandonment (The Duck). Still, you never know. I think I'll pull off the plug on SJ as soon as my paid subscription expires next year. It's a bit of a ripoff, really.

[jecie]

I still have some comics on the duck, but the community is not how it used to be. Still have some good friends I keep in contact with and talk to them on Facebook.

[maelstrom51210]

Smackejeeves was the first comic community I joined after it was announced that Inkblazer's was shutting down. To be honest, I like the way the actual comics are formatted there a bit better. But the main problem I have there is that it's such a big, old website; it's easy for an individual comic to get swept up, especially if you only post once a month like me. Joining Tapastic as well was probably one of best decisions I've made regarding my comic.

I have a Deviantart, but I don't post comic pages there. It's not like a webcomic site where all your pages are lumped together in order, so a reader has to search through the person's gallery to find all the pages in order. That, or the author/artist/comicker has to link all the pages together, and that can be time consuming :/

[vocaloidno1fan]

unless they use DA for only the comic or what not but yeah tapastic seems to win lol

[heterodont]

dA isn't set up for comics and as such it's even more of a pain to set it up. It's honestly only better to build your audience with regular art and then direct them to your comic if there are some curious souls looking to learn more about your characters.

I also use smackjeeves but if I had to rank SJ and Tapastic, Tapastic would be #1. I only use smackjeeves because I like the idea of a customize able website just for your comic w/o having to pay for server hosting and if tapastic had the same function - I'd prob drop updating on smackjeeves and migrate entirely to tapastic HAHA.

[vocaloidno1fan]

maybe that should be mentioned to the tapastic staff :/ if there is a way to :/

[Zanreo]

I also post at Comicfury, which is really my "main" site and what I upload to first. And I love it! Great webcomic system with lots of options and a nice and easy way to customize layouts and stuff, and also a great community. Never tried Smackjeeves or any other comic site that's not CF or Tapastic so I can't say anything about that, but from what I know I'm not sure there would be much of a point in uploading there.

I used to post to Tumblr (and I actually started it at Tumblr before I made a CF account) but I stopped posting because of the image resizing. My choices were to either get the picture resized and too small to read, OR save every single panel as its own image and upload those after each other. Tried the last one for a while but it was just too much of a pain to do for every comic... That's really the main reason I stopped posting. Still post my non-comic strip character art to tumblr, but on my main blog instead of the one I made for my comic. Never got a lot of notes anyway.

I also post to Deviantart, don't get a lot of exposure there (it doesn't seem that good for comics in general) but I got a few readers there so I guess I keep doing it for them mostly? And because I upload most of my art there anyway, I like the "online personal art gallery" feeling

[keii4ii]

The nice thing about dA is that because the site is such an awkward place to post/read comics, people who like your comic are rather willing to follow you to whatever other site you want them to go: Tapastic, your own site, etc. ;D

@heterodont @vocaloidno1fan I don't think Tapastic should have customizable site layout. There are a lot of people who want that feature, but there are also a lot of people who aren't great at web design, and unfortunately there is an overlap between those two categories. Plus, readers won't have to adjust to different layouts when jumping through their reading list. Reader experience is of critical importance. Keeping the same layout across different comics just makes sense, especially when you get notifications from those comics across the site. And no custom layout = no headache of "this comic's custom layout broke Tapastic."

MAYBE there can be a color customization; for example, instead of the black header and white background, you could pick from multiple premade palette options, or even whatever custom colors you want -- kinda like Twitter. But that's the extent of customization I would be okay with, for this particular site.

[vocaloidno1fan]

thats kind of what i was thinking of. more along the lines of color customization and maybe a 'which part of a series you're automatically taken to when u click on a series'
the prob of it starting at the end gets annoying... i rly think it should b set to 'first unread' or 'last read' (like Simon Sues its a rly good series) not starting at the very end when ur first reading the series

[scythe]

tumblebumblebumberrinos

[heterodont]

@keii4ii Oh no, I wasn't implying that Tapastic should adopt a system of making an ENTIRE customizable website.

I do understand that aspect, even reading comics on smackjeeves can get a little jarring just because of how many themes are offered (not to mention how terribly composed some of those themes are which makes things even worse). Hypothetically speaking, with Tapastic's focus on mobile, customizeable websites are more of a headache for whatever poor programmer/designer that has to come up with themes. I just think it'd be neat to somehow add tabs so there can be little 'extra' pages so to say (though I think that can easily be solved by just uploading character profiles to a separate extra 'series' or the series itself)

I do agree with the color customization! That'd be a neat solution.

[AnnaLandin]

I mirror on Tumblr, but otherwise I post on my main website. I get more readers on Tapastic, but grassbladescomic.com looks neater on my business card than tapastic.com/Grassblades. Also, I haven't gotten any ads for it yet, though I'm thinking about looking into it as soon as I'm less busy (whenever that will be =.=;)

I used to use smackjeeves, but that was years ago, so I don't know what it's like these days. It was decent when I used it, but that might have changed.

Before that, I also used Drunk Duck, which I do NOT recommend to anyone - though I don't even know if it's still around. It had major issues, an entirely terrible design, bad forums, and also tended to implode on a regular basis. The one thing it did teach me was the value of mirroring my work on several websites, in case something goes wrong.

[vocaloidno1fan]

wow i seriously didnt think this would get so much feedback owo"
thanks guys! ^w^