What would be your ideal in a webcomic hosting website?

akitsukino 2021-08-19 21:09:17 UTC #1

Do you guys hear that Webtoon is pairing up with DC comics?

https://twitter.com/webtoonofficial/status/1427616953569484808

There are a lot of people who seem both excited and upset about this, many saying that it’s a large corporation muscling in on a space many indie artists use.

Inkblazers died, Smackjeeves died, and both times it happened it left people discussing what it takes for a webcomic hosting site to survive.

I personally wonder if it would ever be possible for webcomics to work similar to how graphics novels, where people get advances and then get to work in silence for a while until a considerable amount of work is done. But I know a lot of people are less interested in that then they are in a good community and visibility.

So what would an ideal webcomics hosting site be for you? Would it have good payment/tipping options? Good forums and community? Easier ways to get seen? Salaries? A good looking interface? Let me know below!

Kaydreamer 2021-08-19 22:00:32 UTC #2

This is already how it works for many Webtoon Originals. Some creators manage to achieve the 50+ panels a week quickly enough that they can maintain a release cycle in perpetuity - but it's becoming more common to see titles release for three months, pause while the creator finishes the next season, and then start releasing again once that's finished.

For me, the ideal would be:

Webtoon-sized audience.
Some of the creator-friendly features Tapas has, like a proper notification box for comments, and being able to individual comments.
An Originals library diverse in genres and target audiences. (Webtoon is actually pretty good for this. Tapas is hilariously bad.)
Good monetisation options, including generous ad revenue, webtoon-style creator rewards, Patreon/Ko-fi integration, and tipping.
Good creator community. Tapas has these forums, Webtoon Canvas now has its Discord. They're both great.
Streamlined interface. Tapas website is horrible, Webtoon is better but too bare-bones.
Good, curated promotional spaces for quality comics to be seen at each stage of their growth; small, mid-tier, and big. If you're producing excellent work, and you're tagging Webtoon/Tapas on social media, you're very likely to find yourself promoted eventually.

mcarrowolga 2021-08-20 05:17:20 UTC #3

I like freedom. ComicFury is the closest I know to my idea of a perfect webcomic hosting.
It allows you to customize your layout as you like (sites like Tapas and Webtoon only allow faceless standardized pages), add whatever extra pages you want (fanart, games, short stories, blogs, etc.), add your own ads (I use ComicAd), and shows every update on the main page instead of reserving it for premiums only.
Surely, ComicFury is underrated.

Llyrel 2021-08-20 07:31:52 UTC #4

^ Agreed, ComicFury for the win! Free hosting, no ads, no push for the vertical format (but you can still use it if you want to), website customization, no paywalls on comics, equal chances for all creators to be seen, possibility to add Patreon/Ko-Fi links and monetize your site with ComicAd if you want to, blog pages, an active community, comments, properly working notifications... it has basically everything I always wanted from a webcomic platform and never dared to ask

sushy00 2021-08-20 13:23:41 UTC #5

More monetization options and something that doesn't always promote what is popular already.

Iris-Grimoire 2021-08-20 20:00:11 UTC #6

The weird thing is that it does have opt-in ads, but I'm not sure I've ever seen Kyo use that option?

But yes, extra support on ComicFury if it had a teensy bit more engagement. I love customization, proeminent forums, decent discoverability, and just a really big focus on being indie.

Llyrel 2021-08-20 21:47:44 UTC #7

Yeah, from what I could understand opt-in ads aren't working as of now, although there was some talk about possibly adding a banner exchange of some sort? °° Although I'm not sure when/if that's going to happen and how it's going to work exactly.

But yep, so much love for CF

DNoble 2021-08-20 22:49:19 UTC #8

I've been around for a while, and to be perfectly honest, I miss the early 2000s Webcomic energy. It was way more action/sci-fi/fantasy focused, and while Webtoons/Tapas has done wonders to open up a breadth of genres (even if the pendulum has possibly swung a little too far in the opposite direction lately, with Romance and Drama being as oversaturated as fantasy/sci-fi action was 15 years ago, but that's neither here nor there), it's also lost a lot of the charm and appeal that the older independently-hosted sites had.

Used to be, each comic creator would get their own domain, usually set up with a Livejournal or Wordpress template that they could customize (I suppose nowadays it would be Squarespace), and there were larger networks you could connect to individually; large forums for webcomics in general, interconnected ad campaigns, and the top100webcomicsboard. You had large directories and community features that ran independently of the individual creator's website, so everyone got to customize, categorize, and archive things as they liked best. Most sites were individual page format instead of the long-scroll manhwa style we see nowadays, but you could update in whatever resolution and aspect ratio you wanted, as many pages per update as you liked, as many updates per week as you liked, it was sort of wild-west where everyone got to build everything from scratch, while still having a sense of community and connection.
Back when I was a wee lad, my brother and I had our own little aggregated mini-library of specific comics we followed, organized in a bookmarks folder on our family's computer, and we went to each one every few weeks to check out the new updates, re-read the archives, participate on the forums, and see if anything new caught our eye: you could sign up with a large network to place ads for your comic on other creator's websites in exchange for hosting said ads for their comics on yours (along with a few regular ads to actually make the advertising firm some money off of this), so if you were reading a fantasy webcomic, you were likely to get recommended other fantasy webcomics that were hosted on this service, and merely checking them out helped the creator to earn money off of it.

Obviously this whole idea is pretty untenable nowadays, what with Social Media being so much more omnipresent and Google essentially owning the entirety of the online advertising market, but damn do I miss those days back when it was an untamed wilderness out here in the world of 'art on the internet'. Any aspect of the above being integrated would be a kick of nostalgia for me at the very least.