What's a average conversion/retention rate from views to subs?

[CyberAxl]

So I just started posting my comic and I'm trying to see what a typical conversion/retention rate from views to subscribers looks like? I've been scrolling through all different genres but it seems to vary a bit.

I just released my second comic and I'm at 90 subs and 868 views. Nothing crazy at all but the conversion is still around 10% which is probably high considering the small sample size.

I guess it's just weird to think almost 1000 people have viewed my comic and only 90 wanted to stick around

That being said I also understand that people re-read and not everyone has an account to subscribe.

I like and respond to all my comments and try to engage and even feature comments from the previous episode at the end to encourage people to give feedback. If you have any tips or suggestions i'd love to here it!

Also here is a shameless plug to my comic:

Cyber Souls

[Inspector_Spinda]

impossible to know unless they release stats one day. but there's such a big skill gap between people, I don't think a mathematical average would be very helpful for anyone

i can say i have 246 subs and 30.5k views on tapas. on webtoons i have 31 subs and 2.2k views

[Kaydreamer]

I have 1.9k views on WEBTOON, and 106 subs. So, about half the retention rate you have.

That said, I was posting it in comic page format until a few days ago, which would have put mobile readers off. Plus, I also advertise each new page on Reddit, which means a trickle of new people coming to have a look, but not necessarily subscribing.

It is a bit demoralising, realising so many people have looked/read your work but not felt compelled to subscribe! But not every story is to everyone's taste, and there's a multitude of perfectly understandable reasons why a person might not be into the story you're telling, which don't reflect at all on the quality of your work.

Your comic is awesome, by the way! I subbed to it when I stumbled across it a couple of weeks ago. I'm a total sucker for the combination of a high-tech setting with magic. My own setting is like that, too.

[Rhonder]

I haven't done any research to see if my numbers are typical, but my first series had ~1% subs to views on tapas, and ~1.5% on webtoons. Despite the numbers on either site being different the % is similar though, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's about right. My series ran for a little over a year, for reference.

I found that especially if you do a fair amount of off-site promotion, you'll often have folks without accounts checking our your work as you mentioned. it's impossible to account for how many views those account for, but over the year-long run of my comic I would have folks at gatherings and parties who saw me talking about my comic on facebook, for example, and were more or less keeping up with it but who had no interest in reading other tapas or webtoons comics and thus no account. Happend some 4 or 5 times, I was always shocked (especially since these people wouldn't interact with the facebook posts either I might have had an idea that they were reading if they left a like or something lmao)

[CyberAxl]

Thank you! I subbed to Blue Star Rebellion a little bit ago, I also am a sucker for futuristic settings!

I do think the switch to a more 'vertical scroll' format will help a lot. It's something I debated a ton and was initially against, but I think it overall helped me.

I also don't have much content right now and it will be a while before I do since I update bi-weekly. I've heard people get turned off or won't invest if they can't binge a good amount first to get hooked.

[CyberAxl]

True, webtoon sucks at analytic data and the algorithm is always a mystery like most sites.

[CyberAxl]

That's a good point to make as well! I do a lot of cross-site promoting.
When I think about when I was a kid, I never subscribed to web series or made an account, I would just randomly check it through google.

[Inspector_Spinda]

also since you have two pages posted, if someone read them both it counts as two views i think. so you actually got about 400 or so viewers. plus there are those people who might have viewed the same page twice since your pages are rather long. if they refresh their browser it counts as another view. views might end up being inflated a lot because of this

[CyberAxl]

Ah good point, didn't think about that. It's actually more encouraging! I'm surprised you said I had longer pages because I was afraid the pages were too short for an action comic.

[ApplesOverIndia]

Yeah, I would look at views for the first episode. We don't have a unique viewer stat, so I think that's as close as we can really get, even if it is still a bit inflated. Going by that standard, I have 81 views on the first episode and 15 subscribers for my novel (not to say those 15 actively read new updates). I think my overall views are slightly over 200.

[Kaydreamer]

Whoo, mutuals!

I've heard people get turned off or won't invest if they can't binge a good amount first to get hooked.

Yeah, I'm holding off running an actual advertising campaign for a few more weeks for that reason - at least until I have a larger cast than just 'scruffy courier'. I think once the action starts, and especially once the first true plot hook is in place, people will be way more willing to invest their time and faith into it.

[CyberAxl]

Whoo!

But yeah I'm waiting till my second chapter starts to advertise (2 updates). It will at least give the story a bit more life and 3 updates is when webtoon starts asking people if you want to subscribe.

[rajillustration]

I feel like it's super normal to have a low rate because people just don't know what they'll get into until they make that first click. We can do what we can with the thumbnail, the cover, and the blurb--but it's always a tossup when you click a comic.