I want to spread my comic around a bit, but it seems like progress has kinda slowed. I can't pay for online adverting and I don't want to go from wall to wall of profiles asking/begging for subscribing, because it reeks of desperation and I wouldn't want for it to happen to me. So whats a good way of getting out there without online spending and looking like a total looser?
Nov '14
Mar '15
I think in a way you do need to spam some, in order to self-promote, especially on sites where that's ok. (social media sites, reddit, project wonderful, friends, family)
However, I think the best way to do that is to become apart of the online community. Become active on the site, comment and follow other people's works, offer up tricks, tips, and supportive encouragements, help share/like/comment and promote other people's comic, and participate in online activities/events. People will start to see you all over the site and start to wonder who you are and what your comic is about. This method sometimes doesn't feel like self-promotion, especially since most of the time you're not talking about your comic, but it's the most genuinely positive method I can think of.
As for advertising, you can get free advertising through sites like Project Wonderdul (I linked to a forum about it below). Also if you create a facebook page or a business twitter account most of the time they'll send you $50 free advertising coupons which are good for a few days. There's a lot of options for advertising.
Off the top of my head, here are some threads where this question has been answer plus, added tricks and tips:
Here's some methods that have worked for me in self-promoting:
Posting on ALL my social sites when a new episode is up on Tapastic (facebook, twitter, tumblr, stumbleupon, reddit, etc.). I give a link to the episode, hashtag the post including a Tapastic tag, and I ask everyone to help me by resharing my post or like/share/commenting on the new Tapastic episode.
Project Wonderful ads. Projectwonderful.com is a free ad site where you can create various sized banners, tell the site where you want the banners to link to, and bid (a lot of them are free) on different sites for your ad to appear. I've done this for my Tapastic site, and it's helped some. (this is how this thread started wink )
"Thank you for Subscribing" posts. These are great! They give you an opportunity to tell your reader how much you appreciate them for following, as well as spark a new friendship with your readers. Also, there are some people that find unknown comics by lurking through other people's profile pages and looking at the thank you posts. (I do this) When I finally got on this band wagon I was able to better connect with readers and my subs jumped 20 new subs in a day.
If you don't have a very big following on social media sites, like me, and worry that posting to your own profiles isn't doing much, don't worrying. Most social media sites have groups or communities you can join to help promote on too. Facebook has groups, Twitter has lists you can be apart of, Google+ has communities, Deviantart has LOTS of groups you can submit art to their galleries.
Get involved in Tapastic activities, contest, and events when they happen.
Use the forums to help promote.
This comic series here, Art of Impact21, sums it up perfectly for promoting with charm and being genuine.
Hope this helps answer your question. Good luck and be prepared to put a lot of time and energy into to promoting yourself. 
I am totally against self promotion, I think it always comes across as desperate and needy. If an artist is talented and the comic is well written there is no need to self promote it will succeed on its own. Well theres my two cents. Oh by the way you should totally check out my comic it's called Yesterdays Popcorn13 I write and illustrate it and it's just sooooo good.
As far as I've gathered trying to do webcomics for uhhhhhh jesus how old am I.... 11-24, devide the twos by PI...... uuuhh..
....13 years!
okay so as far as I've gathered from trying to do webcomics for 13 years now, all that really matters is the quality of your content, if you spam and you've got a solid product people just kind of forget you spammed them in the first place and just go "this comic is neato and the person that made it is my new god" "better get started on my altar of fanart"
So my point is, just promote yourself with complete shamelessness and hope you have a quality product so people can look past the fact that you are a complete whore.
I haven't really found that to be the case. When I talk with my artist meetup group, they always say you need to hustle as well as have talent. I just want to do good work and not worry too much about it :/ - I get so little feedback, I don't even get trolls. What's up with that?! Additionally, my poorer quality comic series gets more attention than my best comic series 
Christmas Truce: http://tapastic.com/episode/1055783
vs.
Journal comic:
http://tapastic.com/episode/933766
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!
We post on social media and are part of groups.
Our #1 best way is advertising. As mentioned, Project Wonderful, can suit any budget. You can spend as much or little as you want.
I know people also use Ink Outbreak, Comic Rocket, Top Web Comics, Just the First Page, and sites like that to help get the word out as well.
Online community and keeping active is your best bet. From what I've gathered, about 80% of my subscribers have told me they found my comic through other reader's lists. Your comic bounces up to the top of a readers list when your comic updates, thus when a reader/creator jumps on another person's wall they'll browse through the first page or so of that persons reading list and find your comic.
You'll have to manually go around and talk to people around the site. Don't start off the conversation saying "Look at my comic", that can be rather annoying. Just start it off with something else.
What I usually do is just ask if the person wants to chat, and I get to learn more about them, see what comics they make, and even get a friendship started (networking!). 
6 times out of 10 they'll click on your avatar and jump to your page to get to know who you are and see you make a comic that way.
If the opportunity to talk about your comic pops up in conversation then do so. Often times when I talk to some of my subscribers they don't realize I run 3 different webcomics instead of just 1, so I'm able to nudge them in checking out the other 2.
Also, become an active reader and commenter. People will notice this (hey, I saw you like 2 minutes ago on another comic! Who are you? clicks on avatar). Users like Hobbes, Bo, Chuckles, Code, The Big Bear, Amet, Whomever, and Abs to name a few I'd say are very much acknowledged by the community despite some of them not running a comic series simply because of their participation .
It's all rather time consuming, but it's the only brute force method I can recommend unless you get the lucky wave of readers mystically flooded into your comic. Besides through this method you get to really interact with the community and even get some close buds out of it which is rewarding in itself
lol, I feel the same way sometimes. I run 3 comic series, Hacheeachkee is my main series but it only has half of my newer side series Death Prince.
I also noticed this especially with Harrodeleted's comics: Demon's mirror only has 160 subscribers, while A Better Place (which got featured in New & Noteworthy) got a whopping 1000 subscribers. Yet I find Demon's Mirror to be so much better, and it's in color too! How the heck does that other 820 subscribers not notice Demon's Mirror?
Honestly I think Tapastic needs to do a better job at promoting the fact that a creator has another comic to help funnel these already potential readers into their other comics. The thumbnails in the bottom right corner are far too minuscule and few people tend not to look on creator's walls to find that they run other series unless it's to post a "thank you for subscribing" jpg, or to comment on their awesome avatar.
I know @noxfox has voiced a need for larger thumbnails to help conduct this flow of readers on past forum posts.
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