When you do sub for sub do they read your comics?

[R.n.P]

I always wonder about it, especially now I'm in my exam period I'm thinking of doing it so I won't have to think too much about advertisements

[ItzaMeLuigi]

Sub for sub almost never works and is a pretty bad way to advertise since you're not getting active engagement. You might be able to get people to click on your comic and inflate your subscriber count, but that doesn't really matter if their not engaged with the work itself. Think about it this way, would you be constantly keep up with every comic you subscribe to during a sub for sub? If 30 people do it, would you go out of your way to even care about properly checking out their comic?

That's why read for read or (more preferably) review for review is a lot better. Having someone sit down, go through your work and actually give feedback is invaluable. If they like the work, congrats you've gotten yourself an active subscriber. If they don't, congrats you've gotten yourself some constructive feedback.

I understand the desire to want to increase your numbers, but the more important way to look at it is how your numbers are increasing and what that number actually represents. I would take 50 active subscribers over 1000 inactive ones any day.

[R.n.P]

I've had that exact thought about my sub count being meaningless if no one is reading it, maybe I'll do the read for read whenever I'm free or have nothing to read
But man its tough, going the hard way to get a viewership is really long

[milejdyvan]

As long as your main source of engagement isn't sub for sub, I don't see an issue with it. I do sub for sub with my fellow creators if I want to support them but don't have much time (which is very often these days), but I still get engagement from normal readers and some creators. As long as you balance it correctly, it can work, but yeah, never depend on it. Simple subs won't do anything for you.

[MeltingCORE]

Sub for sub almost never works unless you're literally friends with the other creator lol. I personally like to show my support through subs but I never expect one back nor would I bother someone like "sub4sub ?"

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

Nope. Very rarely does this lead anywhere productive because people on sub for sub threads are more concerned about getting subs than supporting fellow creators. Sadly participating in those threads is just shooting yourself in the foot. Inactive subs hurt your numbers. It’s better to advertise in general promotions threads or ones specific to your genre or niche. Generally no publicity is bad publicity, but this seems to be the one instance where this isn’t true. People just aren’t going to read your series and provide regular weekly likes and views unless they genuinely enjoy it. Myself included. Expecting them to be a dedicated reader just because you do the same for them isn’t realistic.

Sorry if this comes across as too blunt or pessimistic, but from my own personal experience this is 100% the case. I’ve made great connections with fellow creators on here and regularly read a lot of their works, on top of that the feeling seems to be mutual. None of these relationships have been formed through sub for sub threads though.

[mcarrowolga]

Rarely.
But the point of sub-for-sub is not getting those people to read your books but raising the number of subscribers because:
1) if you have too few subscribers, people don't take you seriously and just skip your story when they see it
2) 100 and 250 subscribers milestones open ads and donations

If someone from sub-for-sub threads actually reads my stories, though, that's super cool

[Tanako]

I wanna know the answer to this too LOL I see so many sub for sub I wonder if these people know that half of those subs are dead subs if not almost all. Just saying.

[domisotto]

For me, it’s simply the way to see what’s out there. I follow and read some stories that came from r4r. I have long reading lists, and I give preference to the authors I have met. If the story has no spark or is not my cup of tea, I won’t read it & will unsub. It’s hard to launch the story w/o sub4sub, but if most subs come from sub4sub, and you have updated regularly, it’s pretty obvious that the story has flopped & is only worth continuing if it is personally significant.