It really depends imo. Most people here are doing it as a hobby or a passion project. When doing something like that it's not really necessary to cater to a specific target audience. As a hobbyist you also don't have a vast array of market studies available to you to hone in on a demographic.
Target adiences are really helpfull if you operate under a professional setting, where there is money on the line. In the end, much like genre, a target demo is just a marketing tool.
One thing I will say though, since the internet has people of all ages on it, from young kids to ancient adults, it's important to take into account who in what age group might stumble upon your work. Tapas as a platform is designed to be friendly to all ages, so either label your work accordingly or edit it to prevent issues.
I write for anyone who's ever had that epic daydream fantasy novel stuck in their head for years. For the strange folk who don't quite fit in. I wrote Realmwalker for all the bookworm, introverted girls who grew up lonely, and wanted to live a life like those in their favourite books. And for anyone who's ever wanted to know what it's like to have an alien for a roommate
I strongly disagree with many things in your text, @Kevin Reijnders.
1st: I also write as a hobby, however, my first episode posted was already getting ads on the first day, but the most a small writer can achieve is visibility if they come to the forum, as Tapas does not publish small stories; If you advertise externally, someone may even read your story, but they won't register on a site they don't use regularly just for that reason; So, saying that you post here as a hobby doesn't seem to make sense.
2nd: it is not necessary to have a wide range of market studies to know who your target audience is: a person who likes horror, for example, likes horror because of elements present in horror, elements that you will not find in other categories; another example is Shounen Battle, someone who knows what Shonen Battle is is much more likely to click on a story about and follow along than someone who doesn't previously know what it is. If your story has a bit of everything, someone with a personal taste in a theme may even find a little of that in your story, but they will find it in such small quantities that they may not be interested; In fact, by the time the person's interests are met, they will have read so many parts that don't interest them that they may think it's not worth following your work. Oh, and the fact that Tapas is designed to suit all ages doesn't mean that all ages will be interested in my work.
3rd: the works that have the most notoriety here are the BL works, which are quite niche, but they offer exactly what their audience wants. They affect the personal desire that the person already has, and therefore, it is logical to say that defining a target audience is important; unless of course, you want to make a story that doesn't deliver something specific enough for someone to be interested and not care if your story isn't recognized or publicize it outside, so people see ads but don't subscribe.
I think it's worth considering who your target audience is, not so that you can modify your story to cater to a specific demographic, but so you can figure out where to most effectively promote your story. Different demographics hang out different places—I wouldn't advertise my gritty, old-school, Conan-style blank and pillage fantasy to a group of tween girls on Tumblr (or wherever the fuck kids hang out now. Roblox?). I did not publish my novel on Royal Road because I heard the folks over there will review-bomb BL stories, and at least at the time I was researching it, they didn't have an LGBT tag.
That said, I still think I'm trying to find my target audience. I thought it would be queer teen girls at first because that's who I thought read BL. Actually, all of my readers are older than that (at least as far as the readers I know) and not all of them are women.
I don't think I'm doing a great job of reaching my target audience. I'm not really sure of a demographic anymore, so I'm not sure where to go to find more of them! It's something I think about a lot, and I try to follow people writing in a similar genre to see what they do... But honestly I'm so deep into this I'm not even sure what's a comp for me and what's not anymore lol.
I used to have the same doubt of who my audience was until I started to check the metrics in Wattapd and Inkitt when I used to post there. And for my surprise the majority of readers where women older than 25 and even 65 years old. That went the same for my mm sport college romance and the omegaverse. I thought my audience on my mm sport college romance story would be in the younger side since the character all were between 21-23 years old since I mostly my characters are not younger than 27, but I was wrong. Also all the booktookers that promote MM all of them are around my age in their late 20s and 30s. So as far now that's why I focus in writing Mature and character driven stories.
Oh that's cool that you can look at demographics like that on those platforms. I'm just vaguely feeling it out based on readers I have talked to. Which is probably not the best way to get accurate statistics lol.
If it's mostly older people, maybe I should start advertising on Facebook... Head down to the nearest retirement home with some flyers
According to Wattpad metrics, women 18-35 primarily from the US, India and the Philippines. I write mostly BL, but I've also written in a lot of other genres and people seem to not mind checking out those stories as well.
I don't really do much to reach them other than what anyone else does, which is using social media and sometimes the forums. Mostly, I like to share art or my characters. Tbh, I don't do a lot of promo because I'm bad at it and I kinda hate it, lol. I've been very fortunate to find people who enjoyed my stories and recommended them, so that's helped!
Honestly though, I never think about my target audience. I'm the target audience until I start making the kind of money I can live off of and even then it's iffy. If I don't find enjoyment in my stories then it's not worth writing them and I never started writing expecting to make money off of it.
No, that's one perfect way! I have a few old readers that I became friend of them that they always gave me insight of what they like and we share even TBR books. And dang, don't made me laught with the home retirement flyers 🤣
@BreeBaxter Not the ghost cougars! 🤣 LMAO
Honestly I’ve been creating comics full time for a few years and never really thought about my demographic. Most of my followers are on Instagram so I get metrics from there that I only check every once in a blue moon. I’ve noticed when I was more focused on a closer to teen comic my demo was more young women ages 18-24 but now that I’m making a more adult oriented comic its gone to women age 25-34.
The only time I’ve thought about my demo was when specifically trying to make work closer to all ages and less mature content but it didn’t really change how I market anything since I always just try to cast a wide net when it comes to finding an audience. I guess that’s less true nowadays since I post less online but it was true once