I've paid for advertising on instagram and comicad and things before, so there is precedent for "paying for visibility" on my part.
BUT....I don't think Tapas would ever implement such a feature, because they're a publisher, not a social media platform.
If Tapas implemented a system where users could say, pay to be included on the front page, they would immediately lose control over the quality of their selection, since the amount of money a creator has doesn't necessarily reflect the quality of their creation. Tapas has tried doing "community picks" in the past, a few years ago. They let people on the forums recommend works to be promoted on the front page. I was in the first batch and got about 55 subs from it, then after that, Tapas itself started giving me regular features. A lot of other people though, barely got subs from this, because their covers or work really didn't interest the Tapas audience, and the problem got worse every week, as readers quickly began to associate "community picks" with "bad quality" and "stuff that doesn't appeal to us" and start ignoring it. This would very likely happen with a paid feature category. People would pay, it would go up there on the front page... and then it would get very few clicks, because contrary to what people who haven't been featured think, just being featured isn't enough, you legitimately do need a work that the Tapas audience actually likes the look of, and if Tapas hasn't featured you, they probably think what you're making either isn't polished enough yet, or is too far outside the tastes of their readers in style, subject matter, pacing, readability on phones etc.
There are "publishers" (barely really publishers) who take large sums of money from creators in return for printing their work, no matter how bad the work is and how much no real publisher would touch it with a ten foot pole. They're called "vanity publishers", and the reason they take such big sums of money from the people they "publish" is because selling the books won't make them money, so they need to get paid enough to more than cover all the costs of printing, designing a basic cover etc.
An actual publisher, however, makes money from an audience reading books. In print books, it's people buying copies of books, and in Tapas' case, they make money from people reading pages of works with ads on, buying ink and engaging with the promoted offers for free ink. This is why Tapas pays me money when I hit a certain number of views in a month, and that's why Tapas promotes my work with features; because my work generates views on pages, and motivates people to buy ink or to engage with the sponsors to get ink so they can donate it to me. Based on how much they're willing to pay me (and sorry, I can't tell you any details due to my NDA), even my small comic with a few thousand subs is generating them at least hundreds of dollars a year. So... if Tapas did start charging for visibility, the amount the person would have to pay for a space for a week would need to be at least equivalent to the amount of money a comic it's replacing would generate Tapas in that week. Plus they might decide on top of that, to charge extra because they're taking a risk on a comic that might not grow and continue to generate money after its feature, and it might be a bad looking comic and harm the trust the fans have to recommend them stuff they like in the future. I suspect to make this viable, the cost for a front page feature would need to be hundreds of dollars, and Tapas might still just turn something down even if they were ready to put up the cash if they thought it'd harm the brand (well... that or ask for more money).
tl;dr: No, I wouldn't pay for space on Tapas. The moment Tapas implemented a feature where just any old person could pay for space, readers would lose all trust in the platform, and they'd change from being a legit publisher to being a vanity publisher. It would probably be cause for me to cancel my contract with them. Fortunately, I don't think they ever will because a comic site with this model probably exists (a fool and their money are easily parted after all...), but likely doesn't have a lot of readers on it.
