Your thoughts on the 40k views per month on webtoon? (A ramble)

[ewi]

I don't know if any of this is of help to you or if I have just completely missed the point of your post

Oh no it was very insightful! For real The post was mainly a ramble but your POV is still appreciated!

I never knew about the bounce effect until now actually, thats a completely new term for me.

The core fact is that your viewer count can be extremely high depending on trends

Now that I look back, I'm reminded of the boom of reincarnation manwhas that surged out of the blue. It was WAY more popular in 2020, I practically read like 30 manwhas of a female lead being isekai-ed by truck kun into a glorious fantasy world with a fairly basic magic system and the love interest always being a prince/emperor.

As popular as they were back in the day I can't help but wonder if most of these manwha's were made just for the sake of garnering views thanks to how popular this genre and setting was. It does sound pretty exhausting to make an entire fully coloured manwha of a story theme that is extremely popular. Even worse if you don't like such stories as much yourself

[MiniSheepPencil]

Now that I look back, I'm reminded of the boom of reincarnation manwhas that surged out of the blue. It was WAY more popular in 2020, I practically read like 30 manwhas of a female lead being isekai-ed by truck kun into a glorious fantasy world with a fairly basic magic system and the love interest always being a prince/emperor.

100% true. I've also witnessed ppl making loads of comics but holding on to them while waiting for a more preferable time in the trend flares. Not to mention those who live on the wave of trends by writing something similar the moment a trend manifests just to make sure to meet a certain quota.

Like just look at Tapas, they went through BL before the Isekai / Reverse Villan(ness) trend took over. It's hard to grasp and not a very healthy choice to chase the trends, but it is still possible to gain visibility by using the same tricks as other peers within the same genre.

[sorible]

So I haven't been keeping up with updates but I'm pretty sure the creator ad revenue program is ending at the end of 2021. I've been on the program for a while but in the beginning it was extremely difficult to maintain 40k views per month even when posting once a week. Plus you can't take the money out until it's reached the threshold of $100, and I think I sat at less than half of that for a month. They did change it to global views later on though.

The payout is way better than tapas or other webcomic platforms I've signed with but I don't know if I can say it's worth it. I've earned 5x more doing commissions alone, and if you have other responsibilities like school or jobs, having a consistent upload schedule is impossible. If you have any questions about it you can ask me!

[l3onch4me]

It must be an extremely hard feat considering the endless amount of webtoons in canvas but only a handful of creators listed under the ad revenue program.

Last time I checked on their app, there's over 100k webtoons on the canvas section, so yeah, it's super hard

[l3onch4me]

It does sound pretty exhausting to make an entire fully coloured manwha of a story theme that is extremely popular. Even worse if you don't like such stories as much yourself

What's popular now? Yaoi, BL is always popular, but what's trending?
Otome Isekai was really popular from 2018 to 2020...

[l3onch4me]

not a very healthy choice to chase the trends

Self-published writers on Amazon do it all the time, and they do it because they write for a living, it isn't a hobby.

[l3onch4me]

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[l3onch4me]

The payout is way better than tapas or other webcomic platforms I've signed with but I don't know if I can say it's worth it. I've earned 5x more doing commissions alone

What type of commissions? furry? xD I'm pretty sure that creator revenue program ends every year, and restart with a new name, or stay the same name, so yeah it ends in 2021, and a new one begins in 2022.

[mbindhammer]

My comic has 20k views with "only" 39 subscribers. I heavily promote my comic outside of Tapas, mostly on Reddit. Anyone can read my comic without subscribing or even registering. Actually, Tapas should honor it more when someone leads unregistered users to Tapas. Instead, they hold on to subscribers.

[darthmongoose]

My comic has 20k views with "only" 39 subscribers. I heavily promote my comic outside of Tapas, mostly on Reddit. Anyone can read my comic without subscribing or even registering. Actually, Tapas should honor it more when someone leads unregistered users to Tapas. Instead, they hold on to subscribers.

Tapas has to prioritise subscribers from a business perspective because:

1. It's easy to fake popularity by paying for clicks. I'm not accusing you of doing that, but it's something somebody could do if there was no secondary metric.
2. Subscribers represent users who will probably read multiple series and potentially donate ink or use ink to unlock premium or early access comic episodes, which generates way more money for them than ads, so they're worth more than somebody who gives them one hit a week reading one person's comic via a reddit or twitter link.

So while there's nothing at all wrong with feeling proud of your view numbers and appreciating that some of your readers may use your social media updates to read and don't want to make an account (I definitely have some of these on Twitter), it's good to be aware that these readers are less valuable to Tapas the business compared to users who make an account, view multiple comics on the platform and buy and spend ink. It's also harder for Tapas to verify that views alone are from "real users" not a click farm. It might suck if most of your readership is off-platform, but for business reasons, Tapas is likely to prioritise promotion and partnerships with comics and novels that bring in subs, likes, comments and donations from verified Tapas users. If a lot of your readership is off-platform, it may be worth explaining to them how it'd help you out if they'd make an account and give likes to help your comic's visibility.

[mbindhammer]

There are two business models. One offers always new products to existing customers. The second model is to acquire new customers. As far as I know, Tapas pursues the second model only succinctly or not at all. That's what I was trying to say. It would not be too difficult to implement an appropriate algorithm. If an unregistered user comes to the Tapas site via a certain comic or novel and then becomes a customer, that should be rewarded, I think.

[darthmongoose]

There are two business models. One offers always new products to existing customers. The second model is to acquire new customers. As far as I know, Tapas pursues the second model only succinctly or not at all. That's what I was trying to say. It would not be too difficult to implement an appropriate algorithm. If an unregistered user comes to the Tapas site via a certain comic or novel and then becomes a customer, that should be rewarded, I think.

But if they're not making an account, how can you measure that these people have "become customers"? Tapas would surely use people creating an account in order to subscribe to the series that brought them here as the metric to measure that conversion?

[mbindhammer]

A simple survey like many other sites do for new customers. I just experienced this the other day with a streaming provider.
My comic will never find customers on Tapas because it doesn't serve the target audience here. For myself, Tapas is in the moment just a host for my comic, I have to find readers elsewhere. I only used it as an example :).

[ewi]

I've also witnessed ppl making loads of comics but holding on to them while waiting for a more preferable time in the trend flares.

That's something I didn't know

It sounds like an odd thing to do as well considering its one of those things you can't really forsee.

[l3onch4me]

It sounds like an odd thing to do as well considering its one of those things you can't really forsee

They probably predict stuff based on recent events, like some Amazon's self-pub writers wrote zombie apocalypse novels during the early stages of covid in China, and (re)self-published them later on when covid's huge around the world, dunno if they became popular, I didn't follow their stuff, but their strategy make some sense I guess... another example would be writing guides about "how to work from home" during the lockdowns.

[l3onch4me]

My comic will never find customers on Tapas because it doesn't serve the target audience here.

Do you mean that your stuff isn't BL, or Romance aimed at teen girls, young women?

[MiniSheepPencil]

It's not as common as it might have sounded like in my post
For those who have too much time and creative freedom will end up with loads of manuscripts ready to transform when the time is ready. Like those of us who ends up making several stories but never post them we end up with a backlog far greater than the stuff we have refined and published. Again, it happens, but I can't say how common of a trait it is~

[mbindhammer]

No BL or GL, no slice of life, no romance, no princess or prince, no mermaid, no horns, fairies, etc.

[conventurecomics]

I think it's to high. It's impossible to gain 100 or 500 subs anywhere. Readers view and like your work but rarely sub. For me subs would be more benificial comments to as like that will keep me more motivated. I've seen some comic drawn ok and they get 200k or 2m subs I don't get how.

[fleurravenbooks]

i don't use webtoon that much (tbh i only read few originals that i just want to see how they end) but i noticed that every few minutes new update/new canvas pops up, i don't think webtoon even has forums so it must be really hard to make yourself known....I guess the only way for someone to randomly find you is if they check genre by date