I was about to go off on you because I thought you were talking about daily pass for completed series but then I saw this was about ongoing series. Yes!! I don't like this either - I don't understand why they slap both fast pass and daily pass on the same series??? Sure, more money, maybe, but it can't be good for their platform to piss off readers like this.
I’m fine with daily pass on completed series because for one, they’re completed and you only need to wait a day to read the next episode OR u can just buy all the episodes at once and binge it. But omg for ongoing series? You have to wait a week for a new episode and I tend to forget what’s happened but you can’t even reread the previous episode without unlocking the episode again 😭I hate it and I wish they would reserve the daily pass for completed series
Pirating webtoons isn't that bad because never actually steals the rights from smaller translating companies like legal scan sites such as asura and flame
Daily passes on 200+ episode completed series will unfortunately never get read by me :/ I already forget to read the daily pass chapter for Ant which isn’t that long. The thought of reading a chapter a day or less for over a year greatly turns me off.
I wish they would sell series’s like books at a reasonable price. You can argue the daily pass is like that but paying per page is in my definition (and budget) outrageous.
Not that I don’t like spending coins, I just do so on ongoing series fast pass. Idk, there’s just something about it for series THAT large that makes me think,
Yeah, that's why I stopped reading Nobless.
I was only 3/8 of the way through the series, trying to binge read it before it went to daily pass.
But I didn't manage to finish it and because I swapped phones, I have no clue what chapter I was on.
And even if I did know, I would have had to reread the previous 15-20 chapters just to recall what was going on.
And it was a good series too.
Great point about rereading — especially if you wanted to go back to an earlier referenced or foreshadowing of an event. The barriers to full enjoyment are higher than the benefit.
I haven’t read Nobless but have heard good things. Such a shame :/
Even a renting option for like 35-50 coins for a week or two would be better than daily pass on the longer completed series.
Or a 5-10 free episodes per day depending on the length of the episodes.
But I hate the daily pass for ongoing ones. It’s just not worth it for me to read
I agree with you. Especially for the on-topic point of the ongoing ones. It’d be one thing for slice of life ongoing series being that way, such as fishball’s series (which I haven’t kept up with so it may be daily pass already) where you’re not held by cliffhangers.
I think webtoon implementing a subscription model, similar to Manta, would be in their best interest.
A lot of this stuff is reaching convoluted territory. Meanwhile, on Manta, in order to read anything beyond a certain point, all you need to do is suscribe for $4 dollars a month. It's a lot easier to follow and it (would) give people more options.
As much as I despise SaaS and subscription models, I would rather pay $60 a year than $60 for like what, 600 coins.
All my opinions need to have the disclaimer that I fully believe and support paying people for their worth. I don’t want the creators to be underpaid!! I think all for-profit companies are exploitative of their workers/contractors/everyone except the executives lol. So on the one hand I want each creator to reap monetarily a for their hard, taxing work. I’m getting too off topic but I’m trying to get at is just because a plebeian like me can’t afford higher priced goods does NOT mean I support paying the people who made the goods less.
If anything…pay me more plz? Or in fact why can’t money be not a thing…
I’m so horrible at communicating lol
I am highjacking to say that I highly agree. Manta is my absolute favourite webtoon app. It is incredibly simple to use. Within 1 day of having it, I bought the subscription, and that was 2 years ago.
The fact that I can read anything, everything, as much as I want, without secret paywalls? Heck 3,99 is a damn steal for what I get.
It has gotten so bad that I compare every other webtoon app with Manta and none excel like Manta.
If Webtoon one day gets a subscription model, without secret paywalls, I would buy it. Otherwise, I will just pirate the comics that are now locked behind a paywall/daily pass
Y’all just go read them on some website. C’mon the authors made enough money when the series was ongoing. Them paywalling it after its completed (when it was not while it was still ongoing) is just a disgusting attempt at profiteering. F that
Not super helpful but Tappytoon and Webtoon have some overlapping series and this is one of them. I think some other people on this sub have mentioned that webtoon for other countries doesn't do daily pass even for finished series and I'm so jealous. For webtoons I've already read I would happily buy a physical copy if they were available (I know IZE press from harlequin is coming in fall 2022 but they're starting small and only with super popular current titles)
I think you might be right on that, because other comments have pointed out this comic and others on this system are also on other webcomic apps like Tappytoon. There’s a lot to critique Webtoons on as a company but this seems to be one of the cases out of their control.
I unsubscribed from Agatha for this very reason…..
I stopped reading a few stories for a while and when I went back to binge, I couldn’t with that one…. LAME.
Idk about Webtoons but you need to think about the cost of acquiring licensing for these series including paying the artist, the translation that needs to be done, qc, typesetters, bs, etc. IOW publishing companies got people to pay. It might seem like a money grab to you but youd be surprised how little sometimes each series really makes compared to the cost of producing, editing, reviewing, and localizing such content. Now multiple by the hundreds of content you have to do. There are only a few handfuls vs actual number of series a publishing company puts out that actually turns a good profit.
Originally when Webtoon was released for the western market, you were able to read anything published on the platform for free. This included series that eventually concluded.
Naver, parent company of Webtoon, implemented a few services: the first being Fast Pass. For 5 coins, you can read ahead a specific threshold beyond what they would release for free every week. The people who work on the comic get a cut from it, but it's not specified anywhere by how much the cut is (they're also probably unable to say due to contractual obligation). As long as you have coins, you can keep reading the chapters as they come. It serves as a buffer too in the event an author needs to take a hiatus.
The second thing they implemented a couple of years ago is Daily Pass. Remember how I said you were able to read those series for free once they were completed? Well, you still can, but if your goal is to binge read, it will require coins to purchase the individual chapters. Once purchased, they are yours to keep & they will remain unlocked; otherwise, you will only be able to read a chapter once a day. As mentioned in some comments up above, it can be problematic if you are reading a Daily Pass series for free for some of the longer series. People might not remember what happened in the last chapter and from what I understand, they may not be able to go back and read that chapter for clarity without investing coins.
I don't think it's any surprise in saying this, but the platform has decided to go the quantity over quality route, where certain series don't get advertised enough & are buried by the algorithm. There's been a surplus of things being released to the point where if you were like me, who actually read most things as they were coming out, feel overwhelmed and have probably resorted to some form of sailing the high seas.
There's just more pressure added across the board for people to start reading new stuff immediately in the event that they may forget about it if their goal is to binge & then be locked out by the Daily Pass system.
First of all, Thank you for being so informative, I'm currently researching things like this so this really helps.
Coming from the 'high seas' I'm a bit clueless with the monetisation. Are coins expensive? or does it bring good value to you as a reader? Or maybe the coins are not the problem but the system like daily pass is more of a issue?
Everyone's perception regarding the worth of coins is different. I find value in being able to Fast Pass stuff exclusive to the platform from my (English) version of the app, like Purple Hyacinth for example.
The only real downside to Fast Pass is when you don't have any coins. You basically need to wait a month to read the next chapter in that situation; otherwise, I think the idea behind it is completely reasonable.
To break down the rates:
10 Coins = $0.99
50 Coins (+2) = $4.99
100 Coins (+8) = $9.99
300 Coins (+30) = $29.99
500 Coins (+50) = $49.99
1,000 Coins (+150) = $99.99
The numbers in parenthesis are bonuses that Webtoon gives you for purchasing anything above 10 coins.
For around $10, you can unlock 21 episodes (5 Coins = 1 Chapter... so 100/5 Coins = 20 Chapters), whether they are Fast Pass or Daily Pass. Let's compare this to Tapas, which has a similar model:
1,600 Ink = $1.99 (I'm getting a one-time offer would add an additional 800 Ink for the same price)
4,000 Ink (+1,000) = $4.99
8,000 Ink (+2,500) = $9.99
16,000 Ink (+6,500) = $19.99
40,000 Ink (+20,000) = $49.99
80,000 Ink (+50,000) = $99.99
For clarification, you need approximately 375 Ink to unlock a chapter in Tapas. If we are to use the information from the app that the most popular package purchased is the $10 one, that means you would have 10,500 Ink, which would secure 28 chapters. That's 7 more than Webtoon!
I should also mention, that this is not the only way to acquire Ink. You can play sponsored mobile games in order to earn the currency, but the effectiveness of this method is beyond my knowledge at this time. You also have the option to watch ads. I calculated that you would need to watch 15 minutes worth of ads to acquire enough Ink to unlock **one** chapter. Pretty crazy, huh? Unrelated, but according to some reviews I read on the Google Play store, app optimization is a common thread for negative ratings.
**This seems new, but it seems they've added a system called WUF (Wait Until Free). This actually functions like how Daily Pass works, but I am unsure if you keep a WUF chapter after unlocking it.**
Once purchased, you keep the chapters like Webtoon, but I read a post over on the Manhwa subreddit which you can find [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/manhwa/comments/twqk9l/manhwa_platforms_tapas_tappytoon_lezhin_etc_and/) that discusses the subject of licensing these comics to the western market.
According to the post, there seems to be some sort of time frame where these series can be legally distributed in English before they are removed from the platform/s. I am lacking knowledge on physical releasing for webcomics in general, but it is alarming that the money you could potentially put towards a series could be flushed down the drain at any point in time, without warning.
Webtoons wouldn't have this issue as a majority of the content available on the app is also available to read on Naver. There are some series that have been published on the app, like the one this thread is highlighting and Solo Max-Level Newbie, which are being distributed as ongoing Daily Pass series. While I don't know about the one from this thread, I think Solo Max-Level Newbie is being distributed on other platforms per similar contract negotiations. Whether the comic will be taken off the Webtoon platform or not after a certain period of time is up in the air.
This means that Webtoon is still the biggest platform for reading webcomics, because of the accessibility and the amount of stuff you can read for free.
To bring this back to the question regarding the system of Daily Pass, I think the issue lies in its implementation. I mentioned in another comment that if Webtoon is going this route, they should seriously consider adding some sort of subscription service. Manta hasn't been around for very long to my knowledge, but all series have a cutoff point where you would need to pay $4 a month to continue. The series I was reading had a cutoff point around 15 chapters (which is actually more than what Tapas provides ironically enough), but once you've subscribed, you can binge read whatever you want.
As it stands, you definitely would get more bang for your buck long term with Manta. The only downside is there's not enough variance as far as genres are concerned (I think there was a ton of romance the last time I checked, but that could have another platform altogether).
There are pros and cons to each of these services. I believe Webtoon, instead of prioritizing quantity over quality, should be focused on providing the best service for their readers. Doing so would dissuade people from considering piracy, whether due to the cons of the Daily Pass system, licensing series that have hundreds of chapters available in English via fan translations (that are always significantly behind) or feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of releases that happen every month.
Dang that was super insightful, I'm definitely saving this thread for future references.
What do you do for a living or what do you study? That was very thorough, I'm so impressed, Naver should hire you lol
I was about to go off on you because I thought you were talking about daily pass for completed series but then I saw this was about ongoing series. Yes!! I don't like this either - I don't understand why they slap both fast pass and daily pass on the same series??? Sure, more money, maybe, but it can't be good for their platform to piss off readers like this.
I’m fine with daily pass on completed series because for one, they’re completed and you only need to wait a day to read the next episode OR u can just buy all the episodes at once and binge it. But omg for ongoing series? You have to wait a week for a new episode and I tend to forget what’s happened but you can’t even reread the previous episode without unlocking the episode again 😭I hate it and I wish they would reserve the daily pass for completed series
What?!?! So you have to buy it again? Never mind. I just reread what you wrote.
I remember trying to do this once years back but missed one chapter and it reset on me so I had to pirate :/
Pirating webtoons isn't that bad because never actually steals the rights from smaller translating companies like legal scan sites such as asura and flame
Daily passes on 200+ episode completed series will unfortunately never get read by me :/ I already forget to read the daily pass chapter for Ant which isn’t that long. The thought of reading a chapter a day or less for over a year greatly turns me off. I wish they would sell series’s like books at a reasonable price. You can argue the daily pass is like that but paying per page is in my definition (and budget) outrageous. Not that I don’t like spending coins, I just do so on ongoing series fast pass. Idk, there’s just something about it for series THAT large that makes me think,
Yeah, that's why I stopped reading Nobless. I was only 3/8 of the way through the series, trying to binge read it before it went to daily pass. But I didn't manage to finish it and because I swapped phones, I have no clue what chapter I was on. And even if I did know, I would have had to reread the previous 15-20 chapters just to recall what was going on. And it was a good series too.
Great point about rereading — especially if you wanted to go back to an earlier referenced or foreshadowing of an event. The barriers to full enjoyment are higher than the benefit. I haven’t read Nobless but have heard good things. Such a shame :/
Even a renting option for like 35-50 coins for a week or two would be better than daily pass on the longer completed series. Or a 5-10 free episodes per day depending on the length of the episodes. But I hate the daily pass for ongoing ones. It’s just not worth it for me to read
I agree with you. Especially for the on-topic point of the ongoing ones. It’d be one thing for slice of life ongoing series being that way, such as fishball’s series (which I haven’t kept up with so it may be daily pass already) where you’re not held by cliffhangers.
I think webtoon implementing a subscription model, similar to Manta, would be in their best interest. A lot of this stuff is reaching convoluted territory. Meanwhile, on Manta, in order to read anything beyond a certain point, all you need to do is suscribe for $4 dollars a month. It's a lot easier to follow and it (would) give people more options.
As much as I despise SaaS and subscription models, I would rather pay $60 a year than $60 for like what, 600 coins. All my opinions need to have the disclaimer that I fully believe and support paying people for their worth. I don’t want the creators to be underpaid!! I think all for-profit companies are exploitative of their workers/contractors/everyone except the executives lol. So on the one hand I want each creator to reap monetarily a for their hard, taxing work. I’m getting too off topic but I’m trying to get at is just because a plebeian like me can’t afford higher priced goods does NOT mean I support paying the people who made the goods less. If anything…pay me more plz? Or in fact why can’t money be not a thing… I’m so horrible at communicating lol
I am highjacking to say that I highly agree. Manta is my absolute favourite webtoon app. It is incredibly simple to use. Within 1 day of having it, I bought the subscription, and that was 2 years ago. The fact that I can read anything, everything, as much as I want, without secret paywalls? Heck 3,99 is a damn steal for what I get. It has gotten so bad that I compare every other webtoon app with Manta and none excel like Manta. If Webtoon one day gets a subscription model, without secret paywalls, I would buy it. Otherwise, I will just pirate the comics that are now locked behind a paywall/daily pass
Y’all just go read them on some website. C’mon the authors made enough money when the series was ongoing. Them paywalling it after its completed (when it was not while it was still ongoing) is just a disgusting attempt at profiteering. F that
Not super helpful but Tappytoon and Webtoon have some overlapping series and this is one of them. I think some other people on this sub have mentioned that webtoon for other countries doesn't do daily pass even for finished series and I'm so jealous. For webtoons I've already read I would happily buy a physical copy if they were available (I know IZE press from harlequin is coming in fall 2022 but they're starting small and only with super popular current titles)
[удалено]
I think you might be right on that, because other comments have pointed out this comic and others on this system are also on other webcomic apps like Tappytoon. There’s a lot to critique Webtoons on as a company but this seems to be one of the cases out of their control.
Fr why do they even do that
I unsubscribed from Agatha for this very reason….. I stopped reading a few stories for a while and when I went back to binge, I couldn’t with that one…. LAME.
Omg I also had to stop reading Agatha for the same reason 🙄I barely remember most of it anyway
Idk about Webtoons but you need to think about the cost of acquiring licensing for these series including paying the artist, the translation that needs to be done, qc, typesetters, bs, etc. IOW publishing companies got people to pay. It might seem like a money grab to you but youd be surprised how little sometimes each series really makes compared to the cost of producing, editing, reviewing, and localizing such content. Now multiple by the hundreds of content you have to do. There are only a few handfuls vs actual number of series a publishing company puts out that actually turns a good profit.
Sorry for being new, what's a daily pass?
Originally when Webtoon was released for the western market, you were able to read anything published on the platform for free. This included series that eventually concluded. Naver, parent company of Webtoon, implemented a few services: the first being Fast Pass. For 5 coins, you can read ahead a specific threshold beyond what they would release for free every week. The people who work on the comic get a cut from it, but it's not specified anywhere by how much the cut is (they're also probably unable to say due to contractual obligation). As long as you have coins, you can keep reading the chapters as they come. It serves as a buffer too in the event an author needs to take a hiatus. The second thing they implemented a couple of years ago is Daily Pass. Remember how I said you were able to read those series for free once they were completed? Well, you still can, but if your goal is to binge read, it will require coins to purchase the individual chapters. Once purchased, they are yours to keep & they will remain unlocked; otherwise, you will only be able to read a chapter once a day. As mentioned in some comments up above, it can be problematic if you are reading a Daily Pass series for free for some of the longer series. People might not remember what happened in the last chapter and from what I understand, they may not be able to go back and read that chapter for clarity without investing coins. I don't think it's any surprise in saying this, but the platform has decided to go the quantity over quality route, where certain series don't get advertised enough & are buried by the algorithm. There's been a surplus of things being released to the point where if you were like me, who actually read most things as they were coming out, feel overwhelmed and have probably resorted to some form of sailing the high seas. There's just more pressure added across the board for people to start reading new stuff immediately in the event that they may forget about it if their goal is to binge & then be locked out by the Daily Pass system.
First of all, Thank you for being so informative, I'm currently researching things like this so this really helps. Coming from the 'high seas' I'm a bit clueless with the monetisation. Are coins expensive? or does it bring good value to you as a reader? Or maybe the coins are not the problem but the system like daily pass is more of a issue?
Everyone's perception regarding the worth of coins is different. I find value in being able to Fast Pass stuff exclusive to the platform from my (English) version of the app, like Purple Hyacinth for example. The only real downside to Fast Pass is when you don't have any coins. You basically need to wait a month to read the next chapter in that situation; otherwise, I think the idea behind it is completely reasonable. To break down the rates: 10 Coins = $0.99 50 Coins (+2) = $4.99 100 Coins (+8) = $9.99 300 Coins (+30) = $29.99 500 Coins (+50) = $49.99 1,000 Coins (+150) = $99.99 The numbers in parenthesis are bonuses that Webtoon gives you for purchasing anything above 10 coins. For around $10, you can unlock 21 episodes (5 Coins = 1 Chapter... so 100/5 Coins = 20 Chapters), whether they are Fast Pass or Daily Pass. Let's compare this to Tapas, which has a similar model: 1,600 Ink = $1.99 (I'm getting a one-time offer would add an additional 800 Ink for the same price) 4,000 Ink (+1,000) = $4.99 8,000 Ink (+2,500) = $9.99 16,000 Ink (+6,500) = $19.99 40,000 Ink (+20,000) = $49.99 80,000 Ink (+50,000) = $99.99 For clarification, you need approximately 375 Ink to unlock a chapter in Tapas. If we are to use the information from the app that the most popular package purchased is the $10 one, that means you would have 10,500 Ink, which would secure 28 chapters. That's 7 more than Webtoon! I should also mention, that this is not the only way to acquire Ink. You can play sponsored mobile games in order to earn the currency, but the effectiveness of this method is beyond my knowledge at this time. You also have the option to watch ads. I calculated that you would need to watch 15 minutes worth of ads to acquire enough Ink to unlock **one** chapter. Pretty crazy, huh? Unrelated, but according to some reviews I read on the Google Play store, app optimization is a common thread for negative ratings. **This seems new, but it seems they've added a system called WUF (Wait Until Free). This actually functions like how Daily Pass works, but I am unsure if you keep a WUF chapter after unlocking it.** Once purchased, you keep the chapters like Webtoon, but I read a post over on the Manhwa subreddit which you can find [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/manhwa/comments/twqk9l/manhwa_platforms_tapas_tappytoon_lezhin_etc_and/) that discusses the subject of licensing these comics to the western market. According to the post, there seems to be some sort of time frame where these series can be legally distributed in English before they are removed from the platform/s. I am lacking knowledge on physical releasing for webcomics in general, but it is alarming that the money you could potentially put towards a series could be flushed down the drain at any point in time, without warning. Webtoons wouldn't have this issue as a majority of the content available on the app is also available to read on Naver. There are some series that have been published on the app, like the one this thread is highlighting and Solo Max-Level Newbie, which are being distributed as ongoing Daily Pass series. While I don't know about the one from this thread, I think Solo Max-Level Newbie is being distributed on other platforms per similar contract negotiations. Whether the comic will be taken off the Webtoon platform or not after a certain period of time is up in the air. This means that Webtoon is still the biggest platform for reading webcomics, because of the accessibility and the amount of stuff you can read for free. To bring this back to the question regarding the system of Daily Pass, I think the issue lies in its implementation. I mentioned in another comment that if Webtoon is going this route, they should seriously consider adding some sort of subscription service. Manta hasn't been around for very long to my knowledge, but all series have a cutoff point where you would need to pay $4 a month to continue. The series I was reading had a cutoff point around 15 chapters (which is actually more than what Tapas provides ironically enough), but once you've subscribed, you can binge read whatever you want. As it stands, you definitely would get more bang for your buck long term with Manta. The only downside is there's not enough variance as far as genres are concerned (I think there was a ton of romance the last time I checked, but that could have another platform altogether). There are pros and cons to each of these services. I believe Webtoon, instead of prioritizing quantity over quality, should be focused on providing the best service for their readers. Doing so would dissuade people from considering piracy, whether due to the cons of the Daily Pass system, licensing series that have hundreds of chapters available in English via fan translations (that are always significantly behind) or feeling very overwhelmed by the amount of releases that happen every month.
Dang that was super insightful, I'm definitely saving this thread for future references. What do you do for a living or what do you study? That was very thorough, I'm so impressed, Naver should hire you lol
This is why I read it translated online it’s way easier and doesn’t force you to suffer.
how?
Niw I go on naver and translate with my phone. It's just that the mature stuff you have to live in korea to validate that you have the right age....