The Success Scheme: When Do People Subscribe?
If you believe that success is a matter of chance, unrelated to specific indicators, and that some individuals are just cool while others are strange, I hasten to dispel your beliefs. In reality, psychology and neuroscience play mind games with our consciousness. Going against the crowd and public opinion is challenging, and each success has its standard, which automatically influences our opinion. A person who understands how to attract a crowd erases their mistakes as if they never existed.
When we see an artist or blogger with 2000 posts and 1000 subscribers, and then another with 127 posts and 407,000 subscribers, you might say, "So what?" However, at that moment, your brain, like a computer processor, processes information and produces a result that involves a subconscious choice of whom you will sympathize with. A regular person might think, "Well, everyone subscribes to this blogger, so I'll subscribe too." Oh yes!
If we see a caption like "I worked at Disney and now work at Warner Bros." and, in contrast, another caption saying "I love pies and draw kittens," with 100 subscribers, 90 of whom are friends of friends from school, who would you genuinely subscribe to without deception?
Now, let's talk about the threshold of trust. It doesn't matter that the artist with 450,000 subscribers simply deletes all unsuccessful duplicates, creating the impression that she only experiences success and is a cool girl or guy. But you won't think about that, will you?
Our brains are designed in a way that automatically evaluates what is safe for us and what we should trust. You don't ponder over the game of truth and falsehood; it becomes irrelevant. If we see a larger number of subscribers (regardless of how they appeared), we will subscribe. And more often than not, we won't subscribe to those with fewer subscribers, those without a crowd. The subconscious dictates, "She has few subscribers; something abnormal is happening here; she is not interesting."
Consider why an ordinary internet user won't question why an artist has 100,000 subscribers for 100 posts. If you are a newcomer and want to develop your blog, this is a red flag; you definitely know that this doesn't happen just by publishing illustrations.
Success is hard work where there is no one-size-fits-all recipe, and the top figures in your genre don't need extra and especially young competitors. To attract real followers (not bots), you need to invest more than $500-2000 every month for such results. To improve your mood, you can commission an illustration in the Commissions section, as well as characters and other art projects.
In conclusion, the success scheme for an artist looks like this: 100 posts - 100,000 subscribers. In practice, achieving this honestly free (no paid) by publishing illustrations is impossible.