Reinventing Webcomics

A while back, I posted 12 Ways You’re Doing Patreon Wrong. In it, I advocated moving away from an ad-supported business model, and into a subscription-supported model. After one member read the piece, they asked:

Q. I have a question about this: Do you EVER provide the paid material to the general population? For example, if Patreon subscribers get your NSFW work, will the visitors to your [public website] … see the archives one day? And if so, how?

A. A few days ago, I posted this under the Webcomics.com Twitter account:

Webcartoonists: It ain’t about the pageviews anymore. Once you let that sink in, you’ll rethink your entire publishing approach.

— Webcomics-dot-com (@Webcomicscom) June 13, 2016

…And this is a perfect example.

Why would I release that material to the general public?

To drive pageviews.

Remove pageviews from the equation. Now, why do it?

Exposure… maybe?

My views on exposure are pretty well-documented here, but let’s not be dismissive. Let’s say I did it for exposure. To what purpose? In other words, how would that particular exposure be beneficial? Again… pageviews don’t matter anymore. So what’s left? Sales? What am I going to sell if I just gave away my content for free?

The short answer is — no. You don’t give away your exclusive content.

You might use a couple pieces here and there to promote the exclusive content, but no more than that.

For example, I packaged 12 months of the NSFW content into a digital download that I offered as a $20 Kickstarter add-on. It generated about a thousand dollars in extra revenue. And it included a very prominent promo for my ongoing NSFW work thru Patreon.

After that went out, I saw a nice bump in patrons (at $10 a month).

And, at some point, I’ll be announcing a Kickstarter campaign for a printed collection of that same work. If I release the content to the general public, it would hamstring my Kickstarter. I’m pretty confident that the Kickstarter will fund easily. Why?

Scarcity.