Here’s an actionable list of things you can start doing today to begin improving your results on Patreon.
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As reported here earlier, after Reed Expo bought the Harvey Awards (without having, it seems, any plans to actually do anything with the property), Baltimore Comic Con announced the launch of the Ringo Awards (honoring Mike Wieringo, a well-known Marvel/DC artist who died in 2007).
The Ringo awards are now accepting nominations.
If you’re paying attention, you can see something downright fascinating happening with the Ringo Awards process…
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Good time management isn’t only about securing hours to work on your project. Rather, it’s about guarding against the accumulation of all of those “just takes a minute” tasks.
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We talk a lot about launching a comic — and we spend hours talking about growing a comic. But we should probably talk about the best way to end a comic. Because that’s a part of this whole thing, too.
I recorded this from my palatial hotel room in Huntsville, Ala. (my son is at Space Camp all week, and this made more sense than driving back-and-forth from Philadelphia twice). So there’s none of those ultra-slick production values that you’ve come to know and love. This one’s just me sitting in front of a camera and talking. I hope you enjoy it!
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How are you supposed to “read the fine print” if you don’t understand half the words they use? This episode of Webcomics Confidential gives you a crash course in Legalese so you won’t be intimidated next time you’re faced with a contract.
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It’s officially summer, and that means that I’m spending a lot more time working out of my home studio. The good news is that you get to see my boys’ Godzilla collection. The not-so-great news is that I’m still working out some of the technical issues associated with recording video out of the home.
Nevertheless, I came across a compelling quandary. If I were advising a first-time cartoonist on Web hosting, what would be my advice?
My answer surprised me.
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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.
The last 15 years of webcomics worked like this — we posted things on the Web to build an audience. As the Community developed around our comic, we started offering merchandise. And we monetized that entire process with ads.
Ads are dead.
So, if you’re going to survive, you’re going to have to lose everything you thought you knew about webcomics over the past 15 years and start re-inventing your publishing strategy.
It ain’t about the pageviews.
Let’s take another look at the bedrock of a webcomic business — its website. What are we most interested in improving? Share your thoughts!
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Earlier today, Patreon unveiled a new logo, a new site design, and several new features. For a crowdfunding platform that took webcomics by storm last year, there’s no signs of slowing down. Here’s a look at some of the changes.
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The most recent Webcomics.con Poll asked respondents to complete this sentence: “The thing that worries me most about 2017 is…”
The results weren’t particularly surprising. The top two answers were actually related, as a matter of fact. 23% of the people said Net Neutrality was their top concern. And 21% said that political changes were their top concerns.
But the really interesting discussion is about what fell to the bottom of the list…
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