Let me tell you why I love the UPS Store.
They made my life easier. And they’re saving me hundreds. Hundreds.
Here’s how…
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This was originally posted in the forum, but I’d like to bring it out front to open it up to a wider discussion.
Q: I’m curious as to what the best way of determining how many readers on one’s comic website. I have Google Analytics enabled on my page and my web host provides its own statistics, but is there a certain way to define how many “readers” I have? I’d like to find a specific number or average of people who return each update to read.
The short answer: No.
Look for the statistic “unique readers.” That’s the best estimate you’re going to get. And it’s just that. An estimate.
Here’s why…
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I had an epiphany today.
Teaching the lettering segment of my Sequential Arts class at Hussian School of Art, I covered some of the basics of lettering — both hand-lettering and digital lettering.
During the course of the lecture, I described how letters have “push” and “pull” that affects their kerning. Letters that trap a lot of white space (O, Q, D, for example) push other letters away a little bit. And letters that are skinny (I, J, T and L, for example) tend to pull their neighbors in a little.
I pushed further by saying that the main mistake novice letterers make with letters such as T, J and L is that they make the horizontal aspects of those letters too wide.
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Pittsburgh Comicon is announcing that they have been bought by Wizard World.
From their e-mail:
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Google has entered the domain-registry field in a move that many have called a game-changer. Here’s a look at their service and how it stacks up against other domain registrars. To make things a little easier, I’ve decided to compare simple domain registration of a dot-com domain across the board.
Please realize that certain add-ons — like keeping your registration information private — is considered optional by some registrars, and it comes at an extra cost. Since you’re required to give personal information such as your address and phone number, I like to keep that information guarded from a simple “WhoIs” search. But, for most registrars, that’s an additional cost. Likewise for services such as e-mail forwarding and domain forwarding.
Also, although many of these companies offer hosting, too, I’m not including those figures. It’s my opinion that you can often find much better deals if you shop for these two services separately.
Click on the headers of each registrar to get more information.
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I’d like to try something new in today’s Archive Dive. I’m going to release the entire post. If you’re wondering about some of the subscription content that you’ll get as a member of Webcomics.com, this is a good example. If you know someone who is considering a membership, please point them in this direction!
As always, you can sign up for an entire year or you can get a Trial Membership for $5. That trial lasts for 30 days — with no strings attached. You will not be re-billed unless you choose to subscribe!
In the Private Forum, a member asked the following:
If you’ve been following a webcomic and you don’t like the direction it is taking and eventually it gets to the point where you’re not enjoying it and decide to stop reading it, as a good fan should you politely just forget the comic exists or should you tell the creator why you have decided to stop following his/her’s work?
Photo by Wayne Large. CC BY-ND
I’d like to address this subject from the standpoint of a comics creator, and from that perspective, the answer is clear. The fan is more than welcomed to send the e-mail, but any cartoonist worth his or her salt is going to promptly ignore it.
As a creator, you have to learn to tell your story… the story that you want to tell. That means writing humor that you find funny… or horror that scares you… or drama that compels you.
In my opinion, it’s the best way to get great results.
And you can’t harness your best creativity if you allow yourself to be run in circles by listening to individual voices.
Because each of those voices is going to give you conflicting feedback.
You cannot possibly take each of the comments to heart.
So, how do you tell if you’re on the right track? One suggestion is to stop listening to each of your readers and listen to all of them instead. You do this through your Web site analytics — your traffic statistics.
Are you steadily building traffic? Is your work being shared on social media? Do you have a steady supply of new visitors to your site? These are all indications that your writing is striking a chord with readers.
Will some of them fall away? Absolutely. And for a plethora of reasons — some of which have nothing to do with your comic.
But if you start to see your numbers flag, then it’s time to start asking why. Comic conventions are great for this kind of market research because you can talk to existing and potential fans alike — and really interview them about how they’re reacting to your comic. Surveys are also useful.
Keep in mind that the real reason may be that your work is simply not reaching the target demographic that best suits it. Ot it may be that your site doesn’t do a good job of promoting social-media sharing.
Or it could be little bits of all of these variables (and a few others).
At the heart of it all, though, you have to tell your story — and tell it unashamedly and confidently. If your comic is a anthropomorphic steampunk novella that parodies he works of Kafka, then you should be The Definitive Kafkaesque furry steampunk novella — leaving no room for someone else to be “that thing... only moreso.”
One thing the Web has showed us is that there’s an audience for every niche. Stop worrying about pleasing individuals and focus instead on telling your Best Story.
Everything after that is academic.
Photo by Wayne Large, CC BY-ND
And now for a little good news. Every year around this time, the US Postal Service typically announces rate hikes. But, for now, at least, the USPS is not changing their prices for the new year. Coupled with the reduction in Priority Mail pricing announced last September, and it’s very good news for businesses that ship packages.
This is the first installment of the Lettering Hot Seat. I’m going to leave the call for participants open for a while longer in case anyone else wants to participate. And I really encourage you to do so. I’ve often said that improving in this area can make a “Meh” comic look great overnight.
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DEADLINE: Feb. 15
The National Cartoonists Society is starting it’s annual call for entries for consideration for their NCS Divisional Awards recognizing excellence in professional cartooning. As always, you DO NOT have to be a member of the NCS to have your work considered for a divisional award… all that is required is that the work be eligible as detailed below.
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Gumroad is expanding its array of tools with an e-mail-distribution feature that has a bunch of useful applications. They all build on Gumroad’s Update tool, which enables you to write e-mails to people who have previously purchased your merchandise on Gumroad. You can send these e-mails to your Gumroad followers or to former customers. Heck, you can even filter the intended audience according to which merchandise they bought. From their blog:
You can use Updates to make announcements, send revised versions of products, and solicit feedback. And now, you can also use Updates to schedule emails and automate email sequences. In fact, today we’re thrilled to announce three new features that make Updates more powerful than ever before.
Those three features are:
• Scheduled updates
• Workflows
• Multi-file updates
Scheduled updates are a no-brainer. Write the e-mail now and send it at a later time/date. This is a great idea for sending sales e-mails for time to time (“If you enjoyed my book, ‘X,’ you might enjoy ‘Y'”). With Workflows you can prepare automated messages to fire off whenever certain criteria are met — such as whenever a customer buys a certain product. You can also use this to deliver content over time — such as an online tutorial or a monthly publication. And with Multi-File updates, you can deliver multiple uncompressed files in a single update.
Of course, Gumroad already offers a Subscription feature, which can also be used to deliver content that gets meted out over time. But where a Subscription is ongoing, a Workflow can be scheduled to close down after a set amount of time.
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