November To-Do List

November To-Do List

It's time to get started on (*choke*) the penultimate month of 2024.If you plan to offer new merchandise for the...
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ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

ComicLab Ep 359 — Should your readers be your writers?

BlueSky is beginning to feel like Twitter did ten years ago! Engagement is up, conversations are genuine, and follower counts...
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Understanding social media

Understanding social media

Social media is among an independent artist's most frustrating elements. We struggle for engagement, wage constant battles with "The Algorithm,"...
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Writing humor

Writing humor

Writing comedy is a challenge that is made even more daunting by the fact that humor itself is completely subjective...
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CMYK vs RGB

CMYK vs RGB

If you're saving your comics in RGB mode, you may be making a potentially expensive mistake. The content you are...
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ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

ComicLab Ep 358 — “Help! I’m not funny anymore!”

Cartoonists Dave and Brad share some thoughts with a young humor writer trying to find their Funny. Also: Is BlueSky...
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ISBN — a beginner’s guide

ISBN — a beginner’s guide

An ISBN is a 10- or 13-digit number used to identify a book from a specific publisher. Once your book...
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How to write a Halloween joke

How to write a Halloween joke

On Substack, a cartoonist was struggling with writing a Halloween joke. He was experiencing a common problem. He was stuck...
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Webcomics Confidential: Size doesn’t matter

Webcomics Confidential: Size doesn’t matter

when it comes to your audience, size doesn't matter. A small and engaged readership beats a huge, lukewarm audience every...
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ComicLab Ep 357 — Innovation fascination

ComicLab Ep 357 — Innovation fascination

Having wrapped up his 16th Kickstarter, cartoonist Dave Kellett shares some insights about setting realistic expectations, avoiding paid advertising, and...
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Holiday shipping deadlines

As hard as it may be to believe, we’re staring down the barrel of another holiday season. If you’re shipping holiday-themed merchandise such as greeting cards or calendars, you’re going to need to be aware of some shipping deadlines so your items can arrive in time. And even if you’re simply shipping books and other standard merchandise from your store, you have to assume the liklihood that the buyer might be intending to give the item to someone else as a gift.

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by on November 8, 2011
Posted In: Merchandise
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Learning from David Simpson

One of the big stories in comics today is the plagiarism of David Simpson, an editorial cartoonist for a newspaper called the Urban Tulsa. After repeatedly being called out for plagiarizing cartoons, he has been un-inducted from the Oklahoma Cartoonist Hall of Fame, and — more importantly — he’s lost his contract position at the newspaper.

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by on November 2, 2011
Posted In: Creativity
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How To Present a Position on the Web

A member has pointed to a recent occurence at the London MCM Expo, eliciting opinions about the issue. I’ve got a few opinions, but they’re not likely to be the one’s you’d expect.

In short, the organizer of the Orang Utan comics collective and one of its member cartoonists felt they had been wronged by the people running the London MCM Expo. They have some legitimate gripes.

But the manner in which they’ve presented their argument almost insures that they will never see a significant resolution to their case. Anything’s possible, of course, but they’ve made their chances awfully slim.

I realize this is a weird topic for Webcomics.com, but it has so many useful applications — from negotiatiating a contracxt to handling a disgruntled fan — that I felt it important to elevate this from a response to a Private Forum post to its own topic.

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by on November 1, 2011
Posted In: Web site
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Maximize Google AdSense

The key to making money with Google AdSense is CTR (Click Through Rate). AdSense pays out every time someone clicks on an ad (as opposed to other ad services which might pay per view). So to increase your revenue, you have to increase your clicks. And that means you need to help Google deliver ads that your readers want to see.
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by on October 27, 2011
Posted In: Web site
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Using Klout to gauge your social media outreach

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ have immense potential for spreading the word about your comic cheaply and efficiently.

I’m particularly impressed with Twitter’s ability to generate viral marketing — to the extent that I bought a monthly membership to 14Blocks so I could try to aim my message to the times when the greatest number of my followers were potentially logged-in to Twitter. In fact, every Sunday evening, I use 14Blocks to map out the entire week planning site-related tweets — comic updates, blog teases and other scheduled activity — for peak traffic times.

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by on October 26, 2011
Posted In: Marketing / Social Media
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