Just a reminder. If you file quarterly estimated tax payments, your Q3 payment is due today.
Just a quick reminder that if you’re planning to produce calendars to sell at the end of the year / beginning of next year, this is the time to start. Here’s what you need to get moving in the right direction…
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Today, the Verge reports that Ad Blocker Plus will strip ads from sites — and replace them with… ads. From the Verge:
Adblock Plus is launching a new service that… uh, puts more ads on your screen.
Rather than stripping all ads from the internet forever, Adblock Plus is hoping to replace the bad ads — anything it deems too big, too ugly, or too intrusive — with good ads, ones that are smaller, subtler, and theoretically much less annoying.
According to the report, Ad Blocker Plus had been doing this in a scaled-down version since 2011. It would (for a fee) “whitelist” certain ads that would show despite the block.
In commenting on the story, the Ad Blocker Plus spokesperson revealed, perhaps, more than they intended…
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I posted a link to this Webcomics.com post on a Facebook Group for webcartoonists. In the post, I argue that we cartoonists shouldn’t focus on trying to get a million new readers. Rather, we need to focus on retaining those incidental readers who stumble across our sites every day — and slowly cultivate those people into fans. A webcartoonist — I’ll call her Ms X — took a different point of view. The exchange was fascinating, and I want to share it with you here so I can address one of the main topics it raises.
Here’s our conversation:
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This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
Today we’re going to talk about a sentence that every last one of us have uttered:
I really feel like if I could get more people to see the comic they would actually like it…
There’s not a webcartoonist alive who doesn’t feel that way. Heck, I would imagine it applies to any creative profession. It’s one of our very few Universal Sentiments.
But it’s a mindset that misses an important point, and until you understand it, I think it’s going to hold you back.
What I think you’re missing is this: You’re already getting new readers. Every day. The question you should be asking yourself is whether you’re keeping the new readers you do get. And if that answer is no, you have to take a long, hard, objective look at why that is. If you think your comic is good — and if you’re not keeping new readers — then maybe it’s not as good as you think it is.
Think about it. Every day you’re getting new readers. If they like your comic, they’ll become regular readers. If they don’t like your comic, they won’t.
Let’s do a thought experiment.
Let’s say I gave you a magic wand. With one wave of the wand, you could get a million people to view your site on one given day. On that day — poof! — a million potential readers. If that comic’s not good enough, how many of them are going to stay? How many of them will come back tomorrow? Conventional Wisdom tells us that you’ll get a decent percentage — but for how long? If that next update isn’t very good, you’re going to lose some of those. And unless you’re able to Bring It — with frequency, consistency and significant — on a regular basis, you will have lost most (if not all) of those million in the span of a few months.
Now, what would you say if I told you that you already have that magic wand?
It’s called your Web site. And although it’s not going to deliver that million new readers on one single day, it will deliver them over the course of the next year or two. If you’ve been publishing for a while, it probably already has delivered that many. Maybe more.
Have you kept them? If not… is it the wand’s fault?
I can’t tell you if your comic is good or not… but your traffic will give you some clues. Look at your update days. A high ratio of new visitors coupled with a high bounce rate tells you that you brought new people in the door, and they didn’t find anything there to encourage them to read any further.
And you have to compare both stats. For example, if you have a high ratio of return visitors — coupled with a high bounce rate — that’s an indication that those readers aren’t diving into the archive because they’ve already read that content.
Everything after the quality of the comic itself is secondary. But the two top secondary concerns are Web-site retention and social media.
Take a moment and look at your site from the perspective of a first-time visitor. Now ask yourself:
Does your Web site retain readers?
Does your site load quickly?
Are you encouraging financial support in the form of sales, Patreon, and so forth?
Do you promote archive storylines?
Do you make it easy to navigate into the archive?
Can new readers find archived material based on their own interests?
Can a new reader easily figure out the concept behind your comic in an About page?
Does your site make it clear that there’s more going on than just that one comic they see?
Does your site make it clear that there are other ways to enjoy your content — books, eBooks, etc.?
In other words, what are you doing to make sure your new readers will come back tomorrow — or at least stick around for a little while longer and become increasingly interested in what you’re doing.
Now more than ever, reading habits are changing on the Web. That makes social-media outreach on the Web super-important. Readers rely less on bookmarks and RSS feeds — and more on social-media alerts. It’s just something we can’t ignore. I offer tons and tons and tons of tutorials and advice on this site to help members do their social media outreach better.
But as important as it is to have a healthy social-media presence, it’s absolutely crucial to make it easy for people to use social media to tell their friends about your comic. That’s why I always advocate having “share” buttons under the comic. Having buttons on your site that lead to your social-media pages isn’t nearly as important as having buttons on your site that enable readers to share your work.
If you’re not doing this, I think you’re making a very big mistake.
Message boards are becoming less and less important (from a promotions standpoint) and paid advertising…? You have to put an awful lot of time and energy into making this a worthwhile investment of time and energy. Otherwise, it’s a gamble. Now that we’ve passed the tipping point in the use of ad blockers, it’s a complete waste of time and energy.
And that’s just the problem. It’s not a question of installing one simple plug-in on your site. And it’s not a question of improving a single punchline or story beat. It’s doing all of that — plus social media, plus a whole lot more — and doing it tomorrow, too, and the day after that… It’s an ongoing struggle. Next chance you get, ask a creative pro who you think has “made it,” and ask him or her what they did to get to that point.
Nine-chances-out-of-ten, they’ll tell you that they’ll let you know as soon as they get there.
Although this change was announced by Twitter in May, social-media toolmaker Hootsuite is indicating that “soon” is upon us.
Here’s what’s in store…
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Call it nostalgia… call it the urge to try something different… but I want to do something on Webcomics.com that we don’t do very often — a special event to showcase members’ comics and cross-promote one another’s work.
Back in the day, Keenspot used to be known for their annual “HalloKeen” Halloween special. Heck, you can still access one that goes back as far as 2001! And there have been several others over the years.
So, what would you be up for? Standalone illustrations? Short stories? Stories that jump from comic to comic?
Webcomics.com will host the event, and use it to promote all of the participants.
Hit those comments and let’s start talking about what we’d like to do!
24-Hour Comics Day is in a few weeks — October 1, to be exact.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
You don’t need a subscription to read today’s post!
This is a re-post from the Webcomics.com archive. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good example.
If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
The Ames Lettering Guide is a little daunting when you begin to use it. For general use, I’m going to suggest ignoring the holes on the left-hand side of the tool as well as the metric measurements.
Before we get started, let’s cover some typography terms.
You can use the Ames tool to measure out Cap height, X-height and leading. It’s an ingenious little tool. Here’s how it works.
For cartoonists lettering in all-caps, that center row of dots is really useful. It allows you to measure out the Cap-height with an X-height that falls into dead center. Finally, it gives you leading that is exactly half the size of the Cap-height — which is also a typographical rule-of-thumb.
Even though you’re not using lowercase letters, that X-height rule is amazingly useful in helping you to place different components of uppercase letters, for example:
June was an excellent example of the tremendous value offered by a one-year subscription to Webcomics.com ($2.50 a month). My readers got early alerts on issues that would impact their businesses, helpful tutorials, insightful analysis, and meaningful feedback on their work.
If you’re curious about joining, we’ve made it easier than ever with a $5 trial membership. You’ll get full access to the site for thirty days so you can see what you’ve been missing. At the end of the trial, you can choose to re-subscribe ($30 for 12 months of access) or walk away with no strings attached. You will not be re-billed unless you choose to subscribe.
As we concluded our Lettering Hot Seat, we launched a new critique series. When you sign up, I visit your site on a random day and talk about what’s happening at that moment.
It’s no secret. I despise some of the default navigation buttons that are included with webcomic CMS packages. The ones (as seen on the right) that come with ComicsPress are especially high on this list.
Personal aesthetics aside, using the default buttons kinda makes your site look like every other webcomic. It labels you as generic. Making your navigation buttons fit the look of your Web site is the first step towards separating yourself from the pack.
Although these instructions are written with Comic Easel in mind, I’m assured that the instructions are directly transferable to ComicsPress users.
New Patreon featuresPatreon has announced another set of improvements to their interface, including content tagging, a reorganized content page, and post previews. Here’s a quick overview — and a helpful Pro Tip if you’re faced with a long list of posts to tag.
Of course, Webcomics.com readers were alerted to the upgrade almost a month earlier, along with a guide on how to use it when it was available…
The August Creator Newsletter from Patreon brought some terrific news for creators! Patreon is rolling out tags for its posts. It’s in beta right now, but the ability to group your posts by content is around the corner.
In other Patreon-related news, the crowdfunding giant became the revenue-stream-of-choice for Line Webtoons. For the better part of a year, Webcomics.com has been posting articles discussing the end of the ad-supported webcomic. Here’s a significant indication of what we’ve been talking about for the last twelve months: Line Webtoons is partnering with Patreon. From the Mary Sue:
Today, LINE Webtoon announced that Patreon has been integrated into their Discover platform, so that readers can directly support the writers and artists they love by becoming Patrons, without having to leave their Discover page. Even better, LINE Webtoon is willing to put their money where their mouth is. According to their press release, LINE Webtoon “will make a monthly pledge to creators who publish at least two updates per month on Discover and who have more than 3,000 subscribers and 5,000 monthly page views per chapter in the U.S.”
Mailbag: How do I find an artist for my comic?Q.: I’ve written a script, and people keep telling me I should make it into a graphic novel. However, I can’t draw. How do I find an artist for my graphic novel?
A.: You’ve reached the classic Catch-22 of comics:
You won’t get a high-quality artist without paying them upfront.
And you — most likely — won’t have money to pay anybody (including yourself) until the comic is produced.
So let’s talk about how to navigate that…
Once again, we have reports of rampant bootlegging at a major comic convention. Bleeding Cool was inundated with stories about alleged bootleggers at Wizard World Chicago — including the Carolina Ghostbusters, Fatal Planet, and Ginger Zap. It’s a perennial problem that poses a serious problem for conventioneers. After all, if you walk away from a convention only to find out that you were duped into buying a bootleg, are you going to be able to trust any future purchases at that convention?
But how does the garden-variety consumer know a bootlegger from the Real Deal?
To find the answer, let’s look to history…
CC BY Rafael Castillo If you’re marketing to other cartoonists, you’re missing the target.
You see it every day — especially if you’re a member of any webcomics-themed Facebook groups. It’s ubiquitous. It’s pointless. It’s almost entirely useless. But more importantly, it belies a huge lack of understanding about the nature of promotion.
It’s cartoonists promoting their work to other cartoonists.
Let’s discuss why it’s so bad — and more importantly, let’s identify some much more effective methods of promotion!
The final reason to stop hosting reader commentsIn February 2015, I published a post that asked if webcomic creators really needed to host a comments section on their sites. By May of that year, I reported that I had curtailed commenting — and it had numerous positive side-effects for me. This release from NPR.org made it even more clear…
NPR is making an announcement today that is sure to upset a loyal core of its audience, those who comment online at NPR.org (including those who comment on this blog). As of Aug. 23, online comments, a feature of the site since 2008, will be disabled.
Here’s an analysis of what that means to you…
Commissioned Sketches — Saying No to the DoodleHe stood in front of my table, after hearing my prices for convention sketches.
“No,” he said, “I don’t want a commission… I just want a doodle.”
Try telling a plumber that you don’t want your drain unclogged — instead, you’d like him to come over and just… tinker… with your pipes.
He’ll tell you to turn blue.
I think artists could learn a lot from plumbers.
I made a choice to charge for sketches at comic conventions a long time ago, and it was the right choice for me. For starters, I never had the hang-up that so many artists seem to face when it comes to accepting that their work has value. What I do takes a certain degree of skill — and I’ve worked for a long time to develop that skill — so it follows that it’s worth money. And then there’s the simple logistics. If I’m spending extra time doing free sketches, then I’m being prevented from the things that I came to the convention to do — selling and (secondarily) promoting.
So I set up a very simple commission fee structure.
last month, I alerted you to Blasty, an online tool that helps you thwart illegal downloading of your copyrighted content.
Although I have had an excellent experience with Blasty, I wanted to share with you the procedure for filing a DMCA takedown notice. DMCA refers to the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” passed by president Bill Clinton in 1998.
I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk with Ryan Friant of Nerdarchy a few weeks ago. We talked about my history in comics and the future of webcomics in general. There’s a lot of great discussion there.
CC BY-ND Brandi Redd
I’ve been writing for this site since 2009, and I see a lot of webcomics. I initiate critiques, I get asked to do portfolio reviews at conventions, and I do comic consulting. I do it because I like it. I love talking comics, and I like having the opportunity to pass along the things I’ve learned by doing this for so long. AND, as I often say — here and to my classes at Hussian School of Art — I’ve already made all the mistakes so you don’t have to.
In seeing all of those webcomics, I see a lot of the same mistakes pop up over and over again. So I want to isolate the top five — not in a “boy are you a loser” way. Rather, since many of these are so widespread, my hope is that we can take some big steps to eradicating these six.
Number one should be no big surprise…
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