Scott Kurtz, Cory Casoni and I discuss the rise of the ad blockers. How did we get here? And what does it means for Web publishing?
There’s another video circulating about creator’s rights that has some folks in the webcomics community worked up. This one concerns the TPP.
It raises some questions: Should creators be worries about the regulations set forth in the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
The video is pretty hard to get through. Skip to the 2-minute mark to avoid the preliminaries.
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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.
In 2009 — in the very early days of this site –I wrote a post that was titled Writer’s Block: It’s a Myth. It was a terrific lesson for me about choosing a clickbait headline for my posts. See, I chose a sensational title to grab people’s attention and generate links (this was before the site switched to a subscription model). And the headline did just what it was intended to do. It stirred up excitement — much of which was in the form of anger from people who had experienced serious problems advancing their writing that felt very real and un-mythlike to them.
The content of the post, however, holds a very good thought to keep in mind for those times that you experience writer’s block:
It’s worth a read, if you haven’t yet. But I’d like to move past identifying the problem and push forward to sharing some strategies to getting your creativity flowing during those times when it’s just not happening naturally.
Here are some excellent strategies for getting your creativity started:
PUT PENCIL TO PAPER
For many of us, creativity is intrinsically linked to the act of making marks — writing and/or drawing. When I look back on the times when I felt my creativity had stalled, there’s a common thread — I was unable (or unwilling) to start the physical process.
So snap out of it. If you’re trying to write, start a sentence. Or re-start the sentence that you’re working on a difference way. Use different words or put them in another character’s mouth.
If you haven’t even gotten that far, don’t underestimate the power of idle doodling. Start a sketch and follow it where it goes. Fill your page (or several pages) with nonsense, free-associative sketches. It’s amazing how much inspiration comes springing out of this process.
CHANGE YOUR PROCESS
If you write in one particular setting, find a new place. For example, if you write at home, go to the park — or a coffeeshop. If you write during the day, switch it up and write at night. But be careful: Make sure you’re still actively pursuing the writing process and not simply avoiding it. In other words, a trip to Starbucks can inspire your writing — but only if you actively try to write while you’re there. If you spend the entire time chatting up the barista or simply staring out the window, you’re doing more avoidance than actual writing.
DO SOMETHING MINDLESS
Clean your room. Fold the laundry. Rake the leaves.
But do these things without the usual headphones or background noise.
Allow yourself to do these things in total quiet. Once your hands are busy, your mind will wander.
GET BORED
I love it when my kids tell me that they’re bored. Because necessity may be the mother of invention, but boredom is the father of creativity.
So let yourself get good and bored. Turn off the music. Unplug the TV.
Oh, and get far, far away from anything that will deliver you the Internet.
Remove all the distractions and then get beautifully bored.
Your mind will find something to do. All you have to do is direct it.
GIVE UP
If you’ve spun your wheels for an hour or so — and I mean really, really tried to get some creativity happening — give up. For now. Do something else that makes productive use of your time. For me, that often means pencilling some of the strips I’ve already written. Or do something that needs to be addressed for your business (are your receipts organized and filed so you can find them during tax season?). Or make that improvement to your Web site that you’ve been putting off. Just make it a point to come back to writing at your first opportunity and try again.
EXERSIZE
Get your heart rate up and keep it up. Get a good, long, tiring workout in. And then, once your body is good and exhausted, sit yourself down and write.
SUGAR AND/OR CAFFEINE
Not a health nut? Stop by Dunkin Donuts and pick up a large coffee and a donut. The resulting buzz can propel you into a little chemical-induced creativity.
Before you take this as a license to write off bad eating habits as the cost of doing business, keep this in mind: This works best when the sugar/caffeine comes as a jolt to your system. If a coffee and a donut is part of your routine breakfast, it’s hardly going to be a jolt.
AND…
What about you? Do you have a tried-and-true creativity jumpstarter? Hit the Comments and share below!
A subscription to Webcomics.com is only $2.50 a month when you subscribe for a year. Not sure? Try the site out risk-free for five bucks.
Square, the company that revolutionized credit-card transactions at comic conventions, has filed for an IPO. From CNN:
The mobile payments company filed paperwork for an initial public offering on Wednesday. In its S-1, it said it is applying to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the “SQ” symbol.
Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan (JPM) and Morgan Stanley (MS) are lead underwriters. The number of shares and the price range have yet to be determined.
Square launched in 2009 with the goal of allowing anyone with a mobile device to accept credit card payments. Everything from small businesses to food trucks to Starbucks (SBUX) can plug the Square Reader into a phone or tablet and it functions as a credit card processor.
Simply put, this means that you will be able to purchase stock in the company.
And if that doesn’t fill you with a sense of dread, then you’re not paying attention.
Here’s why:
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The results of the most recent Webcomics.com poll are in, and it seems that the overwhelming majority of us are choosing to publish with no comics in their buffers.
Here are the breakdowns, and a few thoughts:
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With the Christmas season upon us, I thought it might be useful to do a Hot Seat critique series for holiday greeting cards (of all kinds). To participate, please provide images of your card’s outside and inside — along with your name and Web site — in the comments below.
Your ready reference for all things webcomics. Launched as a follow-up to the seminal “How To Make Webcomics,” Brad Guigar’s guide to the art and business of webcomics is largely based on his writings at Webcomics.com — as well as his 13 years’ experience in webcomics.
In 2008, Guigar co-wrote the “How To Make Webcomics” book with his good friends Scott Kurtz, Dave Kellett, and Kris Straub. At the time, this book was embraced as the “go-to” book on the subject. For years, the authors have been honored by colleagues and newcomers alike who have told them what a fun and informative read the book was.
And then, they all say the same thing: When are you gonna do a follow-up?
Unfortunately, with each of them busy with different projects, it was impossible to get everyone together to do a second edition.
Then it occurred to Guigar that he had already written the sequel. In 2009, after “How To Make Webcomics” came out, he launched a Web site, Webcomics.com, that has been updated daily ever since with the same kind of information that was in the book. Using those posts as a starting point, he started assembling chapters and adding new content. By the time the dust settled, he had a 300-page book that covered a wider range of topics and went even deeper on the content from the original book.
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 $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire. For less than three bucks a month, you can get a steady flow of information, tutorials and advice targeted towards your webcomic business — plus a private forum to discuss issues with other professionally minded cartoonists.
As you may have noticed, uploading a JPEG to your WordPress site kicks off an automatic process in which the file is compressed about 80%. This is great for the run-of-the-mill blogger that consitutes WordPress’ bread-and-butter user. But for us artists? Not so much.
In our cases, we’ve already compressed the image to the degree that we’re comfortable with — and an additional compression on top of that can sometimes add artifacts that make our images look worse than we intended!
So how do you prevent this from happening? Philip M. “Frumph” Hofer, the creator of the ubiquitous webcomics theme Comic Easel, has a solution.
It’s as simple as a few lines of code:
[css]// Don’t let WordPress recompress images.
add_filter( ‘jpeg_quality’, ‘mytheme_return_no_commpress_value’ );
function mytheme_return_no_commpress_value($quality) {
$quality = 100;
return $quality;
}[/css]
You’ll put this code in your Functions.php file under your Child Theme.
• In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance -> Editor.
• In the right-hand corner, make sure the field in “Select theme to edit:” is your Child Theme.
• Click on Theme Functions (functions.php) in the right-hand column.
• Now, simply plug in your code (like the example below) and click Update File at the bottom.
Please note: This only works if you’re uploading JPEG files. If you’re uploading PNG files, for example, the WordPress compression is not initiated, and there’s no reason to code against it!
It has come up in almost every conversation I’ve had with creators who want to use social-media more effectively:
“I don’t know what to say.”
Ironically, this is where our instincts as creators steer us wrong.
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To be fair, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Revenue from banner advertising has been steadily tapering for the last few years, and, as I’ve written earlier, we’ve crossed the tipping point of ad-blocker usage.
PageFair, which has been doing an excellent job of tracking this trend, makes it very easy to see how ad-blockers have skyrocketed in popularity since 2013.
Comparing my 2014 ad revenue to this year’s numbers made it crystal clear. I use Google DFP to administer ads from several sources. Tribal Fusion and Google AdSense are the top two. Here’s a comparison of each. However, it’s worth noting that the TF revenue is about 4-to-5 times larger than what I’m making through AdSense.
Unfortunately, ad revenue was a major factor in the traditional webcomics business model. The truth is, webcomics were never given away for free. Primarily, these sites generated income by turning pageviews into banner-ad revenue.
That market is changing. And as a result, our business model is going to have to change — significantly.
Here are a few thoughts on how our business may change over the course of the next several months.
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