Now, more than ever, it’s easy to see what a subscription to Webcomics.com will get you.

Every Friday, you can read the entire Archive Dive post without a subscription. This is a post from the site’s archive that I pull out front again because it still has relevant information you can use today. This is especially nice for newer subscribers (or anyone else) who may have missed it when it originally ran.

Plus, at the beginning of every month, I do a wrap-up that highlights some of the best posts — from the site as well as the private forum — from the preceding month.

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Please note: The links below will lead you to content that is “subscription-only” content. Why do I do this? Simple. If you see something that intrigues you and decide to subscribe, you can come back here and use this post to jump right to the post that caught your attention. And once you do that, use the other Best Of posts to drill even deeper into the site!

Best of the site

Hot Seat critiques: We wrapped up our “On The Spot” Hot Seat critique, which evaluated participants on a random day, based on that day’s content. And we launched a Hot Seat critique series that has turned out to be fascinating — a Patreon page critique.

Kickstarter — The Add-On Reward: Whenever a Kickstarter campaign attains its goal, it’s expected that the creator will announce a Stretch Goal. But I didn’t have a good Stretch Goal lined up. Besides, adding all of that stuff to the mix means accounting for extra shipping expenses, and I wasn’t certain that I was going to be able to hit a Stretch Goal if it accounted for all of the extra money that would be needed. But I made an extra thousand dollars… with an add-on. The add-on is where it’s at — especially if it’s a digital add-on!

Using Kickstarter and Patreon Together: In preparing the Hot Seat reviews of participating members’ Patreon campaigns, I’ve seen a common error in which the creator confuses a Kickstarter reward with a Patreon reward. For example, he or she might promise a copy of an upcoming book to Patreon backers once that book is successfully Kickstarted. Not only am I going to argue that it’s not necessary, but it’s downright counterproductive — for three compelling reasons.

How Many Pageviews = Success? A reader wrote in saying that friend of his said that a webcartoonist could quit his/her day job once they reached a thousand pageviews a day. That friend was batshit insane, and I explained why. But then, we got down to the Bigger Issue… you’re looking for a Magic Number. And there just isn’t one.

Is the SumoMe plug-in Worth It? It’s promoted heavily on WordPress sites, and its free — except for the Premium features. But is it worth installing on your site? I reviewed it after using it on my site.

Five Writing Mistakes Webcartoonists Make: Writing is the bedrock of good comics. Readers will forgive a surprising amount of artistic “defects” if the writing is superb. It rarely works the other way around. So it’s important to identify some common writing pitfalls — and discuss ways to avoid them entirely. In hosting critiques — both here and with my Sequential Art students at Hussian College, I see many of these mistakes committed repeatedly. These are five most prominent.

The Thing That Makes You a GOOD Cartoonist Makes You BAD at Social Media: We webcartoonists rely heavily on social-media. We use it to promote our comics, our Kickstarters, our Patreons and ourselves. It’s how we talk to current readers, and its how we try to entice new ones. Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, or — heaven help us — Google Plus… you’ll find a webcartoonist there telling you about his or her new comic. And that’s where we go wrong.

Harvey Awards Nominations: You may know they’re due May 9, but are you aware that webcartoonists are eligible to participate? This post gives you all the details you need.

The Webcomics.com Poll: We found out that the issue of selling unlicensed prints at comic conventions was almost as divisive as this year’s presidential race.

The new Webcomics.com Poll asks: What are your update days?