Brad Guigar
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I would say this [liking Instagram content] is the main way in which you gain followers. More so than the Hashtags. more than twitter and more than Facebook This is why you see a larger uptick in the number of followers you receive.
How does this work? What I’m hearing is that the simple act of liking Instagram posts will make the number of followers on my own Instagram skyrocket. That seems… overly simplistic.
Sometimes, I use Hootsuite to schedule posts across several platforms, but I’ve gotten an indication from a few sources that social-media algorithms tend to discriminate against third-party posts. So I tend to post directly more often than not. However, I limit my posts to the “Big Three” — Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
UPDATE: I’ve made a post on the topic, complete with my analysis. I’d like to hear more thoughts on this, so please head over to the post to continue the discussion. And a super-massive hat-tip to Mark for being way out front on this!
I am unable to replicate this. I signed out of Patreon, and then visited several Patreon pages. Each time, I get the public-facing page, with the intro copy and recent posts. This was true for both desktop and mobile visits.
We use it on ComicLab, and people actually use it — and seem to appreciate it. There have been a handful of beneficial, engaging discussions.
I use it for my own, personal Patreon, and there is absolutely zero engagement.
I’ll second the endorsement for Dreamhost.
I’d also add this — if you really consider yourself a hobbyist, then my advice would be to use a free service like Webtoons (or even Tumblr). If you progress to the point at which you want to turn this into a business, I would recommend having your own site. But otherwise, open a Webtoons account, post you stuff there, and call it a day! 🙂
I just looked and it seems as if the Comic Easel theme is no longer available. I believe you can use the ComicPress theme as well.
Just remember, if you do, to create a child theme
Looking at your site, I have to wonder why you don’t simply use the Comic Easel theme — which would instantly place everything you’re talking about, like navigation buttons — and then adjust it to look the way you want it. It seems to me that you’re kind of re-inventing the wheel right now…
That being said, for the most accurate information on the under-the-hood workings of Comic Easel, get in touch with Philip Hofer. He’s very responsive, and he’ll give you the most accurate information.
Wow! Thank you for sharing that! That’s phenomenal information. And congratulations on what sounds like an incredibly successful Kickstarter!
(1) I can’t stress this enough. The reading experience on that website is horrible. Reading a strip in a mobius loop that brings you back to the first panel is the absolute worst. You cannot abandon that quickly enough.
(2) Writing — a step in the right direction! I see action! However… you composed those scenes the way I’d compose a workplace safety video. Detached, emotionless, distant. As a result, I don’t care about the characters. And that’s more fatal than a knife in the back. Here’s an alternative:
Panel one:
Hyper close-up of a baby in its crib. The onsie is soft and downy. It might have a cute cartoon character on it. There’s a mobile overhead with cheery, happy figures. A pacifier lays askew, alongside a peaceful head.
Panel Two:
The scene pulls back somewhat, revealing more tender details in the room — a baby monitor, a fuzzy blanket, stuffed animals, etc. — AND a shadow of a man raising a large knife falls over the defenceless infant.
Panel Three:
Tight shot — bad guy in the foreground, infant in the background. The man’s eyes are narrowed cruelly. The knife is at the baby’s throat.
Panel Four:
Ultra-tight shot of the bad guy’s eye — wide open in shock.
Panel Five:
Wide shot… we can see most of the nursery now. The baby is asleep, the would-be murderer is dead, and over him stands a figure — partially in shadow — but the scene is cropped so we only see this standing figure up to his or her waist.
END OF PAGE.
Now YOU come up with an alternate that’s even better.
(3) Drawing — You’re struggling with all of the problems of a first-time artist… perspective, proportion, color, line quality, etc. Start collecting books that explain these things. (There are lots of resources here, as a matter of fact.) And consider taking a course at a local community college.
(1) It’s never a bother
(2) If you’re just starting out, everything I pointed out doesn’t mean you’re bad. It means you’re learning. And learning is good.
Every cartoonist whose work you admire started out exactly where you are right now. And then they practiced, and learned, until they got better.
For me, it meant doing a comic strip six days a week, every week, for about five years before I started doing work that I’d consider pretty good. After another five years at 5-days-a-week, I got to the point that I was making work I was rather proud of. 18 years later, I’m nearly… confident(?)
You’ve got a long way to go, but if you love cartooning, it’s going to be an enjoyable trip.
That’s way I asked you “why did you choose to make this a comic?”
If it’s out of expediency (comics are cheaper than films), then you’re in for a rude awakening.
If it’s out of a love for the medium, then get busy on the next thousand or so less-than-awesome comics. They won’t be pretty, but if you work hard, they’ll take you to a place you can be proud of.
Let’s start here. Read this post. All six topics are relevant to you.
Overall, I’d encourage you to re-think your approach completely — from the top down. The font choice, the square word balloons, the sloppy balloon tails — those are all pretty easily fixed, but your webcomics-publishing approach is a guaranteed failure.
Here’s why: You are updating a panel at a time, but your individual panels aren’t strong enough to get new readers to stay. (Read “Standalone Days” in that post I linked). You’re not running ads on your site, so there’s no real reason to parcel these panels out one-by-one. (“Cargo Cult”… and also this post and this post.)
Presenting these panels horizontally in a loop that brings you back to the beginning? That’s a horrible, confusing, unsatisfying reading experience.
You would be much better off completing the entire work — first panel to last — and THEN posting it. Make it one, big reading experience. Lose the horizontal loop and make it a continuous vertical scroll. If not that, break it into chunks of story (chapters?) in which each chunk delivers a satisfying reading experience. And then upload those chapters.
Finally, I want you to reflect on why you chose comics as a vehicle to deliver your thoughts.
Your art isn’t very good. Your approach to cartooning basics (lettering, for example) shows little attention to detail. And all of that is OK if your writing is strong. But it’s not. It’s dotted with misspellings, sentence fragments, incorrect punctuation… But worse than the mechanics, your writing has structural flaws. Take the manner in which the third panel transitions into the fourth one. In Panel 3, man starts telling a story. And then halfway through, in panel 4, the girl sits up in bed and asks for a story?! (At least I’m assuming that’s the case — the lack of word-balloon tails in Panel 4 makes it difficult to tell who is delivering which lines.) Worst of all? It’s boring. You’ve dropped us into a boring exposition dialogue instead of immersing us in something engaging.
So, any discussion of this has to come down to one, crucial question: Why did you choose to make this a comic? Why not a short story? Or an animation? Or a play? Or a film?
