Brad Guigar
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In order to establish a baseline, can you tell me if you were able to find this tutorial, buy any chance? It goes through some of the basics of using Comic Easel — such as the use of featured image for posting comics.
Here’s my five-step plan for you (and anyone else having this problem)
STEP ONE: Ignore the post and let it filter to the bottom of the tank. Unless you amplify it, it will die a timely death.
STEP TWO: Do your comic, and post the best work you can. If good work takes longer, then put longer into it. It’s not 2005 anymore.
STEP THREE: When you post your comic, hit social media with excitement.
STEP FOUR: Take time for self-care and handle the things in your personal life that you need to handle. Those things are important.
STEP FIVE: Look back in a week, and realize that – even though this person chose a shitty way to express it — it’s kinda cool that your work elicited a passionate response. You’re doing something right.
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Now… to help aid this process along…
In your social media, I want you to improve the tone you’re setting.
Go back and look at the number of times on that Facebook page where *you* make the topic all about “timeliness.”
I see a lot of “almost done” and “making progress” posts. I see directions for readers who “don’t want to wait.” I see notifications about delays. I see “almost done’ and —— good golly —— slashed tires! (That last one wasn’t your fault, though.)
Here’s my point… you’re the one who keeps bringing up time. You can’t be surprised that your readers are going to talk about it, too.
What to do?
You’re in charge of that page. You set the tone!
Stop making it about early and late and delay and soon and sorry.
Start making it about the comic update itself. The plot and the drawing and the passion and the excitement.
You’ll be amazed! Your reader will follow your lead.
And when the quality of your work is strong, you’ll see that nobody cares so much about the when … especially when they’re so focused on the wow.
Now shake this off and get back to making good comics. 🙂
Since each update needs to be a standalone reading experience, I work in half-page installments. When I’m writing I’ll use the same “Cascading Brainstorming” technique — which we discussed in this episode of ComicLab as well. It’s exactly the same process.
Here’s where there may be confusion. In the first image, you’re seeing four items stacked one-on-top-of-another, and so you may be assuming that I make four boxes — one for each panel — and then fill them in. But, if you look at the subsequent images, you’ll see that I continue writing down the page. And then, if I’m still not “there” yet, I’ll start a new column and write my way down again. And then onto the next page… and the next page. And at any point, in any column, I might branch off and start a new column.
The number of panels is the absolute last thing on my mind. Good gosh, even when Evil Inc was a strip, it was sometimes 4 panels, sometimes three, sometimes two, sometimes one… and sometimes nine or ten!
That’s because writing a good comic has nothing to do with the number of panels.
The point is to write something that works.
Once I get to that point, it’s time to edit — and edit and edit.
Only then do I start counting panels.
Some of my half-pages have seven panels, some of them have six, some of them have eight.
If that’s what it takes to make that specific update work, then it’s up to me to find a way to do it (or re-edit it some more).
But the number of panels is — literally — the last thing on my mind. 🙂
So, it looks as if you upload an image, and then they find matches (doing a Google Image search or the equivalent), and then go after copyright infringers.
I’m not sure what it would find for someone like me. Let’s say I upload a bunch of comics pages. Now, the most likely case of image-based copyright abuse I’m likely to face would be someone who takes a piece of the page (like a panel or a drawing of a character) and uses it on a T-shirt.
I’m not sure that’s going to happen often enough to justify all of the extra work that I’d be putting into it.
Let’s say I’m willing to accept what “in the future, this is what we will become” implies. (I’m not.) I see three separate promises:
If we find an infringement we give you simple actions to take against the infringer.
Also, we help you make money with your copyrighted work.
Imagine that companies that want to use copyrighted work can instantly find the owner and pay them.
(1) How? I can file a DMCA easily enough. And then what?
(2) How? This seems pretty important.
(3) The problem is definitely NOT companies who want to pay copyright-holders. Those folks generally find a way. The REAL problem is people who DON’T want to pay. And they seem to ALWAYS find a way.
In short: Lots of promises. No clear strategy. My advice is to avoid them for now and keep tabs on them in case they come up with something concrete.
Today’s post has some pretty important information on Vero.
That’s a route that I haven’t taken, but I would advise a straight-forward approach:
• Create social media in the pseudonym’s name.
• Promote from the pseudonym’s accounts.
• Whenever appropriate use any of your other accounts to direct traffic to the pseudonym’s accounts (with retweets, shares, likes, etc.)
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Now, the hard part. Patreon is powered by personal connections. People tend to back creators on Patreon for personal reasons. (For example, “I like this artist… I appreciate what she represents…”) That’s not a stopper for you. But it does mean that your work is going to have to do all the heavy lifting. If the work isn’t top quality, it’s going to founder.
I’m going back through my notes, but none come to mind — but I’ve completely abandoned advertising for several years now. In my experience, most SFW ad networks disallow adult content, and those that do allow NSFW publishers tend to serve ads that are similarly NSFW.
If that’s the case, you’re definitely going to be shooting for the higher range of pageviews — regardless of what other webcomics are pulling. Some of those webcomics you’d be looking at have long ago adapted their business models away from ad revenue and incorporated strategies for social-media-only viewing. For many of them, they’ve all but abandoned advertising in favor of crowdfunding. As a result, their publishing actions no longer do things to drive pageviews. The focus has moved.
You, on the other hand, are banking on interstitial ads — one ad for every X number of pages. So your pageviews have to be really, really high to compensate for the lack of traditional static ad views on each page. You’re not getting paid for every pageview — you’re getting paid for every 5th or 10th pageview. As a result, your “actionable” pageviews will be a small fraction of your total.
And, of course, if ad blockers have the same effect on these dynamic ads that they have on other Web ads, you’re going to want to do everything you possibly can do to drive those pageviews really, really, really high… because a certain number of those dynamic ads are going to be blocked. Now you’re making money on only a fraction of a fraction.
No doubt, the dynamic ads have a higher pay-out, but it’s going to have to be significantly higher.
In short, you’ve chosen a very interesting business model to pursue. I’m really interested to see how it develops!
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Bottom line: To answer the question you originally asked… there’s no place that I’m aware of where you can find reliable statistic about websites that you don’t own. Your best bet, if you’re really interested these numbers, is to simply write the creators and ask them. You’ll be surprised at how many respond with frank, upfront numbers.
Just be aware… those numbers, in today’s Web publishing environment, don’t actually mean anything. 🙂
40,000 views a month is totally do-able. So’s 400,000.
But — again — those numbers don’t really matter. Especially since, in today’s Web-publishing environment, a significant number of readers are consuming content on social media only. A site’s pageviews is an increasingly insignificant measurement — and has been for well over five years now.
What matters is stuff like:
• How many of those online readers can you convert to become Patreon backers?
• How many of those online readers can you sell a book to?
• How many of those online readers will support a Kickstarter?I’ve seen an artist with 40k views beat the pants off a creator with 400k views in terms of important stuff like that. (And, of course, it can go the other way around, too.)
The point is, if you get too wrapped up in pageviews, you’ve got your attention on exactly the wrong metric. Unless, that is, you’re one of the few people making significant money from running ads on your site. If that’s the case, then it’s a number to pay some attention to!
I was going to say Alexa.com, but I just looked, and it seems that Amazon has bought that, and it’s wildly different from the last time I used it. Which is OK because I always found those numbers to be incredibly inaccurate. SimilarWeb seems to be what Alexa used to be. But I just checked my own site, and those numbers are way off.
More importantly… why?
I was curious, so I did a quick compare-and-contrast, and I want to revise my earlier comments.
Webcomic is being used by only a thousand users or so. It has only 10 reviews, and 2 of those are one-star reviews. Plus one two-star review. And, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention this. It’s a response to a Support ticket titled “Is Webcomic dead?”. A creator who was using Webcomic wrote: “I absolutely love webcomic and have used it a ton. I see that it hasn’t updated in over 2 years and was wondering if it is dead.”
Every time he uses phrases like “life-related reasons” and “unplanned hiatus” I lose a little more confidence in this plug-in. Right now, I’m hovering at about zero. This guy is just one “life-related reason” away from becoming a serious threat to my webcomic.
Let’s face it, if you decide to use a CMS for your comic, it’s going to be a major pain in the ass to change it a few years down the road. You need to know that the developer is in it for the long haul.
Comic Easel‘s Philip Hofer has been kicking around webcomics as long as I have. Comic Easel has been through countless updates — the latest was about three months ago. It has five times as many users and twice as many reviews as Webcomic — and all of them 4-star or better except for one 2-star review. Plus, Frumph is notoriously easy to contact with requests and suggestions, and he’s always ready to lend a helping hand. And if you’re a Patreon backer, he’s available for direct support.
I was wrong in my initial response. This is a no-brainer.
So much of that depends on what you, as a creator, want out of a CMS. Something that makes Comic Easel great for one person would be completely inconsequential for another. To further complicate matters, you’ll find that most webcartoonists have used either one or the other. We don’t tend to go back and forth. So I could tell you that you should choose Comic Easel, but that’s only because I use it — and I have no idea about the capabilities of the other.
That being said, if someone with a little more knowledge into the workings of both of these CMSs would like to weigh it, I’d really be interested in reading your thoughts!
I could see the 8-page installment idea working — but only if those 8 pages contained a complete, satisfying arc. In other words, they’d better be eight well-written pages.
The $1 price point? Too high for Gumroad. Nobody’s buying an 8-page eBook for a dollar. But as a Patreon pledge? Oddly enough — if you include some other intangibles — I think it might work.
Now… making the first installment free after a significant amount of content had been built up? I think that’s a mistake. It might be more effective to release the first eight pages for free from the very beginning. That way people would know whether they’re interested in following the story on an ongoing basis.
Heh.. Pencil Jack is how I found my back-up colorist.
And someone just posting this on Craigslist, for what it’s worth…
