As a graphic designer who works almost exclusively in print, I’ve worked for about a decade with a number of different printers (large and small). This gives me a lot of expertise and expectation when getting anything printed as to what kind of quality I should get from a printer. So I’ve recently printed my first set of comics, and  as such I’m exploring the world of on-demand comic printing. In an effort to help the community, I will bring my findings to you all so when you come to the time when you want to print some comics, you’ll have some perspective.

My first stop on this Road is one of the more well known On-demand services: Ka-blam.

My Experience with Ka-blam

On my first visit, I wanted to get a sense of Ka-blam’s prices, quantity breaks, and formats. Ka-blam’s website has a nifty little instant quote wiget, that tells you all that information pretty instantly. Ka-blam has an option to include and ad for them to help lower the price of your cost per issue, which is also nice. The cost, over all, for a standard 32pg full color book is about 3$ an issue or there about. Sounds extremely reasonable, yes?

They also offer to add it to their online catalog, Indyplanet, for free, where they will pay you commission of markup minus printing fee  if you sell copies off their website. They also offer a service to offer it to Brick-and-Mortar comic book shops called “Comic Monkey”. They’ve recently also begun offering a digital marketplace option.

My book is the first ‘prequel’ chapter for my webcomic Brymstone. Fortunately, having intended for it one day to be in print, I had high resolution files. A high resolution file is 300 DPI or better, for those of you who don’t know. My first task however, was to make them fit into Ka-blam’s standard comic template.  I was actually quite grateful for the template, although as a designer who’s delt with PDFs forever, I was a little dismayed to have to send my print job as 32 individual TIFF files… in RGB. *shudders*

But this is their show and in all fairness, most of their clients are NOT designers who know of color space and proper discipline when making a PDF. So they are trying to make their process as easy as they can for clients who have no design experience whatsoever.

It took me several weeks to re-format, re-letter, and then have the work proof read. I did plan ahead however, as if you read the fine print regarding their print policies, you need to have your files ready 28 days before you need your order delivered. Not just 28 days, but 28 BUSINESS days, or about a month and a half, or the price of the quote goes up. Significantly.

Unfortunately I had planned to submit my files a month in advance, rather than a month and a half in advance. That bit me on the ass somewhat, since I got dinged with the rush surcharge.

You see, with Ka-blam, the faster you want it, the more you have to pay. This gets a bit difficult for small comic books, as the price per unit can end up not worth the cost. They also have a deeper discount if you want to wait 42 days or more for your books, but, lets face it, most people aren’t ordering like two  months in advance. While other printers have rush charges, you are usually paying that when you want it in less than 10 days, not less than a month.

I find this a bit ridiculous as a turn around time as every other printer I’ve worked with in my professional life has an average turn around of 10 business days (or two weeks). Ka-blam charges a 175% surcharge for what I see as a standard turn around time. Many printers have a turn around time of 5-7 days.  This extreme turn around is limited to comics. Their other products are standard 10 day turn around. I’m not sure why comics pose such a problem (binding issues perhaps?), but if you do plan to order from Ka-blam, make sure you are working MONTHS ahead of your delivery date.

The price break points are also few and far between. You have a choice of 25 books for a price break or 100. Most printers, the more you order the more you save. It seems a bit odd there’s only two points for the price break. I guess they don’t get many orders over 100? It makes some sense since most people who can afford to have those kind of numbers probably shop other offset options.

The other issue with Ka-blam is that they don’t do proofs. You send your files, and then hope and pray. Most printers have at least a digital proofing process, if not a physical proof. It’s extremely unnerving to simply send files, pay a lot of money and then hope that your book turns out okay.

That being said, however, I *DID* get my books by the time they promised, in time for my con and they were GORGEOUS. I have no issues at all with the colors or stock. It was a fantastic job, and came reasonably well packed in recycled shreds. I could recycle most of the packing material and box.

Their print quality is fantastic. The colors are brillant, the pages crisp, the cuts crisp, the binding was solid. The books I received were things of beauty, which had definitely made me proud to sell them, and I think the sheer quality of the books has made a difference to buyers and convincing comic stores to carry them. I can honestly say my books look as good or better than anything made by Marvel or DC.

Overall Ka-blam rates the following from me in terms of a printer choice:

Ease of submission:****

The upload area is easy to use, although having to reformat everything to RGB tifs is a bit cumbersome. Although likely non-designer types will find it easier and more intuitive

Proofing/prepress: *

No proofs at all (unless you want to order 1 copy, wait 10 days, get it, and then place your proper order), prepress is handled by you, verified by them. Make sure you follow their instructions carefully. Although if you follow the guidelines to the letter, you can get a great product.

Price: ****

The value is VERY competitive and cheap enough you can actually make a profit on your book at a low price UNLESS you need a rush job. Which can get very expensive, very quickly.

Turn Around: *

28 BUSINESS days are required to get the low, website generated quote.  So about a month and a half in advance. VERY slow. If you want a faster turn around, be prepared to pay for it for a comic book. If you need your comics within 6 weeks, you might want to consider another printing option, or you may end up paying too much for your books.

Product Quality: *****

The product was EXCELLENT. Great colors, no smudging, kisses, buckling, smooth gradients, clean edges, cut properly, stapled properly, and doesn’t take fingerprints. I honestly could NOT be more pleased with the quality. On par with any pro job. I cannot gush enough about how good the books I received look.

Delivery: *****

Delivery was ontime, as promised, with tracking, and was well packed so nothing got mushed.

Would I print with them again?

Yes, I would, IF I didn’t have an urgent need for comics (such as reprinting between conventions that are less than a month apart for example ) and had the luxury of ordering 6 weeks in advance. I was quite satisfied with the product, just the turnaround time seems excessive, considering everything else they sell they can turn around in 10 days.  I have no qualms with the product, and they offer many great services, but 6 weeks is a LONG turnaround, and 175% surcharge for what should be a standard turn around time seems ridiculous.

First off writers, I’m going to give you a very important tip that’s going to save you a lot of grief when you get to the point of pitching your project.

Two very important words. You ready?

Be Prepared.

What does be prepared mean in this case? Basically it means having your act together before you set out on the road to finding some art talent for your project. There’s a lot of things you need to do before you start figuratively knocking on artist’s doors. Remember, there’s a lot of writers out there competing for the talent. If you want to attract the upper crust of that talent, you gotta wow them a little. Here’s 5 tips on how to do it.

1. Have your script ready

This seems like a no brainer, but a lot of writers jump the gun when it comes to hammering out a script for their webcomic. There’s also the problem that comic script writing is a unique artform. Its not like writing a novel, or a short story, or even a play. Its closer to writing a screenplay for a movie or TV show, since you, as the writer have to convey a set of visual instructions to an artist, much like you’d convey instructions to a camera crew, actors, lighting specialists, effects people, costuming staff, etc.  Being a comic writer is a lot like being a director, in that you set the vision and the shots in the script, and then they are interpreted by the talent. I highly suggest you do some research into what an actual comic script looks like. There’s a lot of variation, but most artists feel more comfortable working with someone who’s bothered to actually learn something about how to actually write their ideas down properly for interpretation by the artist. Look at professional examples and make sure you apply it to your own story. Another little thing writers often forget (because you are word people after all) is that comics are a visual medium. You shouldn’t be focusing on pages of exposition and dialogue. You need to write out descriptions of scenes that convey visually your exposition and keep dialogue snappy and short. You need to shift your mentality to the ‘show it’ rather than ‘tell it’ mode. To this end, you should have written and edited, and had edited by a third party at least your first ‘book’ script before you go heading out to find an artist. You are going to need it to show you are serious about your end of the commitment and bring the best product you can to the bargaining table.

2. Don’t come empty handed.

A lot of writers come to a site full of vim and vigor and excitement for their project, and of course they expound on how amazing their writing and project idea is (even it sounds like a million other webcomics) and then follow up their diatribe with the inevitable  ” I can’t pay you, but…” and of course this is where most artists worth anything just walk away and move on.

You have to realize that an artist’s skill is not to be taken for granted. In fact, if it was easy to do, you, as a writer, would not be seeking one. You have to first RESPECT that fact, and be willing to reward that skill. Artists who work professionally rely on their skill to eat, pay their bills, and support their families and likely won’t be interested unless there’s cash involved at some point. Artists who are more hobbyists still want to get something for the hours and hours of their lives spent working on your project, although they are likely to be more flexible about what that compensation is. But you should never come to the table and say to the artists “I need someone to work for free”. You would expect to get paid or compensated for a writing job, wouldn’t you? Well artists need to be compensated to.

Most comic artists work on something called a page rate. This is how much it will cost you to have them do a page. Depending on what you want from them (pencils, pencils+inks, Pencils+inks+colour), this page rate will vary pretty dramatically. It may be as low as 10$ or as high as 120$, and of course anywhere in between. Typically the better the artist and the more you want them to do, the higher it will go. Sometimes a writer can save on page rate by learning an intermediate skill such as inking or coloring and only buying pencils or pencil/inks and doing the colors (or tones for things like manga) themselves. Its not a hard skill to learn, particularly if the art is simple. Some artists like to have a minimum number of pages ordered, but others are willing to work on a page by page basis, you pay for the pages as they are produced, and if you can’t afford a page, they just won’t produce for that week. Many artists fall in the 25-45$ per page range so you can use that to budget for yourself how many pages you could possibly afford a month. Knowing your budget and having cash in hand gives you leverage to negotiate with artists, and it will attract those of a higher caliber than if you walked in with nothing and disrespected the talent.

Maybe you really can’t afford to pay a page rate. There are other options, but here you’ll need to have your ducks even more in a row because you need to prove that their time investment will be rewarded. Here are the most common olive branches extended by writers who can’t pay their artists… yet.

Option A: Profit sharing

This usually involves a business plan on behalf of the writer regarding the operation of the site. The writer promises a split of any donations, profits, subscriptions or monies collected as a direct result of the comic or artists work between the writer and the artist. This is often a 50/50 or 60/40 split. This tends to be more attractive on established comics than new ones, simply because it can take up to a year to gain any sizable audience.  I highly suggest some kind of written agreement between the artist and writer to make sure that it is understood how this profit sharing will work.  Writers often like this one because if they make money, both make money, if they don’t then the writer still gets their art. Professional artists probably won’t agree to this unless its on an established title, but hobbyists might.

Option B: Service exchange

Sometimes, depending on the writer’s other talents, there can be a bargain struck for an exchange of services. For example a website developer might offer some programing services for art, or perhaps a musician writer might offer a song for art. A marketing professional/writer might offer promotional services for art. This is a bit tricky, matching values, but sometimes its worth it to an artist to not have to pay for other professional services. A writer offering this needs to evaluate all the skills he can bring to the table and offer in exchange for artwork.

Things you shouldn’t promise an artist in exchange for their work is:

• Exposure – because frankly they are probably already more famous than you and your work, unless you happen to be a famous author. Unless you happen to be some kind of marketing god, working on your project probably isn’t going to be ‘their big break’. You probably are looking at non payment options anyway.
• Experience – they can get experience working on their own projects, and its probably more enjoyable to work on their own stuff than for a boss that doesn’t even give compensate them for their time.

So in short, have a plan to compensate the artist. The more cash or profit potential you bring to the table, the more like you are to find a good artist. If you don’t feel comfortable stating a  page rate you are willing to pay, invite artists to submit a portfolio and page rate to you. There’s no commitment on either side, so its no problem to ask. Don’t ask however, for specific renderings of say… your characters. That borders on something called ‘spec work’, and its generally frowned upon since you are getting usable artwork for your project for nothing. You should be able to tell from a portfolio what sort of art you’ll be getting. No need to ask for specifics.

3. Do your homework on comic art

There’s a huge range of artists out there and their skills and styles vary all over the map. As a writer, you probably haven’t spent a lot of time LOOKING at comic art. If you are basically thinking of hiring/buying some, you should probably have an idea of what you are buying. When you get artists submitting work to you, you need to know how to evaluate their portfolio. Artist’s styles are kind of like finger prints. Each one is signature and unique. People hire artists based often on if they like the style they work in, and most artists really can’t change their style too dramatically. They can shift around a bit, but their art always looks like their art. Spend time looking at comic art, gathering samples of the kind of art you want for your project. Study it in every detail. The lighting, the linework, anatomy, detail, inkwork, colour, make sure you acquaint yourself with what is and isn’t the quality you are looking for. Make sure you know what good sequential art looks like, so when the artists do come, you can not only find the artist you want, but the artist you want for the price you can afford. Some very good, but new artists will charge a lower page rate than more established artists with possibly less skill. You have to have an eye for the art to be able to tell when you are getting a deal, and when you aren’t. As the buyer, this responsibility is square on you. Don’t get had.

Some writers also come to the table without understanding the comic market and expect the artist to somehow introduce them into it. That’s not really the case. You are expected to know the market you are entering and do your own research. This is YOUR project, you need to take on the bulk of responsibility for the business research.

4. Bring a collaborative attitude

As an artist with a lot of experience collaborating with writers of various sorts in both comics and graphic design, I can tell you it is infinitely more rewarding to work with a writer who is willing to work with an artist rather than be draconian about their writing vision. Open minded writers who are open to different interpretations of characters, environments, etc of their work by an artist tend to get a more inspired product than those who feel the need to beat their artists into a pre-determined mold. Most artists are a bit fragile, and while professionals can handle changes, and being sent back to the drawing board, eventually they do get frustrated with it. It is a bit of a curve to learn to work with an artist. Artists by their very natures are kind of flakey and weird. This is where it becomes very crucial that you do your homework as stated above. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential artist questions about their workflow,  how they’ve worked with other writers, what they expect in terms of freedom to create, or how much need do they have for direction from you. Some artists just like to be given a script and run with it, others might want each stage verified and signed off. When you are selecting your artist, make sure you choose one with a style and approach to working with you that you can live with. Also make sure that you are honest about the scope and length of your project from the get go and that the artist can commit. It can be difficult when artist and writer part ways halfway through a project, forcing the writer to get a new artist, and re-establish workflows and look/feel of the writing. No two artists will have the same interpretation of the source material. Its best for consistency to stay with one artist, unless you plan in advance. For example if you have short comics, each one done by different artists, its alright, but for a continuing story to just shift artists half way through a chapter, its disruptive to the reader.

5. Protect yourself

While most artists aren’t out there to screw you over, particularly those who are professionals and make a living off their art (reputation is everything), there are individuals out there who are a little on the unscrupulous side or just plain flakey. Artists are a weird bunch to work with and do not tend to behave like some kind of art ATM. Today’s society has us conditioned to expect certain things when we pay for them, service with a smile, the customer is always right, and the department story mentality. Art, especially original art, is not a mass produced commodity and the people predisposed towards making it are not Walmart. Some artists sometimes need a bit of babysitting to keep them on track. This means emailing them every so often (keep this reasonable, don’t do it every day or it gets annoying) to see how progress is coming. Its important with creative people to make sure you set deadlines, and set them a little in advance of when you actually need things. Creative people tend to be procrastinators and you don’t want to get caught holding the bag because they were late. Anticipate the behavior. If your artist proves to be reliable, you can always adjust. Its also a standard practice to pay the artist half of a job’s worth up front (to prove you are a serious customer) and half upon completion and delivery. If the artist doesn’t hold up their agreement, you only forfeit the deposit, rather than a whole amount. Being paid only half is also an incentive for the artist to finish. If you are hiring an artist, you may also want to double check their reputation but doing a little googling on line. Some places have places where deadbeat artists are tracked or deadbeat clients are tracked so that people can avoid them. This is more prevalent in some communities than others, but it doesn’t hurt to check up on how satisfied previous commissioners were with the artist. Often artists display commissioned work on their websites or in galleries and normally list who it was for. You can always message these previous customers and see what it was like dealing with the artist.  This type of research also helps you to avoid art thieves, people who steal an artist’s work or identity and takes commissions/jobs as the artist they have stolen the work of. Of course its fraud and the people who pay never get the art they were promised. Examine the work presented to you in a portfolio carefully for things like altered signatures (or missing signatures), clearly cropped work, work that appears to be degraded artifacted or signed with a huge ugly digital font rather than a hand signature). If you’ve done your homework, you might even be familiar with the work of a particular artist, and be able to identify if it is being used inappropriately. While it might also seem attractive to go out of your own country for cheap artists, keep in mind language barriers, time differences, and currency fluctuations may cause problems. There is also often no way to legally pursue anyone out of your own country if they screw you over, so keep that in mind when choosing your artist.

If you do plan on working long term with an artist, it may be in your interest and his/hers to come up with some kind of written agreement regarding rights, payments, schedules, deadlines, etc, just so that you are all on the same page and that everyone knows their responsibilities. This helps protect you, the investor in the project, as well as the artist, as they know what they have to do.

Start Early

The conventions/shows I’m planning to attend are happening in June, August, and October 2011 respectively, but I’m starting prep now in March 2011. Preparing (even half arsed) is a long process and if you want to have everything by the time of the show, you need to start at least a few months early. If you happen to be ordering things (like books, prints, charms, etc) You need to allow for production times and delivery times from the companies producing them. You also have to give yourself time to produce artwork, and complete the projects for these companies to produce. It often takes longer than you would think!

The second thing is that artist’s alleys in cons or other venues tend to be first come first serve. Some are juried (they take an application and decide) but most aren’t. You have to be on top of the application dates and make sure that you apply early! If you snooze, you lose. Its best to start with conventions near to your local area to reduce costs and learn the ropes, so find out what’s going on in your community (or at least within driving distance) and mark the date of when artist alley submissions begin. Sometimes there’s no set date, but you have to watch the convention communication channels (like forums, twitter, facebook, mailing lists… etc) like a hawk.

Deciding what to Sell

This should be generally done fairly early on as it takes time to produce. It can be hard to know what to sell, but generally speaking, there are some rules of thumb as to what you need. It seems intuitive, but its surprising how many people don’t think about this (myself included the first time around), at a comic/manga show, people tend to want to buy comics/mangas, so if you can produce one, even a small book, this should be your #1 priority. At my first conventions I had a little, hand made ashcan comic (basically some letter paper folded in half and stapled run off a laser printer). This time I plan to have something professionally printed. I want to have at least one graphic novel of 100+ pages, and possibly a second 30ish page minicomic. Ambitious? Yes, but worth it. This is one of the #1 things people come to cons to buy. If you forget everything else, this is the #1 thing webcomic people should MUST HAVE for cons. In my first few conventions, I can’t tell you how many times I was asked for a book. People bought the little ashcans, as crappy as they were, but if I had put some real effort into it, I could have done much better. So this time, I will.

Another common standby that people tend to buy are prints. My best sellers in previous conventions were always either generally topical (werewolves or busty women turning into werewolves in my case) or fan artish stuff. You have to be cautious with fan art, as a lot of artist’s alleys have regulations about how much you can have, and display due to copyright restrictions. So its important, that even if you have some fan art, to make sure you come with a good amount of original character artwork, which is usually fairly easy for us webcomic peeps.  Fan art can be a great gateway to commissions, which are usually pretty lucrative at a con. Prints in general are usually either commercially produced on glossy or good matte stock, or some people produce them at home on a good quality laser printer or inkjet printer. I also learned that its good to have sleeves and boards for them, just like comic books (actually comic ones are the ones I use). So you have to order them and have them intime for the convention, or go to a comic bookshop and get them. Last time I took about 15 of each print, and had them displayed in a portfolio book people could flip through. Portfolio books are very good for displaying not only your prints, but also original art for sale or sample comission stuff. People like to flip through them. I also used mine to showcase my comic work, which gave me a foothold into selling people my comic stuff. I plan on doing this again, since it worked well.

Other merchandise

Other things that seem to sell well at cons I’ve been to, I’m going to try, as well as a few dark horses. I’m going to get a button maker. These sell really well, and anyone I’ve seen with buttons has almost always done well provided the buttons were cute or witty. They are a fun collectible that a lot of people… well they collect. So they are predisposed to buying them. Button makers are pretty expensive if you are looking at getting a good one (about 300$ or so for the button press and circle punch), but they often come with a lot of parts, and once you sell those, you’ve almost made back your money. You can also share the cost with a friend or sell buttons to other creators to help make back your money. Generally speaking, these are good investments I hear, so I’m going to give it a go. I’m going to get a Tecre 1.25″ button press with a cutter. I’ve got a friend who wants in, and possibly some other people locally who I might be able to do some small business with. I’ll keep everyone posted on how this investment goes for me.

The second thing I’m going to sell that’s a little sideways is jewelry and charms. I’m a girl. I’m crafty, and this is actually really cool to me. I’ve picked up some ultra light sculpty, and plan on doing cellphone charms with it as well as beads for the jewelry. This is highly experimental. I intend to try to go cute with some, and more cool tribal with others. This is another ‘we’ll see how it goes’. I’ve got a backup plan to sell whatever I don’t managed to get rid of at the cons on-line. I am going to try to tie the jewelry/charms into my comics, but in a very generalistic sort of way. Most merch doesn’t do well if its too tied into a property no one knows about, but if its very general, like say werewolves and vampires, or medieval heraldry or tribal magic, it tends to hit on more casual congoers. So its good to be able to identify yourself in a very general sort of way.

The same applies to T-shirts, of which I plan to make a very limited amount with only one or two general designs. It is generally pretty expensive to carry this sort of merchandise for a smaller con, like two of the ones I’m going to, but I’m kind of banking on merch for all three (assuming I get tables at all three… we’re still waiting to see how that pans out).

My goal with having a variety of merchandise is to hit on all the various price points. A lot of people come to cons with variable amounts of money to spend. Kids tend to be given small amounts of money by their parents to spend, whereas teens or young adults typically are willing to spend more. I’m sure you can remember a time in your life when you were a kid somewhere and your parents gave you a small amount of money, maybe five dollars or less to ‘pick out something’. So you want to have stuff that’s only a small amount of money, like a $1-5, a midrange of about $5-10, and then the higher end stuff which is often $10+. A lot of people also come to conventions looking for deals. Make sure you can price your stuff as a deal ( two-for-one, or three-for-two, or a bonus if you buy something else) to help entice customers to buy.

Giveaways & Freebees

Generally you also need some kind of freebees to people, promoting your comic to them even if they don’t buy something. Bookmarks, businesscards, and stickers are often good giveaways. I’ve already got a bunch of business cards from previous years that are still good, but I’ll need to do some bookmarks or fliers of some kind to give to people for free.

Because this stuff is given away, it has to be kept fairly inexpensive. You don’t want to put all your money into the stuff that isn’t going to make anything back. My personal focus for my freebees is to get people to go to my website after the con. The more useful I can make my free stuff, the more likely people will keep it and it will remind them to visit my website. If I can build my personal brand, that’s even better, as I can use my freebees to reinforce my brand to potential new customers.

The Booth/Table setup

This is the other major thing I’m working on at this point. Your booth setup can make or break your show. Numerous tales of how a very small tweek to a booth setup changed the fortunes of a webcomic artist have been spun on various blogs and con journals. One thing that is always stressed is vertical space. I’m going to need some ways of displaying my products that take advantage of vertical space and don’t hinge too much on anything hanging below the knees. At smaller shows, a table banner might work alright, but at bigger shows, the traffic of people just walking by obscures it. I plan on having a fair number of things, so I want to be able to show them all well.

Things I need to get sorted:

• A vertical or hanging banner above my head
• A vertical way of displaying art and jewelry
• Bookstands
• Display for buttons and other small items like charms
• Tablecloths (never assume you’ll be provided with one)
• Security for items on table
• Display for portfolio book
• Locking moneybox
• Transportation system for display/items

Most of this stuff I can buy, but its expensive to buy professionally produced banners with their associated hardware. I’ve researched other artist’s setups and found some ideas I think would work alright, perhaps a bit cheaper, such as setups with PVC poles and vinyl banners, and simple grid panels for vertical hanging space. Its just a matter of making sure that they will collapse and setup without too much difficulty. You never know how far you’ll have to hoof all your stuff, so its best to make sure you can get your setup into as compact a space as possible. This may also require me to buy a little cart or rolling bag to put everything on (or in).

I’ll probably have to buy a metal lockbox, I know I can get stuff like that from staples. I should also produce a sign that has my commission prices on it. I’ve forgotten this one several times now, and hand done signs look unprofessional and tacky.

Once I get my stuff sorted out and start making progress, I’ll chronicle my journey and successes (and failures) here in other related articles. Stay tuned to see how I fare in my journey to showing at conventions.

Comics that stand out have GOOD WRITING

You know all those times in English class when you looked at the teacher with resigned disdain in your eyes? Remember how, as you doodled superheros and cartoons in the margins of your books, you wondered why things like ‘semi-colons’, ‘spelling’ and ‘sentence structure’ were important? Do you remember when they asked you to analyze the structure of of a story that you scoffed at words like  “crisis”, “climax”, and “dénouement”? You wondered to yourself when you were actually going to use this stuff anyway? Well, the answer is, in your comic.

Comics are a story medium. Even if you are going to write a joke comic that’s four panels long, there’s still a beginning, middle, and end.  You need to understand things like conflict, pacing, and plot, and tension and how to create them. If you are going to do a long form comic, this becomes critical because the story is the lifeblood and longevity of your comic. Awesome art can attract people to your comic, but without a solid storyline to keep people hooked day in and day out, its just fluffy, pretty art and the readers lose interest fast. Good webcomics, comics that stand out, have good stories and good writing. Dialogue is strong, pacing is  even stronger, and the use of dialogue and plot are masterfully used to keep readers faithfully coming back every week.

Assuming here that I’m speaking to people who are thinking of making English comics, another common mistake that lowers a comics bar is to make simple spelling and grammar errors. Webcomics might give you the freedom to not be under an editors thumb, but you now become your own editor and proofreader, which puts all the responsibility of proofing your work on you. If you can’t spell, you look like an idiot, and constant spelling errors and grammar problems in a comic results in readers having difficulty getting the story out. Comics that are persistently plagued by spelling errors appear unprofessional and its harder for readers to get into the story, and is jarring them out of the story every time they come across one. Its not hard to run a spellchecker or have a proof reader look at your pages before you post them.

Comics are a unique medium to write for, particularly webcomics as they aren’t published generally in one big block, but a single page at a time. The flow of the story on the page has to grab the reader in a very short space of time, not just once, but with every single page. The expression ‘page turner’ very much applies to webcomics that are well written.

Another extremely common mistake is that comic creators don’t plan out their story in its entirety. They start writing, but they never actually take a story all the way through from beginning to end. They don’t plan out their character’s development, pacing, plot, figure out a total page count, edit it, have it beta read, edit it some more, etc. Its important when you are writing comics to have a plan with your story, or you may find yourself written into corners, and having to butcher your otherwise well written comic to suddenly account for massive plotholes or story shifts that mess with the pacing to get you out of a writing jam. A really good comic has a cohesive story from beginning to end. Make sure you’ve planned your story all the way through.

The bottom line: Building a comic is like building a house. If you want your comic to rock from the get go, you need to start with a solid foundation and strong supports on which to put the dressings. Writing and story is the foundation to any comic, from jokes that make you bust a gut to an epic story that spans ages. If you want to build a comic that stands out, your story has to be solid. Not just in concept, but in actual execution. You have to be able to write, and write well. Without solid writing, the readers won’t stick around.

Comics that stand out have GOOD ART

Its been a long debate if story or art is more important in a comic. The reality is that webcomics that really stand out have both. Not only are they examples of excellent story telling, but the art is of such a quality that it really supports the story. This is not to say that all art is shiny and of a certain style, or even has to be hand drawn, but comics are a visual medium and as such require good supporting artwork.

The second part of that is that the artwork has to be suitable to the sequential nature of comics. There are a lot of wonderful pinup artists or artists who do everything BUT sequential art, but the harsh reality is that comics are a unique art form and require art that not only illustrates the words, but breathes them to life.

Generally most of the most notable comics are drawn, either digitally or by hand, although some have managed to carve out niches in less traditional mediums such as 3D or sprites. But all of them that are truly notable display a skill at handling the medium they have chosen. If we keep with the house analogy, the story is the foundation and soundness of the structure, art is the curb appeal and dressings. Art that is strong to the story concept helps to attract readers to have a look, and support the story. When you are choosing how you want to illustrate a story, you need to consider what sort of art work would support the writing, and breathe life into it.  Artistic decisions should be actively made regarding options such as if the comic is black and white or colour, if it is in a particular style (manga, independant, marvel, european, 3D…), colour schemes, digital, traditional, all these factors need to be considered, weighed and ultimately decided for or against in relation to if it helps the written work. There are of course other factors, such as speed at which the artwork can be completed, level of skill, materials available, but ultimately, what the writing needs, should be what it gets.  The artist needs to at least be able to convey the heart of the writing through expression, movement, composition, and mood, no matter if its a hilarious joke or a somber dramatic scene. Cartooning, and indeed any sequential art is a medium that has to tell a story. Each panel has to communicate as much as possible unspoken, and the very best webcomics do this very well.

Comics that stand out UPDATE ON TIME

One thing that makes a webcomic look professional, and keeps people coming back, are webcomics that update on time.  Updating on time shows a level of commitment to your comic, to your fans, and to the work. People are ultimately creatures of habit. In order to get them to keep coming back week after week, they have to always get their cookie when you say its coming. And it will become habit and they will keep checking back. That habit can span over years if don’t correctly, and hold your audience even if you have to take an unexpected break or hiatus. However, webcomics that update sporadically, once a year, or say they update a particular day and never do, are disappointing to their audience. The audience is fickle in that they want their free entertainment and they want it when its promised. Years of tv shows, and before that radio shows, and before that plays,  being on at a particular time of day, a promised time of debut, people want to see it when its promised. They spend all week waiting, and they want their cookie. To deny them their promised morsel is going to damage your reputation over time, and believe you mean, it takes a LONG time to rebuild it when you do get your act together. The solution, especially if you take a long time to do comics, is never to promise more than you can deliver. Make sure you know your production schedule, and err on the side of caution. If you can only deliver a comic every other week, then only promise it every other week. If you can do more, buffer it, or offer it as a bonus. But don’t promise weekly updates or daily updates or any other schedule unless you can deliver.

Comics that stand out HAVE A GREAT WEBSITE

As webcomic creators, we can’t discount the power of good website vs bad website design for attracting or repelling readers. Most of the best webcomics also have really great site designs that make the comic easily accessible, and the most notable features of the comic site are easy to find and access. They also tend to pick colors and schemes that are appealing and easy on the eyes, and that compliment their comics. Good websites are also clean, and not overcluttered with advertising, buttons, and widgets. A lot of people do use the wordpress/comicpress combo for setting up their websites, which is fine of course, but a lot of people lack the ability or willingness to truly customize it so it doesn’t look like a generic site.  Website design needs to be both engaging visually, but also able to guide the users eye to the right places, and showcase the content, namely the comic, in a good way.

The most common mistakes are either to leave the site too plain or make it too busy. A stark white and black site with perhaps a header, no additional graphics, text links, etc. While this can work with blogs, with webcomic sites, it tends to just look lazy and boring. Then there are those that swing the other way. They try to pack too much into too little space. All sorts of adds, visual links, blinking buttons, widgets, polls, vote buttons, etc all packed onto their front pages.

There needs to be a balance. If you aren’t any good at web design, do yourself a huge favor and find a webgeek or webdesigner friend who can help you out. Working with a webdesigner can open the possiblity for things you may never even thought of. Also, asking for critiques on your website from fellow creatives can be helpful in refining your site.

Just always remember, the comic is the most important thing. You should have a very good reason for it not being on the front page.

Comics that stand out DELIVER MORE

The comic is great, and that’s what people come for. Ultimately, that’s what people want, but a lot of the great comics offer a little extra, either in between updates or as a part of the update. This can be in the form of blogs, tutorials, resources, wallpapers, gallery images, character information, world information, or simply really strong interaction with fans. Comics that can deliver additional content generally stand out as being more complete, giving readers something to explore.

The more you can give to keep people busy and engaged in between updates, the more value it adds to your website as a whole. Websites that do this well build audience not only for their comic, but for additional content. There’s also always a chance that people are going to come for the extra content and then check out the comic.

Generally its recommended that a webcomic be at least a year old and have a reasonably substantial audience before they try to make a buck. If you are considering merchandising, get some real metrics on your audience size and traffic using Google Analytics or something like Comic Rank to get some real numbers to base your decisions on. If you consider that only 5% of an audience might actually shell out cash for something (if you’re lucky), you should make sure that 5% of your audience is still a worth while amount of people to be attempting to sell to.

There’s a lot of questions that webcomic authors have to ask themselves when considering this step for their comic, not the least of which is “What do my readers want to buy?” In terms of considering merchandise this is a pretty important question to answer, and the answer isn’t completely simple as every audience is different, and what you might take to a convention and what you might offer via your website are also different questions.

However, there are a few stable products you may want to consider as your first options.

The Graphic Novel or Comic Compilation

This one is almost universally agreed to be the very first piece of merchandise you should offer, and also tends to be the one that sells the best on both websites and at conventions. The reality is that your readers already like your product (ie: your webcomic), and if you provide them an option to buy a paper version, they will take it. I believe so strongly in this option I won’t even go to another convention until I have physical books to take with me. Comic readers want to buy comics. Its just a no brainer.

Fortunately, there’s been a lot of breakthrough in the comic print-on-demand market which gives comic creators an extremely cheap and actually profitable way to produce dead tree versions of their online comics. With little to no overhead, no stock to maintain, and not even any mailing to do, the profit you make is really that, profit. Depending on the size of your readership, that could be a little, or a lot.

Print on Demand suppliers that specialize in comics:

Ka-Blam – Kablam can do both regular saddle stapped comics and perfect bound graphic novels, and their prices are very reasonable. If you need to order a bunch of physical copies, they provide a slight price break at 25 and 100 copies. They also offer a free ISBN at 100 copies. If you want to see their quality, you can order a sample comic for 2$. They will carry your book through their Indyplanet website and make your comic avaliable to brick & mordar retailers through their ComicsMonkey distribution site. Ka-blam also offers a quazi affiliate program, offering 5$ credit per new customer referals.

ComicXpress – One of the first exclusive to comic print on demand sites (least that I can remember), ComicXpress has proven to be a very reliable printer with good quality product I’ve actually personally seen. They have comparable prices to Kablam. Like Ka-blam, they also have an online store where they will carry your product for order, and unlike Ka-blam it is integrated with their main website. They have also recently eliminated any setup fees, which is helpful for new and upcoming comic peeps to get their book into print. ComicXpress offers the same sort of referral program, offering a 5$ credit to clients who bring them new customers (and those customers say who referred them).

Lulu – I’ve heard a number of creators who’ve gone with Lulu have a positive experience with them. They provide a wide variety of page sizes and binding options and provide templates for people to work with in order to make sure they’ve got their book laid out correctly for their process. They also provide store front services, and ‘publishing packages’ which include various services including an ISBN number, which is useful if you want retailers to be able to carry your product.

T-shirts and other clothy stuff

One of the next most common items that comics will put effort into making is T-shirts, and often other clothing (hats, scarfs, whatever) T-shirts are a bit of a dangerous territory as they aren’t as straitforward as simply putting your comic’s logo on the shirt and believing it will sell like hotcakes. Far from it. Unless you are famous already, the T-shirt has to be approached from a totally different angle.

After scouring interviews and videos, such as this one, its become clear that making a hot t-shirt is often about stepping away from plastering comic artwork or characters or logos on the shirt, and coming up with witty, interesting, and stylish designs that riff off the themes of your comic. These are things that would appeal to your audience’s tastes, but would still be something that someone who’d never seen or read your comic might still be interested in. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds. Designing for a t-shirt you have to really think about the kind of things your audience might be into or interested in outside your comic, and play off those interests. Most artists approach it from a humorous or witty angle or a ‘holy-shit-that’s-cool-looking’ angle.  But ultimately it has to appeal beyond your basic audience to a larger audience. Things can be inspired by your comic, have similar themes to your comic, but ultimately it shouldn’t relate directly. This rule applies for most clothing designs.

It is also worth keeping in mind that not all audiences are t-shirt buying type audiences. Just because it works for one comic, does not mean it will work for another. You have to really get to know your audience to be able to offer the kind of merchandise they want. For some groups T-shirts may not sell well, but bags do great.

In terms of price point and profitability, there is a few different ways of approaching it.

Printing Local – Like with book printing, this can give you the best price per unit to be able to offer your shirts for a reasonable price. You do have to deal with taking orders, printing, packaging, mailing, and customer service issues, you stand to make a much better markup than on print on demand services. There is normally a minimum order of shirts that must be purchased to get a decent discount, although there are more and more places where those orders can be 5-10 units. Although the printing on the shirt is digital, direct-to-garment- printing rather than traditional silkscreening, much like print-on-demand places. But at least you get to quality control your product.

Print-on-demand garments – Like book publishing there are many print-on-demand places that offer t-shirts and other merchanise, among the most popular (and notorious) is Cafepress. They do offer a large selection of POD merchandise, but have not always been the best for T-shirts.  There are alternatives however, like Printfection, Zazzle, Spreadshirt (good European alternative!), Redbubble, etc. There’s a pretty comprehensive list here. Although you might have to shop around to see who offers the best ‘base price’ so you can mark up your shirt decently (the markup is your profit amount, BTW) so you don’t price yourself out of your audience’s market. Most people these days, unless it is BEYOND cool, won’t make an impulse purchase of a t-shirt over 20$. Most are looking for a better deal than that because we all have so much less money to spend. And then there is postage and shipping to consider. Many of the shirts start out around 15-18$ leaving only a tiny 2$ markup of profit for you. Make sure you look at all your options. Quality and consistency is also a point to consider when deciding on a provider. You don’t want to be selling your customers crappy shirts.

Prints & Cards

Many artists offer prints, and if you have a lot of magnificent splash/cover art, it might be a considered offering, however, it really depends on the market and venue. Online, as an offering, cards and prints tend to do poorly in comparison with other offerings. However, at conventions, art cards and prints sell very well and it would be almost artist’s alley suicide to go without any.

Like with garments, you have a choice to print them up with a print company, or go with a POD vendor, or if you have a good inkjet printer, you can do them yourself.

If you choose to do them yourself, its very handy as you have a lot of control over quality, paper type and production. But be careful to track how much it costs you per unit (factor your printer ink, plus your paper, plus extra for the wear on your printer and electricity it uses) and make sure that your prints are created on good quality paper. Unfortunately inkject printed material does not hold up well when exposed to water, as opposed to commercially produced materials.

If you require a large amount of cards or prints to be on hand, say for a convention (or convention season. If you can order in bulk. It saves money), it is often more efficient and better quality to shop for a local printer who can do high quality digital printing on glossy stock for you. These prints not only look very professional but are more durable than their inkjet counterparts. They are also less likely to fade over time if exposed to light.

If you are looking to vend prints through your website, a POD supplier, such as Zazzle, Deviantart, Cafepress, Artybuzz or Redbubble. It will save you hassle in the longrun, however if you do a lot of conventions and are producing local anyway, you might find you get better returns if you simply vend your unsold convention stock manually through your site.

Sketch Cards

These are a kind of unique offering that has become popular in recent years both at cons and as sort of auction ish items. They are 100% original. They are not copies, and if you have time to do them, they can be a good addition to the table. If you want to read about them, there is a page here. But they boil down to basically being trading cards with original artwork on them. I’ve actually had people send me cards and ask me to draw on them. XD Its worth trying if you’ve got the time to knock a few off.

Charms & Buttons

A much more common offering at a convention than on a website, charms and buttons follow a similar philosophy as T-shirts in that they are best linked to, but not directly derivative of your comic (although sometimes characters work well with the charms, its very individual). Although done well, these items can be ridiculously good sellers. Because they are generally priced fairly low, and make great impulse buy items. There are also a lot of people who collect buttons, and as such they are always on the look out for this product to add to their collection. I have seen these fly off artist alley tables, when literally nothing else would sell.

Buttons have the advantage of being a possible ‘do it yourself’ crafty project. By purchasing a button press, and the button shell supplies, you can craft yourself as many or as few buttons as you need. The presses can cost between $50-$400, but many artists have paid for their presses several times over. You can also pimp your button making services to fellow creators and make some buttons for them too on the fly. I encountered more than one person carrying a button maker with them at a con for making new buttons when they needed, but also offering their services to other artists if the other artists were willing to draw button sized artwork. Obviously its easier to shrink art to fit the button size than draw in a tiny button.

There are places to order them however, like Smallworld Buttons. Zazzle, Cafepress, or other print on demand services that offer buttons. Many of them do. But watch the price per unit and make sure you are getting the best deal.

Acrylic charms for cellphones, books and bags is slowly catching on and adorable charms can definately hold appeal. Its also not a common offering, but its certainly more oriented towards the girly with its highly cute quotient and the fact girls are more likely to dangle things from their cellphones than guys. However, done right, one can create charms or jewelry that would appeal to both, but like so much, it has to be carefully designed to appeal to your audience. The only place I’ve found to order these is Printsess which offers both acrylic and metal charms. If you know any other good suppliers, let me know.

While I have seen webcomics sell these successfully, I think it very much depends on what they look like and the webcomic in question, as well as the sort of audience they have.

Unique Merchandise

Often some of the most successful merchandise is unique and creative things related to the comic, but that can be applied to the real world. One that comes to mind is the Medallions sold by Kory Bing of “Skin Deep”. Not only are the designs aesthetically awesome, but they could be worn by anyone that’s a fan of mythology, but gives a real fan an almost touch into the world of the comic, given that its part of the ‘mechanics’ of the world/story of the comic. They are also unique. No one else is selling anything quite like them, so there’s only one place to go.  Kory also polled the hell out of her audience before creating them, so she did her market research! A good way to see if your audience is ready to buy something you take the time to make. Polls are great.

Because ‘unique’ is the word of the day here, unfortunately I can’t really provide any resources because I have no idea what you might come up with. But the point is to try to be innovative. Obviously whatever you come up with still has to be made (or make-able) but being creative is what us webcomic peeps do best and by doing that we can bring merchandise to the table that is both great for our readers and customers, unique and memorable, as well as a good seller so we can continue eating while we make comics.

While there is a lot of other options out there, including toys, stuffed animals, magnets, stickers, etc. Many are too expensive to develop for a fledgling webcomic ( unless you happen to win something like Patch Together’s toy contest) and magnets and stickers don’t tend to be the best sellers or money makers but are better served as bonuses to include when someone purchases a book.

One thing to always keep in mind is cost vs return when it comes to merchandise, particularly if you are printing locally and footing the bill. Make sure your sales are worth it and don’t be afraid to do limited experimentation. A single run of 10 shirts of a new design, wait till you’ve sold them, then go print more if they sold well. If not, then you only have to deal with the handful of shirts that are left. There is also a benefit to taking pre orders.

Getting Merch on your site

A lot of the POD sites offer a store front or some kind of imbedded scripting to get the store front onto your site, but if you are doing your own printing and need something to supply an e-shopping cart, there are a lot of options if you happen to be running a wordpress/comicpress site. Simply by installing a plugin, you can have the functionality of a cart. If you aren’t running wordpress/comicpress, you may have to find a PHP solution, and if you are on a free hosting site, you would probably be best to stick with free hosting solutions. Some places like DrunkDuck even have integrated merchandise hosting. Unfortunately free hosts make things limited, but if you are using a POD service, they can often set things up for you to work around the problem.

Ending thoughts

95% of webcomics don’t make any significant money off merchandise. This can be due to a lack of aesthetic design in that merchandise, choosing the wrong merchandise, or simply a lack of audience numbers. If you don’t have at least 1000 uniques a day, steadily, its not even worth worrying about merchandise. Over 5000, you might begin with the book, and as you climb in your audience numbers, look at other options. Merchandise must also be turned over frequently to produce steady income, be prepared to do new things regularly, and try to innovate as much as possible. Be yourself, and be unique!

In the spirit of the season, this month, I’ll be talking about various ways and tips about making money, monetizing, and merchandising your webcomic, and finally what it takes to make a living at your webcomicing dreams. This first article is about what you need to begin making money on your webcomic.

For a lot of webcomic creators, there is a sort of ultimate dream of one day being able to make a living off doing the thing they love. Of course, in order to make your webcomic your day job it has to do the one thing that comics have never really been known to do easily; make money.  So how do you do it?

Are you ready?

There should be a caveat mentioned here, before we delve into the part that most people are eager to get into, and that is a little self check. While anyone with an audience of any size can begin on any of these income streams, you aren’t going to see any kind of significant income until you have achieved a certain audience ‘critical mass’. If you’ve only got a few dozen, or even few hundred readers, you won’t be making money hand over fist. You might make 10 bucks here or 3 bucks there. Some options won’t even be available to you until you have grown your audience to an appreciable size. I should also mention, these audience members need to be real bodies, not just hits on your webalizer logs.

You will also need to really KNOW your audience, in order to maximize your efforts towards the income streams that will yield the best rewards. It may take some experimentation, but be prepared to pay close attention to performance of certain items, particularly things like merchandise. It will give you real numbers of where to put your efforts.

There is also no instant success in this endevor. Just like it takes time to build an audience, it takes time once you start monetizing to realize income. It will trickle, then dribble, then trickle some more, then flow, and it may never torrent.

The key word is “Diversify”

If there was any one tip that I can glean from those who’ve actually managed to cultivate an income stream from their comics, this would be the number one piece of advice.

Unlike traditional income sources, most webcomic income sources yield only a small amount of money at a time. In order to get that minuscule cash flow up to a river of sustainability, one has to funnel several of these cash trickles into the proverbial funnel. Some of the routes hail from more traditional business models. Merchandising and print sales are among these, but these, like many traditional methods, cost money to make money (to a degree). Others involve more blood and sweat from you, but less cash up front.

Let’s take a look at several different ‘trickle’ sources. They include:

• Website Advertising
• Premium Content
• Merchandise Sales
• Donations
• Affiliate programs
• Subscription Services

Most of the comics who support themselves employ most of these methods, although the more sketchy ones such as micropayments and donations may become dropped off as ‘legitimate’ profits from advertising or merchandise begins to take off, although for any webcomic to make money, there is a sort of ‘critical threshold’ in terms of traffic that must be achieved. Each of the ‘methods’ have a different threshold based on what the user actually has to do to generate revenue for you.

Web advertising

Rating: Easy
Cashflow: Varies, normally low, particularly in the begining.

This is the easiest of the above options. It requires no special effort for you or the reader beyond the initial set up on the site. Sure, you sacrifice some space around your comic, but whenever a user visits, your traffic goes up, and usually so does the value of the box. With Project Wonderful, this process has been made very easy. There are other services however, and you can use them if you wish. (particularly if your comic is of an adult nature…)

This is a highly scalable income stream, as your traffic grows, so does the value of advertising on your website. The more eyes you have, the more you are worth. But obviously this works the other way too. While you might scrape in a measely .25 cents for the first few months, working on getting your traffic up can slowly start netting dollars, and then several dollars, and then tens of dollars and so forth. However this is also unstable as traffic drops or disruptions to the website will also drop the value of your ads. It is an easy come/easy go sort of income stream.

While Project Wonderful might be a good thing to start cutting your teeth with, when your audience gets to the right size (5-10K plus daily uniques), you may want to consider looking at joining an advertising network. The profit from such networks is typically higher overall than Project Wonderful, and more consistent, as the network has access to bigger clients, and since they work on selling the ads, you don’t have to. When considering a network, do your research and find ones that aren’t going to serve ads that are offensive or totally off your audience’s tastes and interests. Try to match the ad network with the flavor of your audience.

Donations

Rating: Easy
Cashflow: Pretty low generally

The equivalent of digital begging or perhaps more like putting out a tip jar, saying ‘if you like this, buy me a coffee’ can work. Its easy, requiring only that you sign up with paypal or another vendor to collect the money. However generally, if it is not pushed on the reader, the perchance for generosity is pretty low. Occasionally one might get a wonderful reader who donates more than a dollar, but its not often. Certainly not enough to sustain any kind of income, but it can buy you a coffee every now and again. There are mixed feelings about Donations as a method of comic income, and some creators are highly against it, and others swear by it. Ultimately you have to decide what’s right for your comic.

Affiliate Programs

Cashflow: Variable depending on willingness to flog or appeal to audience

Affiliate programs basically work on the idea that you partner with a retailer or seller of products, and for every person who goes from your affiliate link on your website and buys something, you get a cut. This cut can range from 50%-2% depending on the program. On of the most common programs is partnering with someone like Amazon or Barnes & Noble and selling books or items from their site. This tends to work best when people actually /Talk/ about or review products from a given site, enticing people to read/buy/invest in whatever it is that the affiliate is selling. For this you have to be both creative and active and works well for comic creators who are both bloggers and comicers adding value in both aspects of their website. Some partnerships can also just seem logical. For example, an tabletop RPG webcomic might partner with an RPG dice retailer, as presumably an RPG webcomic creator and their audience would enjoy RPGs. Affilitate programs tend to be more viable the closer related they are the subject matter of the webcomic, as they match the audience’s tastes. Mature/Adult comics for example, may have success through certain affiliate partnerships with other adult sites.

It is best though not to have more than two affiliate programs active on your site at a time. You need to pick a couple, try them out, see how they do, and if they aren’t performing, swap them out. Try different angles. A lot of this is trial and error, but you have to keep it as seamless for your readers as possible. Partnering with bigger retailers like Amazon have the advantage that readers will likely already have an account and trust with the retailer so they will be more willing to buy the products you’ve recommended from them than a small or unknown retailer. Sometimes smaller or specialty retailers might give a better % on their affiliate sales, but the more willingness to buy from a bigger retailer on a smaller commission might actually yield a better payback unless the niche is highly specialty and there really isn’t another way to go.

Merchandise Sales

Cashflow: Low to high

This is a bit tricky as it involves the actual creation and selling of physical products for people to buy. The decision to create merch can be a tricky one and I’ll cover the ins and outs of the specifics in a separate post this month. But here’s a basic overview to consider.

Merchandise or “merch” for short, comes in many flavors. There are a lot of options today that exist that never existed before, particularly in the are of print-on-demand (or POD). The advantage of POD is that the artist/creators don’t need to keep any real inventory on hand, and things are created only as people actually order them. They are ordered, manufactured, shipped, and delivered by the POD production company, leaving the webcomic creators to do what they do best without worrying about the technical needs of taking orders and delivering stuff to people. POD can be very good for people just starting out, but the downside is it has a very high base cost for the most part, and so profit margins are pretty slim unless you are doing a lot of business. Which, chances are, in the beginning, you won’t be.

The other option is to ‘buy local’ and do it the old fashioned way. Find a local supplier you can get a good deal on the product, have them print/manufacture a bunch of them at a discounted cost, and then sell them for a markup on your website. While there is generally a higher profit margin for doing things this way, the artist is suddenly responsible for a retail business. Taking orders, packaging them, mailing them, and dealing with customer service. Also, because most suppliers don’t manufacture small amounts of product ( sometimes called ‘small runs’), you might end up with 200 T-shirts that aren’t selling. And you have to pay for all your merchandise up front and make the money up. Some of this can be alleviated through a pre-ordering system, but again, that still means taking orders, collecting payments and keeping things strait so people get their stuff. Its a lot of work, but you’ll make more money than doing POD.

The art of merchandise design is also something to consider. Its generally agreed that just putting your comic logo on something or a character is NOT going to sell merch. You need to create stuff people would buy even if they didn’t read your comic. This is trickier than it sounds. The only exception to this is books. If you had only one piece of merchandise to offer your fans, it should be books of your work. POD books have come to such a point where it is actually economical and profitable to produce POD books. Graphic novels are still better in price point than traditional North American style comic books, but if you are looking for some thing physical to sell, this should be it.

Of course, the larger your audience, the more items you’ll sell, and the smaller the base, the less you will sell, so merch can be very hit and miss in terms of profitability.

Premium Content

Cashflow: Low to high, fluctuates based on audience and frequency of additions

Premium content is not new, but new technology available to webcomic creators are making it more and more doable. Premium content is content that people pay to download or get access to. Unlike a subscription, its a one time payment that people make to download or access the content once. Something like special wallpapers, or additional short digital comics,  icon packs, ring tones, anything is fair game for downloadable premium content as long as it has some kind of fair value. A couple of bucks for a premium wallpaper pack might be an acceptable price point, where 5 bucks for a digital comic PDF might be fair. Pricing is a bit of an art, but generally keeping the prices small and fair will encourage people to buy. Like the comic itself though, you need to continue to update it, so there is a large selection and continually new things for people to buy. If you don’t keep the new content flowing, the cashflow will slow to a trickle, because they are one time purchases. But it is a good way to offer cheap, additional content and give readers a way to support the comics they enjoy.

Subscriptions

Cashflow: Starts slow but can grow to make you a living

Subscriptions are a bit tricky to set up for, but once you’ve got the bugs, price, and value for the subscription worked out, this can eventually become something that builds to make you a living. A subscription is a re-occurring charge that is billed to a readers account to give them access to additional or special content that isn’t available to normal readers. The trick with subscriptions is that you have to provide value for the reader to keep being charged whatever you are charging them. There are a lot of factors in this, and I’ll do a seperate post detailing this stuff, but this is kind of a general overview.

Like the rest of the comic, whatever the subscribers get, it has to be in addition, and updated frequently (monthly at the very least). Smart webcomic creators have combined values and offerings that mingle with their regular webcomic work so that they don’t have to do a lot of extra work but still can provide the subscribers with services or product that they find value in. Some offerings have included:

• Bigger, uncensored comics
• Early updates (this is good for keeping you on track for the main comic)
• Exclusive wallpapers/art
• Sketchbook/insider information
• Exclusive monthly draws or contests for merch or sketches
• Access to an exclusive or side comic not publicly available
• Exclusive access to livestream sessions or Q&As with creators

The sky is really the limit, as long as whatever you promise, you can deliver on. Nothing turns customers off faster than being promised something and not getting it.

Subscriptions are particularly good for sites where merch or other income streams might be problematic or unpopular, such as Adult or Mature comics. Price point appears to be fairly low. 2-4$ seems to be the sweet spot for many subscription services, people seeming to get a bit edgy and more likely to cancel if they are paying 5$ or more.

Other methods of bringing in money

In addition to the above methods, there are others that many comic artists employ to raise funds, although they tend to be dependent more on the artist and their temperament as well as how much bandwidth they have for running things such as events.

Selling art & Originals

Several artists often sell original artwork of either pages from the comic or from the artist in general (of characters, of other stuff, yada) either through Ebay or private sales. This often appeals to the ‘collectors’ to own a peice of their favorite comics and can provide a decent income. Some artists don’t like to part with their originals, and may not be a viable option if you don’t happen to be an artist with originals (digitals only). Sometimes this can be resolved through the selling of prints, but that becomes a point of merchandise.

Commissions

Some comic artists will put their fame to work doing commissions. These can be quite lucrative at times, especially if the artist is well known or the commission was auctioned and there was a bid war, but the downside is that commissions a) take away from comic making time and b) make you deal with clients. Clients can be wonderful or terrible. Its a total crap shoot, but it can really tax the artist to be doing a comic AND a stack of commissions.

Vote Events

Sometimes Comic sites arrange events such as wallpaper battles, where people can vote via dollars to have  a particular outcome occur in the contest. These are great one time fund raisers or a sort of monthly incentive to donate, but can be time consuming to administrate. Great if you have someone taking care of this sort of event, kind of a pain if you are running it yourself.

Cameo Auctions

These are auctions for a person to make an appearance in a comic. It can be as little as a person in a crowd, or it could be for a speaking part. This usually dictates the price. Normally these go over very well, as people LOVE to be a part of their favorite comic and can be a good source of income. However, in order not to be drawing a HUGE number of real people its best to limit these to a few a month or something.

Webcomic creators are creative people, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list of all the ways people make money on their comics, but it should give you some ideas of where you could look to get started in thinking about ways you could draw some cashflow from your comic.

This is the first article in a series of several to come  that will explore all the ways of making money with your comic that will be posted over the course of the month.

The best way is to tackle this problem from multiple angles with a sort of ‘master plan’ in the worlds. Webcomics are a field of innovation, but there is also some etiquette involved, especially when it comes to flogging your wares. But lets look at this in order.

Step 1: Make sure you are ready

Before you start trying to draw readers in, make sure you are ready for them. A lot of beginning webcomic artists get really excited that they have their first few pages on the web and are desperate for feedback and so promote themselves prematurely. Remember: THERE IS NEVER A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION. Don’t let your enthusiasm ruin your chance to make a splash with readers!

In order to BE ready, you should have the following done. Feel free to use this as a sort of checklist:

1) Have a functioning website. This means that your graphics are all in place, there are no ‘under construction’ pages, any extras like shoutboxes or forums are ready and tested, your archives work, character pages are up, and if you have one gallery and tipjars are operational and populated. Make sure your site isn’t blank! Ideally everything is all spit and polished, tested and retested to make sure that when a visitor arrives, its easy for them to find the comic, the archives, and the way to other parts of your site. If you have any doubts, recruit a handful of friends to help you test it all.

2) Have an archive of AT LEAST 10 pages. This is one a lot of people get lazy about and trip up on. Ideally for a long form comic you want at least one full chapter in the archive before any sort of heavy promotion. Why? so that you have something to really hook readers with. Most longform chapters are 15-20 pages, but I’d say about 10 pages min for story or short comics to give the reader something to anchor to.  Comic s with archives hook better than comics without archives. Getting readers invested is what keeps them coming back. Don’t get lazy on this step! You don’t have to have 10 comics when you put up your page, but wait until you have ten before you proceed to the ‘marketing’ phase of this list.

3) Decide on an update schedule. This is VERY VERY VERY important and will have the most direct impact on your readership and if you gain or lose readers. It is vitally important that you decide on a schedule you can keep. If you can only do one page a week, only commit to one page a week. If you can do three, great, do three, but make sure you can keep it. In the beginning stages of your comic, test how many you can do as you build your archive but BEFORE you update. Try to do as many as you can. Depending on the complexity of your comic and your personal speed, you’ll come up with a number.  The general rule of thumb regarding updates is the more the better, but even more vial is to choose a number that you a) can keep up with, and b) won’t burn you out. A point also to keep in mind is quality control. Don’t put out shit just to make numbers. Its better to produce less, high quality pages, than a lot of shitty pages. Why? Because quality counts. People will come back even over long spans for awesome webcomics, but they won’t do that for crummy ones. That, and you will probably end up restarting/redrawing your comic at some point. No one likes to repeat, and nothing kills readership faster than reboots. Trust me on this.

A lot of you might wonder which are the best update schedules. The ideal is 3xs a week, the most ideal days being Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Its one of the most popular and one that’s proven to work very well. If you can update more often, you can decide if you want to update 5xs a week (many dailies do), or only twice or even once a week. The best days to update are usually Mondays and Fridays. Avoiding weekends as a primary update day is good, as a lot of people are offline on weekends and tend to check comics when they get to school/work on monday morning, or on friday afternoons when they are bored from the week. If you have particular days you can or can’t work, you may want to schedule your updates around your own personal life, which is fine, but if you work in advance, you can do both. Work on the days you can, and update on a ‘prime’ day. Keep in mind however, the more you wait inbetween updates, the less chance people will remember to check back at your comic. And if you miss promised updates, people get VERY pissed off. Do it repeatedly, and they will stop visiting your comic. This is why you need to pick a schedule you can keep.

4) Based on your chosen update schedule, build a backlog of at least 2-3 months and work in advance. If you’ve decided to update once a week, you need a total of 8-12 pages in your backlog before you move onto the marketing phase. If you choose 3 times a week to update, you’ll need 24 -36 pages in backlog. You might be wondering ‘why the hell do I need to work that far in advance?’, and here’s the answer. When you move on to marketing yourself, you may find that your comicing time is slightly reduced because you are busy keeping up with social media, posting on websites, doing fan art for other popular comics, and following the marketing section. To keep fans coming back it is vitally important that you don’t miss updates. It also takes some time to build trust, and get readers in the habit of checking your comics on the update days, and making sure that there is always an update waiting, reliably and on time will keep them coming back. Three months is a good solid amount of time to start building positive buzz around a comic, and if you are prepared you’ll never miss an update in that time.

4) Do splash art. You will need a good deal of it for the website, for your ads (that you will create) and to use in avatars and signatures on the web. Its important to have a stash of it handy also for things like merch later. Make sure however, that the splash art you do is extremely similar to what you are offering in your comic. If your splash art is too much nicer than your comic, when people visit your comic expecting to see quality artwork that you advertised with and they see something crappy. If you plan on using comic panels, make sure you keep some of your finished art without lettering to use as splash art.

Some guidelines for what you should have ready: Individual shots of main characters, some composites of up to three main characters, a few action shots with decent backgrounds.

Step 2: Marketing

This is the step that most people like to jump to right away, because its sexy and people are impatient. But if you haven’t done the “getting ready steps” you’ll have to go back and do them anyway to make this section work. Why? because you need to have prepared to do this section. So make sure you’ve completed everything from step 1. To make the most of this section you cannot miss a single update.

While your comic is updating regularly, and with an archive set up to hook readers, you can now start to put the word out to people that you exist. There are several ways to do this, and it keeps changing and evolving as time goes on. Given that most people also don’t have a lot of cash, doing stuff on the cheap is really important.

Strategy 1: Social networking

In today’s internet, this is pretty important. Everyone looks to social networks to provide recommendations of content and get updates about what’s going on in the world that matters to them (basically, what’s up with friends). Getting a facebook page for your comic and adding a join button on your site, is pretty top priority, with facebook being the #1 social networking site in use today. Twitter is also pretty popular with webcomic people and readers, and make sure you have an RSS feed for your comic. Other social networking sites you may want to join can include Myspace, comicspace, bebo, digg, Stumbleupon, del.icio.us, etc. If you want to go all out, there are many more that aren’t as commonly used, but I suggest looking at a tool such as Ping.fm to manage posting to a lot of social networks at once.

Just being on these social isn’t enough either. You have to contribute to them and build relationships with readers. Literally, you have to make friends and alliances. Usually this means friending other, influential people, posting relevant useful information (articles, tutorials, videos) and generally being a nice person. Getting involved is key to making these sites work for you. You can’t sit on your laurels and expect people to come and see you. You have to engage. This is why its important to have all your comic work taken care of, so you can focus on updating a lot on these networks. You can’t really just flog your comic, but your comic has to be ready to be flogged, so when you people visit your page, or listen to your tweets, or read your latest blog about art, or webcomics, or whatever, when you DO say you’ve updated your comic, people are motivated to go and read it. They also constantly see you on their radar, they put more stock in what you have to say. These days, its not just good enough to put out comics, but you have to build a positive reputation and quazi friendship with your fan base.

Strategy 2: Getting Listed

While the above helps you generate interest, you need to make sure your comic is listed in places where webcomic readers go. Also, people often use specific trackers to see when their webcomics update, and its a good way to remind them to come and visit. Certain webcomic toplists are also a place that people will go to cruise for new comics. Don’t underestimate going to where the readers are. There are a number of these lists around, and make sure you are submitting to them. Search engines are also important so make sure your site is properly optimized for search engines (SEO). Some examples of lists sites include: The Webcomics List, Onlinecomics.net, The Belfry, Piperka, and WebcomicZ. There are a more out there, but some come and go with the wind. Some lists to consider would be Topwebcomics.com or Webcomics Super 100 list. Comic Rank is also an interesting toplist as it helps you track your readership more reliably than stats alone. It also functions as a toplist. You may decide to submit to all or only a few of the above lists. As a new site listing your site in many places can increase your link backs and page rank, but if you are an older comic looking just to rebuild or increase readership, I tend to suggest only picking the larger of these sites.

Strategy 3: Get Involved with the webcomic community

As with social networking, this one requires interaction on your part, and I don’t mean just posting links to your comic. But there is a HUGE community out there of webcomic readers and authors on various forums and through community sites that create hotbeds of potential readers. A lot of these are on forums, and through webcomic communities such as Drunkduck, Comicgenesis, Spiderforest, and SmackJeeves, but a lot are independent such as Webcomics Community or webcomic.net.

There are a ton of them out there, and getting involved in some of the choicer ones that you feel your comic fits well as a part of will not only garner you visibility with other authors and fans, but allows you to cultivate relationships between your comic and others. This is important to the next strategy.

Strategy 4: Get Linked with other comics

Ultimately, the best way to get traffic is from other, like comics to your own. If you aren’t sure what I mean, its pretty simple. If your comic is about asskicking demons, you’d probably get more traffic from comic with other asskicking supernatural characters than say, a romance comic. Basically try to find people who write in a similar genre as yourself and find a way to trade links with them. Sometimes it can be as simple as listing their site in your links section and dropping them a note to request they do the same (but don’t require it, that’s kind of rude).  This tends to work well with smaller comics, but larger ones tend to get requests all the time, so you have to be a bit more creative. Its still possible, but requires more effort.

The best way to get linked back is often doing fanart or a fan story for a comic you really admire and think fits well with your genre and comic. When you send them the artwork, make sure you include your comic’s URL as a part of your signature of your email. A lot of fan art is put up in a site gallery and the artist is linked back as a ‘thank you’. Doing a fan comic or one shot is also a good way of promoting yourself and your skills to a new audience. Most webcomic authors use fan filler at some point, and its a perfect opportunity to gain exposure on a bigger comic without paying for advertising.

Strategy 4: Advertising

A lot of people still think that advertising is a dirty word, but today, through services such as Project Wonderful, its really easy and cost effective to get advertising on many comics one might otherwise never get exposure on.  Also, in getting involved you can also start generating a bit of revenue for yourself to either sustain your comic’s hosting, or reinvest into advertising on more expensive comics without having the money actually come out of your pocket.

Generally when advertising, its best to only advertise on days you update. This ensures that whenever people click through the ad, its a fresh new page they will be seeing. Don’t advertise if you haven’t updated in a long time, or if you only update once a week, try to advertise on only the few days after you update. Bid on comics that fit your comic’s genre and demographic, and make sure your ads reflect the actual comic art, not just the splash art.

Project wonderful isn’t the only place you can advertise, but its one of the most highly aimed at webcomics specifically. However places such as facebook, where highly targeted advertising tools are present, make good places to fish for new readers.

Step 3: Create additional content on the site to hold readers

Marketing will help bring new eyes to your site, and while the comic is good to keep people coming back, people don’t generally STAY on the website unless there is more to keep them interested. Content is king on the internet, and the more you have, the better your site will do in keeping people coming back, even on the days your comic isn’t updating. This helps keep your views up for ad boxes (revenue generation), as well as provides additional ways to interact with readers.

Adding a blog, art gallery, character bios, twitter feed, forums, games, etc. All add value. Keeping people coming back even when there isn’t a new comic helps create opportunities to continue interacting with your readers, entertaining them even when nothing is going on.

Step 4: Update. On time. Everytime.

This is the most critical point. While people might love your additional content, always remember, they are there for the comic. If you say you are going to update every wed night, then update every wed night. Nothing kills comics faster than missed updates, long term hiatuses, and erratic schedules. Believe me, I know first hand. If there is one piece of advice I could give any aspiring webcomic creator that is iron clad, it is this one.  This also happens to be the single hardest task in making and maintaining a webcomic. Keep this up, and your audience will grow steadily.

That all being said… a caveat to readers:

While all this will definitely help you bring in readers, it will not necessarily drive them to you in droves and guarantee instant popularity. There are many factors in making a comic ‘popular’, and marketing is only a means of getting the word out that your comic exists. You will gain readers over a period of time. Most audiences are built over the course of several years. You need to make sure you give yourself time and don’t become discouraged when you aren’t instantly popular. The world of webcomics is always changing, always evolving, and you need to keep rolling with the punches.

Good luck!

Most webcomic artists are not marketers. We’re artists, and inherently we are all about our work rather than thinking about big picture stuff like marketing plans. However, successful webcomics have creators that are willing to grow and learn new skills to be lean, mean, business machines in addition to artbots. When it comes to advertising on a shoe string budget however, it pays to invest a little time in wrapping your brain around a few fundamentals of marketing.

Advertising your comic

There are two key points you need to consider and have solidly in place before you start spending any money on advertising. One is ‘website metrics’. This is more commonly known to internet folk as ‘website stats’. If you don’t have your own website, you can sign up for a free counter or preferably something more comprehensive like Google Analytics. The second thing you need to do is a little thing called ‘identifying your target market.’ Let’s talk about one at a time.

Website statistics are important because they tell you things about the visitors coming to your website. It measures how many, how many unique, how many stuck around, and where they all came from, where they went, and if they ever came back. When you start advertising this is important stuff to know so you can understand your ‘ROI’ or ‘return on investment‘. When each dollar is precious, you want to pull in the absolute most quality visitors for the buck, but the only way to know if you are getting that is to actually measure the numbers of people who arrive from which websites, how long they stay, and how many come back.

Some of these trackers can provide you with a LOT of information, but here’s the main stuff you want to look at as measurements ( for the basics anyway, we can get more involved later):

1. Unique visitors: This tells you how many unique IPs visited.Think of these as individual people. This is more of a true measure of your readership, if you sort of average out this number over about a month.
2. New visitors: These are new people who’ve never visited your site before. Most trackers use cookies to deterimine if someone is ‘new’ or ‘returning’. If you are doing a lot of advertising, you’ll notice ( or at least should notice) a spike in new visitors. If you stop advertising, this will drop. However, the goal is to turn New visitors into Returning visitors.
3. Returning visitors: These are visitors who come back to your site. This is a good thing because it means that they like what they see and are or could become regular readers. You want as many new visitors to become returning visitors. The conversion rate between new visitors to returning visitors is something you want to keep an eye on over the weeks even after you stop advertising, because that will actually give you a measure of how many people are visiting your site and then sticking around.
4. Referring URLs: When you are advertising, keep an eye on your referring sites. Sites which have a very high referral rate as a result of your advertising, take note of! It means they likely have a higher percentage of the target market you are looking for. Sites that you are advertising on, but are doing very poorly, you should check out. Is the ad placement proper? Is it working? If a site is under performing, you should make note of THAT and save your advertising dollars for the sites that do perform.

Something that measures all this stuff should be in place well before you start advertising (at least a few months), so you have a baseline to compare against once you do start to advertise. They also provide a lot of other useful information, but I’ll get into that in another article. This one is sort of bare bones basics.

Target your Audience

One mistake a lot of people make when they go to market something (well anything really) is the idea that you can attract anyone and everyone to whatever it is you want them to look at. While you might be able to scream ‘look at me!’ loud enough to turn people’s heads for a second, the reality is that most of them won’t care unless they are already interested in that type of thing. There are just too many marketing messages these days and people tune them out. This principle holds true for webcomics as much as it does for movies, books, cleaning products, or toenail polish. If you cast your net too wide, the message becomes watered down and you won’t get as many ‘quality visitors’ as if you specifically target and advertise directly to people who will already be interested in what you are selling. These people who are already predisposed towards liking your stuff are your ‘target market’.

So who makes up your target market? Well to answer that question you have to do two things. The first one is a little research. If you’ve had your comic for those few months, see what sort of people are already visiting your comic. You may want to do polls to find out how many girls vs boys read your comic, how old they are, what sorts of comics do they like. If your comic is of a fantasy genre, chances are the people who read your comic like fantasy genre comics. Your counter might collect information such as referers (where people came from), and country they live in. Visit links of referers and check out what got your comic a mention and what sort of people were interested. This gives you some very specific information about the types of people who are interested in your comic. It can tell you what other sorts of things they are into, this is important when you are looking for places to advertise.

The second thing is doing a little guess work and thinking about your comic in specific and the sorts of people who would want to read it. There are a few things you can assume in terms of target market for webcomics in general. Webcomics, as a rule, tend to appeal to people age 12-30. Unless the comic is extremely targeted at younger children, or older people, most webcomic readers fall into that age group. In north america generally the comic readership is male dominated unless a comic is specifically geared towards women. Certain genres tend to have a higher female readership than the standard, for example romance or boylove comics tend to be often aimed towards females rather than males. However, action adventure comics generally have a higher percentage of male readers. If your comic is particularly violent, graphic, or adult, your target is going to be 19+, which will remove some advertising options, particularly from places like project wonderful. Generally if you have an M or R rated site, you don’t advertise on G rated comics. Its honestly not the audience you are looking for, and some comics don’t appreciate it. Etiquette is somewhat important between comics these days.

Generally if you have a comic that can be placed into a genre, people who like other things in that genre will have a greater chance of liking your stuff. You should seek out places where those sorts of people gather as well as other entertainment that fits in that media that already has large followings. Forums, facebook pages, and other social media works well for this. As does things such as fan art, or link exchanges with like comics.

You may also be able to guess other sorts of things and other specific products or entertainment those who share similar interests with you and the sorts of things your comic is reminiscent of. For example, if your comic has vampires in it, you can probably assume people who like horror may like your comic. Specific examples of other entertainment might be fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anne Rice, Twilight, White Wolf’s World of Darkness RPGs, and Dracula fans might also enjoy your comic. If your comic is fantasy based you might be able to assume people who liked Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or the Final Fantasy series of video games might like your comic. Think also about yourself, about the sorts of things you are into, that inspire you to do your comic, and may find audiences in stuff you are already involved with. Its always easier get people who know you personally to check your stuff out.

By advertising primarily to people who are already predisposed towards liking what you have to offer, you get a better chance of conversion of visitors who are inclined to click on your ad from a ‘visitor’ to a ‘reader’. Remember, the goal of all this is to gain a readership, and that means that people have to like your stuff enough to come back and check on it. If they already like that sort of thing, the chances of this conversion happening are much, much higher.

Getting your message to your target

Back in the day, it was a lot easier to get your message in front of people without it being too expensive. Today its a little more of a challenge. As a result, where you spend your efforts and money needs to be carefully considered in terms of ROI. That can include time as well as money. Today there are better tools for getting your message to your targets in many cases. Facebook has one of the most robust set of targeting tools for advertisements out there aside from perhaps Google Ads, but facebook is more personal. Project Wonderful also has some capability to target by selecting comics similar to your own to advertise on.

There are free options, such as doing fan art for comics that are similar to yours, getting involved in forums or other social groups that have a common interest that your comic shares onto (such as if you have a sci-fi comic you are involved in sci-fi websites) and making sure you put your comic and your signature and profile. It should be noted that spamming boards or any other social media is considered bad form and not only makes you look like an asshat, can get you banned and potentally alienate readers from ever checking you out strictly on bad behavior. Link exchanges with like comics are one of your best tools, as links are often permanent and raise your own page’s google rank. A link exchange is also a little like an endorsement, and a lot of people will check a comic out that someone they like essentially recommends.

Its also advised to advertise and try to exchange with comics larger than you because they have a larger fan base, but not necessarily the largest in the community. Often times, when a comic has reached a certain size the author will not entertain link exchanges or social exchanges. While fan art or paid advertising remains viable options for these sites, certain exchanges are not just due to the volume of requests the person probably gets. You can try, but don’t hang your hopes on getting an exchange. Some of the biggest comics, such as Penny Arcade, will not do them for fear of knocking servers out. Don’t even bother.

While targeting people who may already be into webcomics is a good idea, such as by advertising on webcomic sites, don’t forget that there are a lot of people out there who may not yet read webcomics, but might still be interested in your subject matter. Look for innovative places to advertise and to look at

Final Note: Be Personable

As a final thought, as you embark on flogging your work to the world, its important to keep in mind that in today’s climate on the web, everything is about being personable. Its all about being friends with the world. Genuine enthusiasm for your fans and for your work will help to propel you a lot further than being an asshole. While controversy can work in your favor, and everyone likes to gawk at a train wreak, its not the sort of attention you want over the long term. Be smart about your image you project. Be personable and polite, excited and enthusiastic. If you can get excited about your own work, and share that with the world, people won’t be able to help getting enthusiastic about your work too. And enthusiastic people share things they are passionate about to their friends. And there is nothing that beats word of mouth advertising. A personal recommendation is the highest compliment a person can give for a product, and a zealot fan can be your best ally in getting the word out about your comic.

Good luck!

Originally written by Kevin Kelly, the 1000 true fans theory states in a nutshell that if you want to make a living off your creative genious on the internet, you need to cultivate “1000 true fans”. A true fan being defined as someone who is so zealous about your work, they’d buy everything 10 times over, even your belly button lint if it was sold on Ebay. Basically someone who truely is ‘fanatical’ about what you are doing. This post turned out to be a pretty hot topic across many blogs, which even prompted further posts, against, defending, and comparing to similar theories, even some temperance from reality of doing it. Go ahead, read it, come back. You’ll need to know what I’m talking about for the rest of this post.

Although the vast majority of the examples and applications have been to music, its been put to other creative diciplines, from writing, to painting, to comics, to business. But I have to say, personally, as a webcomic artist, it intrigues me.

This is not to say I think this is the be all and and end all solution to the age old dilemma ‘how do I make money with my webcomic’, but rather a bridge. A goal to get from your day job to making your living on the web by providing direction and a target number.

The nice thing about this theory is that it sounds easy and friendly. Initially reading it, I caught myself going ’1000? that sounds doable’, especially on the internet right? I mean there’s millions of people on the internet. Finding and keeping 1000 people around who worship your stuff shouldn’t be too hard just on odds alone. But as I thought about it, and did some math in my head (although admittedly I suck in math.. so take it as you will), it became a little more… shall we say, challenging?

I’m only talking webcomics in this post, to be clear, my numbers are based on my experience in webcomics and being involved in the webcomic community.

A ‘True fan’ according to the principle, is someone who is SO crazy about your stuff, they will buy ANYTHING you put out. In the terms of a webcomic, they own every shirt, even book, ever button, the UNDERWEAR, win art auctions regularly enough you know their screen name, donate regularly, and hassle their friends to buy your stuff. They are the sort of fan that asks ‘when do I pay?’ when you are still talking about a hypothetical product. I’ll tell you right now, these people are RARE. Rare enough that when you’ve got one, you will come to know them as good friends or on the flipside someone you dread but smile for because they help pay your bills. At any rate, these people are your bread and butter, and collecting them is quite a challenge, because they have a pretty high upkeep, and there are all sorts of challenges involved in paying that upkeep. These people, at most are only going to make up maybe 1% of your total fanbase.

Now, with every true fan, comes a gaggle of what I like to call  just ‘fans’. People who like your work enough to follow it regularly, have probably saved every comic to their hard drive, and maybe have bought one thing here or there from your store, or are very patiently waiting for a product offering they feel is actually worth money. They participate in forums, polls, comment on your comics, etc. Overall they like you, they might follow your work for years, but they aren’t yet paying customers. Or at least not regularly paying customers.  These people aren’t a huge group either, but there are more of them. Say 5% of your fanbase.

Out side of THAT level, there is what I like to call ‘casual fans’. These are people who like your stuff enough to follow it, to read it, maybe not regularly, but they like what they see. You figure on their entertainment radar, but they are just not invested in you for whatever reason. They are the sort of fan that might check back every month, or couple of months, and read through whatever you’ve posted, or maybe even as little as once a year. They might not even remember the author’s name, or only sort of vaguely recall the actual work. But they remember they liked it.  However, you still have the foot in the door, in that they know your work, and they might like it, but something is holding them back from moving ‘inward’ towards being a ‘fan’. They are pretty much everyone else.

On the very outskirts of your ‘circle of influence’ as it were, there’s the rest of the whole damn internet and planet, just waiting for you to tap.

This basically boils the 1000 fans theory down to the general consensus that, of ANY fan base, only about 1% is going to reliably spend money on something. And of that only a percentage again is going to buy everything you do. Its a really tiny number, and its REALLY freaking hard to get exact numbers of fans over the internet. You can get a clue, but never really know every life you’ve touched.

Here’s an actual example of the above math:

With comic rank, I get an idea of how many readers I have for my comic, Brymstone. My highest number was about 1400 or so. With that number, the amount that are ‘fans’ that might spend money is 70.  The amount of people who probably WOULD spend money is approximately 14.  If I was making a sales projection for  merchandise this would tell me ‘don’t make a lot of it’.

You know, this type of math makes things more depressing. However, this does provide me with a sort of target number, and working in the marketing industry, I really like target numbers.

In terms of a webcomic, this generally means steady traffic of numbers in the 100,000s on a daily basis. If you are getting over 100,000 uniques a day (or better), the chances of you actually having 1000 true fans in the mix, is pretty good. And even if your true fans are a little scarce, the ability to ‘convert’ from the fans to true fans, is better the more fans and casual fans you have. But you do have to work on that whole ‘conversion’ process. Matthew Ebel is champion at this. You have to make people CARE about not only the work, but you as a person as well. People help people they like, and your true fans, you have to treat them like friends. Good friends. Special friends. Personal friends.

This is a very important part of this theory. It is based a lot on new media making this possible through facebook, twitter, blogging, whatever. These people have to feel close to you to spend money 0n you. Cultivating these fans is like growing a garden, they must be tended lovingly, gently, and often with frequent nutruring of webcomicy (in our case) goodness. You can’t let them forget, and you can’t disappoint them too much, or they will cease to be true fans.

This is sort of part of the catch 22 of this. It takes a lot of time and effort to cultivate these fans. How do you find time for this if one of the secondary key points to this theory of success is creating new content? And as often as humanly possible.

Let’s face it. Content is king. The way people come to your site, the whole REASON they come is your content. Be it writing, comics, music, or whatever, the people come when you update. So in order to keep people coming, to keep their interest high, and nuture the want to buy shit from you, there has to be a regular stream of content flowing out of your website. Not only THAT, but a regular stream of merchandise too. If you want to keep the true fans spending, you have to keep coming up with new things to spend stuff on! No one wants 12 of the same shirt. Also, not every thing you make is going to be consumer gold. You’re going to have a lot of misses to your hits, so you have to be prolific. If you look at those who are succeeding in this theory, the are, for the most part, extremely prolific. We’re talking weekly content here people. AT THE VERY LEAST.

For webcomics, this isn’t entirely bad news. We are kind of used to putting out on a weekly, bi-weekly, or tri-weekly basis, some people are daily, or 5x a week. The more you update, the more people come back, the more your stuff gets known. In my experience, anything less than 1X a week, and you’ll be struggling. Regularity is also a huge key for the webcomic industry, you need to hit those update days if you are serious about growing your fanbase.

Although that’s not obviously the ONLY thing you need to do, as Robert Rich points out in his letter to Kevin Kelly, you can’t limit yourself to only fishing in one pond for fans. You can’t pander to one group forever, or even one set of tastes forever or you are setting yourself up for a sort of creative suicide. For webcomics, a lot of creators don’t reach past existing webcomic readers, cannibalizing over and over otherwebcomic’s audiences. The comics that really succeed have to bridge the gaps between subcultures, and into untapped markets. Webcomic creators that see opportunity in non-webcomic places and seize that are the ones who usually blaze their way to some kind of quazi success. Daily funny type comics tend to do this more easily that serial manga, which is probably why one sees more success with the daily. I’ll write more on that bitch later.

But on a whole, the theory, if you can wrangle and convert 1000 people into being true fans, you can make money. Maybe not enough to make a luxurious living, but a living. And obviously once you’ve got the first 1000, you have to continue adding and converting, because ultimate people on the internet have attention spans that are about the equivalent to that of a ferret with ADD on speed and drowning in coffee.