Now I’m not unfamiliar with conventions, although previously I had always shared a table and nearly all of my experience was in the US. This time, I was only taking on my homeland of Vancouver, BC, Canada. This led to some very interesting experiences and a look at some very interesting revelations about my fellow canucks and the climates of the various conventions.

Minicomi

My first convention of the season was Minicomi. A new one day comic market based after the 1 day dojin markets in Japan and put on by UBC’s Anime Club. The event was held in UBC’s Student Union Building (a place I have become very familiar with…) in the ballroom. It was quite spacious, and seemingly well organized as far as checking in and setting up was concerned.

I had generally guestimated that the crowd’s demographics would probably be 15-25, biased to the females, likely asians or asian decent. I had thought that it was, from all the advertising, going to be a market of people buying stuff, or looking to buy stuff. Since there were no ‘official’ vendors, as in commercial vendors, and this was an artist only event, I figured it would be a good climate for independent comics. However, this was pretty far from the truth.

The event was free, and so a lot of families were showing up with their kids (ages ranged from about 7-14ish), and there was a LOT of browsing and not a lot of buying. The crowd that was gathered was mostly interested in cosplaying and window shopping. A lot of people stopped and looked through my artbook, and really liked my jewelry, but never wanted to buy. It was strictly looking.

The sales that were being made around the hall were specifically fan art of established, popular series. There was also a price point of about $5. Most things sold were under or not much exceeding $5. Keychains, buttons, and small fan art prints appeared to be the best sellers. Now, I used to work in a commission sales position. I KNOW how to work a tough crowd. I worked it as hard as I could without being a bitch, and I just BARELY made back my table costs. I sold about six things total, including one commission, an art card, a couple of buttons and a couple of comics. I know that other independant comic artists didn’t do much better. The people who were doing well up were the fan artists, not just of anime, but also video games. There were some crafters there as well who I don’t think were doing particularly well either. The price point of this event was very very low, and the people who were there really were interested in fan content, not original content.

I may give this another whirl with many of the new, fanish buttons I came up with over the three conventions I did. I only started with about 7 or so designs, and I have a lot more now. I would also think i need to do more fan art or genre work to make back my money on this. Overall, I broke even on the table, but not the gas or my time at the convention.

I would only recommend this market for people who do a lot of fanart or fan based work, and bring stuff that is 5$ and under. Don’t expect to sell much above $10 in price. (unless you sell cosplay items or plushies… I saw people walking around with those) If you have a lot of product already, it may be just another opportunity to sell, but unless you are making things that appeal to fans of established series, this probably won’t be a good market for you.

Notes for next year: I’m going to try this convention again, but I’m definitely going to find more $5 or less items, and tap a few fandoms for ideas like I did with my buttons later in the season.

Cos & Effect

Cos & Effect is supposed to be an alternative fashion and Cosplay convention which was held at UBS, that, like Minicomi, was a brand new convention this year. However, since the demise of the local anime convention “Anime Evolution”, this sort of became this year’s defacto replacement.  Unlike Minicomi, this was a two day event and had a registration fee associated with it. It also had dealers/artist alley separation. The price was more than Minicomi, but it was WORTH it.

The artist alley was located in a room on the second floor, and it was a friggen destination at the convention. The room was PACKED for nearly the entire con, so much so that making your way around the aisles in cosplay (which turned out to be far too narrow) was hazardous to displays and fellow con-goers. The biggest issue was that if someone stopped to browse a table or take a picture, it stopped up the whole flow of traffic. This made it difficult for some folks since no one could actually STOP at their tables. I was lucky, I got a table in the front corner, where there was a large space and it was right in front of the entrance. Everyone could see me.

For this convention, I made up a bunch of new button designs, had a t-shirt printed, and did up some earrings for the necklaces I already had. I also had my comics and, art cards,  art prints from the previous Minicomi since I sold so little.

The sales were brisk and the place was packed even before the room opened (someone screwed up and let people in early. ). Over two days I met a ton of interesting people and sold more than enough to cover everything, from my table to my gas money, and covered what I lost at Minicomi.

My most popular item, hands down, were my buttons. Buttons FLEW off the table. Seriously, I pretty much made my convention off button sales. Several times I had to whip out my button maker and press more of particularly popular designs. I can officially say the button maker paid for itself.

The next best selling items were the comics (awesomely enough), and artwork (prints, artcards, and commissions)

The big loser as far as product went was the T-shirts and the jewelry. Again, price point was an issue. A lot of interest in the jewelry, a little in the shirts. But not a lot of people willing to spend larger sums of money.

The con’s demographic was slightly higher than minicomi as far as age went. about 18-30, with some families, but less than the one day Minicomi. It was more highschool/college students, with a smattering of working adults, and a few family units here and there. The main difference I think between minicomi and Cos & Effect, was that people came to the convention expecting to buy stuff. They were LOOKING for stuff to buy, and not just of their favorite fandom. They were much more open to discovery, and artists. This made the convention much better for independent artists who’s work doesn’t center around fan stuff. Although fan stuff obviously sold very well.

The price point was higher than minicomi. $10-$15 was the threshold that made people buy or make them think and “come back later”, although I learned that bundled table deals make things sell much better. My button bundles were far more popular than anything else on the table. I plan for next year to make more available. A lot of people wanted to buy more expensive things, but a lot of them spent their money in the dealers room. I’m guessing the threshold for the dealers room was higher in terms of what people would spend, but that’s pretty typical it seems for most conventions. I think a lot of younger people too are struggling in the current economy. There was more than once people were extremely interested, but they just couldn’t afford it.

Overall this was an awesome convention, and I’m sure it will be even better next year. IRL Events really knows how to run a good event. With some of the changes and feedback they got from their artists, I’m sure the alley will be even better next year. I expect the artist alley will be juried again, which is different from a lot of conventions way of handling artists alley, but I hope I make it in again. (assuming they have one)

Notes for next year: I’m going to add some cosplay elements to my table specifically for this convention, and try to work on my jewelry so that I can get it to a lower price point. Also, more button designs and work on updating my artbook, new comic issues, and freshen up my prints. But I’m definitely coming back to try for this one.

Vcon

One of the oldest sci-fi conventions in Canada, Vcon is a proper convention held in a hotel. It’s been around a long time, and as such had (as I expected) the oldest demographic as far as age ranges. It also didn’t separate the artist’s alley from the dealers room, which was actually pretty small comparatively to many other conventions I’ve been at.

Vcon is… unique as far as conventions goes. The vendors room was a little more like a craft fair than what you’d expect from dealers. Which makes what you can buy there a truly unique experience. And also what’s expected from you as an artist shifts a little sideways I discovered.

The attendees were generally in the 35-50 age range, although there was a smattering of  younger adults, they were definitely the minority. A few families had young kids, but for the most part you were dealing with older sci-fi/fantasy fans, which, let me tell you, are a very different breed than anime fans. Also, unlike cosplay/anime conventions, it skewed a bit to the male heavy side somewhat. The price points seemed higher in the room, 20-50$, but you had to have the right stuff.

These folk had money to spend on the right products. But the right products were tricky business. Artwork these people were looking for was classic fantasy and sci-fi art, and they expected to see originals as well as prints. Large ones. Like 11×17 or larger, on bristol or canvas, in traditional mediums like ink, acrylics, oils, or watercolour. The artshow was a big deal, with some AMAZING pieces. These people are buying art for their homes, or are collectors. They are willing to spend some big dollars for the right pieces, but most of the artists in the alley (including me) were definitely NOT ready for that sort of crowd.

As far as my table went, I brought a few new items with me to the convention. Clip on kitty ears, cyberlox ponyfalls, and a brand new set of sci-fi/geek themed buttons and added Zipper pulls to my repertoire of my most popular designs. I also had to reprint my comics, since I had sold so many at Cos & Effect. ( you can read my reviews of Ka-blam and RA Direct’s print jobs if you want to know how they stacked up.)  Otherwise, I was working off old stock from the previous conventions.

Vcon is a 3 day convention, and the first day, Friday, was predictably slow. The Saturday was also slow, surprisingly so since Saturdays are usually the busiest at 3 day conventions, however Sunday was a gong show. Almost 80% of my sales were on Sunday. I did… alright. The buttons, once again, were a life saver. Sold more buttons than anything else at the table. Our other surprise, was that we sold out of kitty ears in a flash on Sunday. We didn’t bring that many, since it was an experiment, but we’ll be for sure bringing more next time.

Again, lots of interest in certain products. Cyberlox were a definite novelty, people stopping to touch them all the time, and browse the jewelry, but only sold one item, one of the cheapest ones. Had a lot of people browse the art, but my anime stuff is definitely NOT for this crowd. I would probably have done better with more generic fantasy art, and definitely need to bring traditional originals.

I bundled my comic with my T-shirt, and thanks to a few friends sold a couple, so that made the table cost. A nice promotion that the Vcon folks did was create a con currency for the dealers room to encourage people to shop. Everyone got a free 2$ of con cash with their registration, and the convention ‘cashed’ it at the end once the dealers room closed. They also awarded prizes in con cash, so it encouraged people to shop the dealers room. A very cool idea for sure. I cashed out a fair amount of it.

Notes for next year: Bring more ears, more buttons, more artwork, particularly an original portfolio of more classic artwork. Enter the artshow. Make jewelry that I can sell at a cheaper price points.

Overall Notes for 2011

I think I broke even more or less on the conventions I went to. It wasn’t easy, but it was also my first time there, and my displays were not ideal. I have a lot of work left to do on those yet, but I need money to make things like popup banners. I did managed to get some better racking. I might need more though.

I am definitely happy about my button maker purchase. It paid for itself many times over and saved my butt at each convention I was at.

I need to work on updating my artbook and focusing a little on my core product, which is my art in general. Comics and originals/prints and such. My artbook is horribly out of date.

Overall Notes for 2012

I am definitely going to look at deals/bundles for the table, making more buttons. I might consider getting another button maker of a different size. I also want to work at making most of the products on my table under 10$ as much as possible, nothing over 20$, unless its in a bundle. I will probably try to leverage a little more fan inspiration into some of my art, but also look at producing some work which can be sold as originals, especially since I’m already committed to Vcon and looking at other conventions in the summer. I want to have my other comic, Shifters, printed. I had Brymstone #1, but I also need to get back on top of updating for Brymstone (which kind of fell behind thanks to Shifters and conventions) and be well prepared in advance this time.

Readers are, by nature it seems, a shy bunch. You can have several hundred readers and only ever see a fraction of them make a peep. Like we are talking in the single digits. And even less become regular commenter. There’s several reasons for this, lets examine what prevents people from commenting and how you, as the author can help alleviate these conditions to get more people to talk and participate on your site.

Reason #1 – Nothing to say

A lot of readers simply have, well nothing to say. They like what you are doing. Its clear because they keep coming back, but they don’t really have anything clever or witty to say. You might not think this is important, but a lot of readers do think its important to have something relevant beyond ‘thanks for the update’ or ‘nice page’.

How to fix it: If you give your readers a topic to comment on, something they can relate to and give an opinion on, it really helps to alleviate this problem. When you write your comic blog, try to think of a single question to ask your readers and solicit feedback from them. Not only does it provide something for them to do or say, but it makes them feel valued and allows you to collect information from your readers.  Giving them something to give their thoughts on really helps. It won’t get everyone to comment mind you, but it often gets people out of the woodwork who might not say anything otherwise.

Reason #2 – Conversation feels one sided

A lot of artist creators soak in the comments but don’t actually respond individually. While its nice to get comments, its also nice to be recognized for your comments and thoughts, particularly by the artist in question. If the artist never responds to comments, or never acknowledges the contributions of the readership, people can get tired of giving, giving, giving and never getting anything back.

How to fix it: This one is really easy. All you have to do is recognize your commenters kindly and regularly. Treat them as friends, build relationships with them in terms of conversations in the comments. Reply to each and every comment and try to be gracious and kind, even if the comments aren’t always good. Remember, at least people are taking the time to tell you what they think. That’s really worth something.

Reason #3 – An empty forum/comment section is an intimidating one.

No one likes to be the first one to stick their nose out into an empty forum or comments page. Unless you’ve got some kind of culture where that sort of bravery is lauded and celebrated, most people will be reluctant to be the first person to comment. Once there’s a string of comments, more people will tend to join in, but the trick is to get that first person to comment and then begin talking to them to build those page comment numbers so that people don’t feel intimidated.

How to fix it: Make the first comment on your page something special. Offer some kind of special mention of the commentators name, give them a digital cookie, or find some other way to reward people who are brave enough to comment first. If you do this, people will scramble to be the first comment when you update.

Reason #4 – The Author appears to be mean/emo/reclusive or otherwise unapprochable

There are a lot of authors who either don’t believe in the blog, don’t know what to say, or don’t write particularly well in a prose form. Conversely they might also perpetually bitch about how miserable they are, or complain about things, or put their comics down, or annoyingly give a blow by blow of the comic. Constant negativity or saying the same things over and over again does not encourage people to comment, it sometimes discourages them if it goes on too long. You get what you give, if you give nothing, you probably won’t get much back in return.

How to fix it: Make yourself as approachable as possible. Invite feedback, even if you have to say “Feedback is always welcome”. Try to talk about things possibly related, but not directly about your comic. The readers can see for yourself. Keep the conversation positive and interesting. If you don’t believe in blog with a comic, try to engage people elsewhere, such as through a facebook page or on twitter, encouraging them to comment. Treat people well, and they will treat you well back. (generally)

Reason #5 – Readers feel no sense of urgency to comment

Readers, by nature, are kind of passive. So to engage them you need to give them reasons, and immediate reasons to comment, or do something. In advertising this is called a ‘call to action’, giving clear instruction and reason for the reader to engage.

How to fix it: Giving your readers a good reason to engage is key to this. Recognition can go a long way, but sometimes your bribe needs to be a little more substantial. Running contests or other forms of competition requiring people to jump through a few hoops (joining forums, making posts, commenting on so many comics, etc) will break the ice with a bunch of new people. It gets them to join forums, and make some posts. If you have a handful of regulars, try to get them to help keep the newbies engaged. If people feel like they are getting recognized and being accepted on a forum or website, they will tend to stay around. Make sure you use a time limit on contests to give a sense of urgency. Having monthly, or reoccurring contests can be very good for keeping people engaged. The more they are invested in your site, the more likely they are to say things.

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.

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.