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.

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.

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.

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.