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!

This originally appeared in my deviant art journal, but that’s not exactly a great place to post this and I thought it was one of the more poignant pieces I’ve ever written on what Webcomic readers can do to support their favorite comics without spending a dime. A lot of webcomic readers are young, and understandably don’t have a lot of cash, but when it comes to support, lifting your favorite comic up doesn’t have to require a credit card or even a bank account. If you are interested in seriously showing webcomic artists some appreciation, read on.

When you do a comic, especially a webcomic, there isn’t a lot of reward. You don’t get any money for it unless you really go out of your way to monetize your comic (and not everyone has the resources, business savvy, or discipline to do it.) and its not as easy as some people seem to think. People read webcomics largely because they are free, and people like free entertainment. Unfortunately a lot of people also equate free with worthless and free stuff holds less value in the minds of the people who consume it. Unless they actually set out at some point to do something like create a comic, they just don’t get how much suffering and work goes into making stuff. Most webcomic authors do it for the love of making comics, but you know what? Its really nice sometimes to get SOMETHING for all your hard work.

Now I also realize that a lot of webcomic readers are young people. Elementary school, high school, college. They don’t have a lot of money, so financial contribution is out of the question. Hey, that’s cool, I understand. I work and I STILL don’t have any money. I’m pretty sure a lot of people are nodding right about now. But there is still stuff you can do to show your love and support of a webcomic that won’t cost you a cent. Curious? Well read on.

1) Comment
This is probably the most direct thing you can do to show the comic author that you are reading and care. Do you like updates? Well comment on them! Most webcomics have some kind of comment feature these days. Many don’t even require you sign up with a membership, just post a message saying you like and appreciate them. its like giving your favorite webcomic a cookie.

A true story: I get the MOST comments when I *stop* updating. I’ve had more comments and stories about how people appreciated/loved/wanted Shifters AFTER I quit doing it. If I had heard those voices BEFORE I stopped, I might have felt it worth continuing despite the problems. But there is only negative voices or worse, nothing at all, its like a musician playing for an empty auditorium. Its depressing and kinda disheartening. So, because people seemed not to care, I decided ‘okay, no one will miss it if I go off and do what I need to do on my own time’.
Doesn’t it seem odd to you? That I get a ‘cookie’ when I stop doing something? Shouldn’t I get cookies when I do?

I’m not alone either. We only hear from you guys when you bitch. Its kind of disheartening honestly. If you really want more updating, you need to reward us when we DO update, and not slag us when we don’t.

So if you love your webcomics, COMMENT. Don’t be a lurker. Says something to let us know you are listening. Even if its just. “Thanks for the update!”

2) Vote and Fave!
Getting seen in the webcomics arena these days can be pretty competitive. For webcomics who can’t afford paid advertising we have to kinda do what we can with things like toplists. You might see vote buttons or links to comic directories (like onlinecomics.net for example). Take five seconds to click through the vote, every day you get a chance or every day it updates or whatever you feel is fair. Even if there is no vote incentive. If you think the comic is worth reading, give them a vote or a favorite.

3)Follow us!
A lot of artists these days often use social networking, like twitter, facebook, myspace, ustream, RSS, etc to try to spread the word of our works. If people are following us or friending us, then we know people are listening, but if we aren’t being followed or friended, we feel that our message isn’t getting out (which it isn’t) and no one is listening.

4)Share us!
Webcomics rely on ‘word of mouth’ advertising, especially in these times of social networking. If you see a comic has updated or you find a comic you like, share us with your friends! Re-tweet comic updates, link us on your website/blog/facebook/myspace. Digg us and Stumbleupon us. It doesn’t take a lot of effort on your part, but it shows you feel we are good enough that you are willing to share us with your friends. We can see when these numbers spike (most webcomic artists if they are freaks like me, do track referers. If we see we’ve been getting stumbled upon or digged or refered from various social sources, we know someone is giving us some love.)

5)Send us fanart.
Its probably the most time consuming on your part, but most webcomic people that aren’t enormous love to get fan art. Its really cool to see other people take on your characters, and that you inspired someone enough to draw your characters. Its flattering and super cool. We might be able to make our own art, but seriously, who doesn’t like presents? It doesn’t have to be art either, it could be a fan story, sculpture, plushie, hell even a picture of you cosplaying our characters at a con. Now that’s super awesome.

6)Get involved
Interaction. We love it just as much as you do (well some of us do, I know I do, but some artists can be really weird about it). Reply to us on twitter, sign up and get involved on forums, ask questions, send an email, visit our Ustreams, come visit us at conventions. A lot of people get intimidated or feel weird about interacting with people they might look up to or like, but don’t. We are still people and usually like to talk about our projects and work. Some artists aren’t so good about it but some thrive on it. There are so many ways these days to interact, its crazy. I’ve got several fans that are now my friends because they got involved and talked to me.

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.

Anyway, I’ve been making webcomics for years, I started way back in the beginning before webcomics were a big deal. Back when the idea was still novel, and having your own website was all the rage. Today, it has evolved into a highly competitive content industry where people can actually making a LIVING doing it. But how do you get started? This is my first in a series of posts about making webcomics.

Contrary to popular belief, making a webcomic really isn’t hard. The essence of the thing is make some sequential art and post it on the internet. With services like DrunkDuck and SmackJeeves, its dead fucking easy. You don’t even need to know HTML or anything. Sign up for a service, click upload, upload comic jpg, and voila, instant webcomic.

However, making a GOOD webcomic that’s going to stand out in today’s increasingly crowded webcomic landscape is a completely different question. And with the wealth of increasingly awesome comics out there, unlike just a scant five years ago, you really have to kick up your game and have a plan if you want to get noticed.

As a potentially aspiring webcomic creator, you may be wondering, if you want to put your best foot forward, how the heck do you get started?

Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

In the case of webcomics, and indeed anything you intend to go anywhere with, its best to have a plan. If you are going to start a business, you start with a Business Plan. If you were going to make a movie, you’d start with a script at the very least. When you plan a trip, you get out a road map. Making a comic is no different. You should have a plan. At the very least, a script or summary with a direction you want to go.

If you are just sort of futzing around with the idea, you may be interested in making money at this point, but just publishing for exposure or for the love of sharing your stories/art. This is a different goal than making a marketable webcomic you can make a living off of. Both require different sorts of planning. One is less involved than the other, but both so require some thought. Lets address the more hobbiest aspect of the craft, and we’ll worry about the heavy stuff where money is involved a little later. After all, if you can’t handle webcomics at a hobby level, you probably won’t make it at the money level.

At this point, when you’ve decided to make a webcomic, you need to consider a few more basic parameters:

Format - Is this going to be a strip type comic or a serial manga?  Both have their own challenges associated with writing and production.

Medium – Digital or traditional? Color or black and white? These factors will affect how you make your comic and how you get it on the internet.

Frequency - how often can you produce a completed page? This becomes important when you decide how often you can update.

Place – Do you want to put it on a domain you already own as a subdomain? Do you want it to have its own domain and hosting? or do you want to be a part of a free site? or a free site with your own scripts? This will affect how people find you, and how you can advertise your site and what sorts of promotional tools you can use and access. Your technical knowledge of the internet, php, html, rss, and other interesting techie acronyms will be tested here. Can you even design a website?

How long? – How long do you want to be doing this? Is it a one shot deal?  A single story with 30? 50? 200 pages? Is it an ongoing strip with no real beginning or end? Is it a finite story with multiple books? Is a series of short stories? Deciding how long or short your story is gives you the ability figure out timelines. If this is your first webcomic, I tend to suggest a shorter format before working on your opus, as it seems 98% of long form webcomics are never finished. I’d say less than 50% live past 50 pages.

Artist or Writer? - Usually, most people who do webcomics are one or the other. Not to say that if you are an artist you can’t become a writer or vice versa, but knowing your strengths lets you also address your weaknesses. If you can’t draw, but write well, you will probably have no trouble coming up with a story, although you may run into trouble turning it into a comic script, as you really have to cut down your words. The other problem you will probably have is actually creating visuals. You are going to have to learn to draw, hire an artist, use a program, or create some kind of crutch to get by. Artists learning to write can produce the visuals, but their stories are often not that well thought out, crude, and not always well executed. Since a lot of the draw of a comic hinges on the story, the artist would benefit taking the time to properly develop their story and script (and have it proofread & revised a few times by actual writers) before setting to creating visuals.

Recruit help – Even the most seasoned, awesome, amazing webcomic creators need a little help from their friends from time to time. Most become involved with the webcomic communities online in some way or another. Be it advice on plot, to help with webdesign, to artistic tips and tricks in photoshop, there’s lots of help to be had to anyone who asks. Places like the drunkduck forums are a good place to start if you are new. I’ll update this area with more resources as I track them down. But the long and short is, if you need help, don’t be afraid to use google and ask. Most creators are happy to share advice or point you to people who can help.

Equipment – You will need some actual STUFF to make comics. If you are working traditionally, you’ll at least need access to a scanner to get things into the computer. Many creators start with a pen and paper, and then scan it in and add text and such later. I’ll cover artistic process in detail in the next article. Some artists prefer an entirely digital route using an input device such as a Wacom tablet. Many use programs to aid this, including some such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and MangaStudio. Others use free programs such as GIMP or Pixia. I’ll work on providing a more complete list in another article.

Once you’ve made the above decisions, acquired equipment and connections, and you’ve got yourself a script in hand, its time to actually start making comics. Unfortunately, this takes time and work. I highly suggest that you make a buffer of comics before you consider putting them online. I use a guideline of 30 comics before debut, but you could probably start with 10, but I wouldn’t launch a comic site with anything less. Doing 30 comics gives you a good chance to get to know your own work speed, and to do refinements. Once its up, its up, and people see it. If you make a spelling mistake or need to change it, its easier to do it BEFORE you’ve launched to the world. (although the nice thing about the web is you CAN change it, as opposed to dead tree format, where you can’t.)

( I will update and flesh some areas out more as I get more articles written. )