Freebies

[raerae]

I've been handing out free bookmarks with my site on it at conventions as a way of promotion. I know a few that do postcards or such too.

Any other ideas for cheap little things that you can use for promotion?

[TTallan]

Flyers! They're cheap and informative. Pictured below are the tri-fold style that I use, although these are my old versions that I used back when Galaxion was a "floppy" comic available in stores (I had one flyer for regular readers, and another for retailers). The new version features the recent art and advertises the website, rather than retail stores. I just print up a what I'll need for each con, though I suppose I could find a cheaper way than just going to my local Staples...

[raerae]

Flyers are a good idea. I was thinking of designing a one-page comic with a short introduction to the comic and characters to use as a flyer.

[LegendWoodsman]

Dave Kellett has an excellent colour flyer that he hands out at conventions.

In the past, I've made Christmas/New Year's cards that I would send out to readers as thanks for signing up on the mailing list.

[Gar]

Mini comics with your comic's URL are a good promotional item, people are less likely to throw them out than they would an ordinary flier (just because of the format!), and you can get across a simple story and/or a couple of good gags to entice potential readers.

Here's a how to: http://www.ehow.com/how_2101482_make-a-minicomic.html

From a marketing standpoint, selling the mini comics for, say, 10 cents a piece might be a better move than giving them away free. It's just a token amount to create the illusion of value so that people would be more inclined to read them.

[TTallan]

As far as non-free promotional items go, minicomics are a great idea! I'd probably charge a quarter for them, though, because if someone's willing to pay 10¢ for an item, they're likely willing to pay 25¢, and then you don't have to deal with as much small change.

I made a promotional comic back in the day, a 16-page b/w full-size comic that was an intro to some of my characters. It was professional printed, and I had... well, I can't say that I remember the exact numbers, but probably around 3000 copies made. They probably cost me around 40¢ each. I sold them for 99¢ (a regular 24-page comic sold for $2.50). I still have some left over that I bring to conventions, and even today they are my best seller, because a lot of people who may not be ready to drop $15 on a book are often willing to pay 99¢ to give it a try. Well, when I say it's my best seller I mean I sell more units of it than anything else, but even if I sell 25 copies I still make more profit selling 2 graphic novels. But I hook a lot of new readers with that 99¢ purchase.

(Oh, and when I sell it for 99¢, I have a small pile of pennies, and I offer one to people when they hand me a dollar. Most of the time they tell me to keep it.)

[wendyw]

Stickers are a good one, because as well as a neat little gift and promotion towards the people that you give them to some of them will end up stuck on school/college folders, guitars, laptops and all sorts of bits and bobs which other people will see, plus if you're doing a gag strip and can pull off a good one panel strip then that's perfect.

The other thing that could be interesting is something like the Cubees that are on the Sister Claire site here. Depending on how much it would cost to have them printed up then they could be an interesting alternative to normal flyers, still containing some information about the comic on the other side as well instructions, but of course that largely depends on the size and complexity of the model.

[Rob]

After Yamino put up the Cubee thing I took a long look at it and seriously considered using it myself. It's actually pretty cool but you really need to be an artist to figure out where everything in the folds go.

But the template itself is free and downloadable. I think their once caveat is that you can't sell them for profit. So they are pretty much a freebie because they must be. The nice thing about this though is that it doesn't really cost any more than what you pay for copies. You can print it off of your own printer or you can take the file to Kinko's and have them make a 100 color copies for whatever they charge for that. If you want glossy paper then it will cost a bit more but for the most part it can be as cheap as you want it to be.