Advertising link-tos

[Miluette]

Something I've been thinking about. There could be several ways to go about advertising your comic, when it comes to where the link on the ad goes.

- How about straight to the first page in your archive in general? Does that work? Or is it just dumb? Does a website context have to be established before linking to the first page? Maybe needs some special instances under which to be done?

- Linking directly to promotional pages that the ad mentions. That just makes sense.

And then there are sites with splash pages, which require them for warning's sake:

- You might advertise in general and link to the splash page, which would be an extra page to go through but is also a precaution (in addition to an indication of NSFW-ness on the ad itself );

- Of course you could maybe advertise linking to the main page and not the splash with ads specially tailored for certain kinds of sites. Makes sense too?

Just stuff I haven't seen talked about so much. Sorry if some of that makes no sense, as for some reason my thoughts just got a little cloudy.

[Rob]

No it's a good point. There are more than a few popular comics that link to the first comic instead of the most recent update. It's not the norm but it's not uncommon.

Remedial Comics is going to have a splash page eventually because we will have several comics going instead of just one. But if I didn't I would choose to link to the latest update pretty much every time. It's what returning readers expect.

That said, a link for "New Reader" that takes them to a synopsis with a link to the first comic is pretty snazzy.

[Gibson]

I'd say the best way to link depends on your type of comic. With strips, linking to the newest page is probably best, where with story comics it might ruin some of the plot for new readers. I don't tend to link any of my current comics to the newest page for that reason, but with my old strip comic I did.

Pictures of You links to a Menu Page, kinda like the menu on a DVD, with a News box along the side (which I haven't updated in a long-ass time!) From here you can access the Archive, and there are link options on the page like "Begin the Novel" and "Current Page" and such. Our Time in Eden has something similar.

[amanda]

I always link to my homepage which shows the most recent comic.  The art is so so so bad in the beginning that I want people to know it gets better right up front, ha!

I never considered having a page set up specifically for ad traffic though - that might be a good way to convey all the info right up front.  Here's what it's about - here's a link to the first page - here's a sample of recent artwork.

The more I think about it, the more I like it!  Next up: finding time to actually DO it. ^.^