Webcomics Community

So far this site has been about the community coming together to share information and help lift each other up and so far it's worked pretty good. After five months there are almost two hundred of us coming here to look things over, offer our opinions and share our knowledge. But lately we've been running short on content. We've cut back on articles and the staff here, already very busy folks, have stepped up to try and help out. I've been incredibly busy (and sick) with the relaunch of my site (next Monday... thank goodness) and I've been slacking here, no doubt. I've asked you, the community to contribute but alas you must be pretty busy as well. It is con season.

So I have a choice to make here. I could simply keep the doors open and let content go up when we have it. Dragon is doing an excellent job with the reviews and Amanda is occasionally bringing us excellent interviews. Also Webcomics.com (http://www.webcomics.com/) is doing pretty well. Five months in and Brad (http://www.evil-comic.com/) has delivered everything he promised he would and then some. My hat's off to him. But for me, and I cannot state this emphatically enough, this was never a competition. And I still feel strongly that a place like Webcomics Community, a place where webcomics creators can gather and talk and improve and share for free, away from the eyes of their readers is both needed and important. So I've decided to take a bit more active role.

I've avoided doing this for a lot of reasons. I never wanted this site to be about me. I'm not a professional webcomics creator. I don't have years of experience in the field. I certainly haven't gained much success yet and almost everything I've learned about webcomics has come from other webcomics creators; webcomics creators like you. I've also been told I come off like a dick sometimes despite my best intentions. So there isn't much upside to me trying to lead the conversation here. But I'm going to try and do it anyway, because I think it's important that someone does.

What I would ask of you my fellow creators is to not simply accept my words as truth. I'll always do my best to be true to you, but I'm just one person, one relatively inexperienced person with one opinion. I'm offering up my thoughts to encourage discourse as an experiment here. I want you to challenge me, if you disagree I want you to tell me why and if you think what I'm saying is factually wrong I would love to see some proof. I think you will find that while I defend my opinions strongly I will happily admit I'm wrong when presented with proof.

This article is not a conscience colonic or some sort of mea culpa. It's a manifesto for how this site, or at least it's front page will proceed for the foreseeable future. From now on whenever I have an interesting topic I feel like talking about rather than simply posting a short teaser on the forums and linking I'm going to offer full blown opinions on the subject in the form of front page articles. Hopefully this will lead to more in depth explorations of the subject. I've been talking about Webcomics 2.0 as a sort of tag line for the way things are changing in webcomics today and I think it will serve as an excellent signpost for when I get up on my soap box.

The first cannonball I'm firing is on the subject of professionalism. I'm going to come right out and say it. A lot of folks have been chattering on in webcomics for a really long time about how important it is that we look professional (I'm guilty of it myself). "I want my booth to look professional," "I want my book to look professional," "I need a site redesign so it looks more professional." Yet I can't think of a single instance in which professionalism has provided a proven benefit to a webcomicker I know. I can't.

And I often find myself considering the stark difference between the perception of professionalism and the reality. Some harsh truths I believe in.

Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have butt ugly websites.

Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have lousy art.

Many of the most popular webcomics in the world have absentee creators.

Many of the most popular webcomics in the world don't appear to have very business savvy creators.

I'm not suggesting that there are popular webcomics creators who are showing up drunk to business meetings and hitting on the receptionist before telling a racist joke to the company rep they are negotiating a merch contract with or something. What I'm talking about here are the many things that we, as smaller, aspiring webcomickers seem to latch on to as examples of professionalism.

And I think we are ignoring what is really professional about almost all of the worlds most popular webcomics. The one thing they all seem to have in common.

Consistent updates of engaging content.

I've seen very popular webcomics at conventions with ugly, poorly organized booths; selling merchandise that amounts to the kind of garbage that fills town dumps from sea to shining sea. I've seen those creators stammer and blush as their fans come up to them and gush inane and often vacuous sentiment about how the comic effected them before buying those aforementioned trinkets by the armload. I've seen cosplay and cakes and gifts and hugs and oh my lord the picture taking.

And nobody cares that their website is done on a simple wordpress template. Nobody cares that there is a typo on page 82 of their first book. Nobody cares that they can't draw or maybe couldn't draw for years but are now pretty good. Nobody cares that they are in black and white. Nobody cares.

Recently I started playing roleplaying games with a group on Sundays and I mentioned a very popular webcomic whose creator I am friendly with. The dungeon master immediately piped up and said "yeah I used to read that but I don't anymore." I was shocked. This comic seemed right up his alley and while I was prepared for him to have not heard of it I was not prepared for him to be a former reader who had rejected the comic. When I asked him why, it wasn't because the website has an ugly horizontal scrollbar (it does at least at my resolution). It wasn't because there was a printing error on the first book (it did the creator told me all about it). It wasn't because of donation requests (this site makes many). It wasn't the dead links on the site or the fact that almost nothing is sold beyond the aforementioned books. He said, "the story isn't being told fast enough and there's only one update a week. I got frustrated waiting."

Consistent updates of engaging content.

Many of the biggest comics around had the benefit of starting years ago when there was venture capital and not much competition for idle eyeballs on the web. There were fewer and less complex firewalls and a lot less monitoring of on line activity in the workplace.

For most of us that moment is gone and we are now in the land of Webcomics 2.0 where everyone is shouting and only the loudest get heard. Where everyone is looking for an edge whether it's a fancy website or the latest share application. And edges are important. I believe that it is those edges, the little things we do to increase our site functionality or engage our fans that will define the Webcomics 2.0 era. Because the days of just getting a car on the track are over. Now, to further the racing analogy, you have a thousand different details to fine tune before you can hope to compete in the high speed classes.

But you aren't going anywhere without an engine. And the engine that defines professionalism in webcomics and drives everything that goes with running a webcomic as a business is consistent updates of engaging content.

Having a publicised update schedule and sticking to it is pretty much professional conduct for a cartoonist, fancy sites and whatnot are just good window-dressing (Mac dressing, linux dressing. Whatever, it's a pretty bad pun).

It's a slow-road approach to getting a lot of readers though. Neko the Kitty has been updating twice a week on tuesdays and thursdays for nearly two years, and has only recently broken 1,000 unique IP visits in a month. I think that's OK for word-of-mouth only, but if the site was advertised properly then there would probably be a lot more readers, and someone may well have bought a t-shirt already.

As I've said in other threads, I'm a hobbyist, but it would be nice to make some money doing something I don't perceive as 'work'. I'm not particularly inclined towards business-type activities, but I reckon any cartoonist who is supported financially by their work is either pretty business savvy, or at least knows someone who is.

Quote from: Gar on June 01, 2010, 04:22:00 AM
I'm not particularly inclined towards business-type activities, but I reckon any cartoonist who is supported financially by their work is either pretty business savvy, or at least knows someone who is.

That is often the perception and I'm here to tell you that it's just not true. I'm not going to go down a list and tell you what each one is doing wrong; I'm just going to say it. Many of the most popular webcomics have been lucky to be able to support themselves and most of them have had tremendous issues trying to figure out how to monetize the comic.

What I see more often than not is an artist hits one rich vein of monetization and sticks to it like a deer caught in the headlights. Whether it's advertising revenue, T-Shirt Sales or Donations if a creator makes enough money to support themselves off of any one of those options they usually fail to explore any others. Being grateful simply for what they have. If you take a look at the top 30 most popular webcomics you will find many long running comics that don't sell print versions, don't ask for donations, might not even sell anything.

There are in fact very few webcomics that have great traffic and are making money from ad revenue, merch sales and donations. The triple crown of webcomic income if you will. And of those that make money from merch sales very few have maximized this by offering a wide variety of products. Often they find one they are good at, or one that sells well and they stick to it failing to explore other options.

I do agree with you that constancy is only the beginning but as I said in the article this is the land of who shouts loudest now. With 25 thousand or more webcomics word of mouth is only going to get you so far. I'll be talking about other things to do to get those edges in the coming articles but if you've been updating regularly for years (and I know from reading that you deliver some good content) then you have a solid engine. If you're perfectly happy playing the hobbyist and are taking the long view then I'd say you are doing fine. If you want to bump it up then you probably know some of the things you could be doing and I'll talk about more in upcoming articles.

I wrote an article about exactly this point on the old Sinister Squid site, how not everyone who works hard makes it but everyone who makes it works hard. I keep meaning to send it you but then I keep forgetting. I agree, it's not the only thing that matters but without producing comics on a consistent basis, nothing else really matters. A slick website is great and fine business acumen will help and manipulating ad space like that deaf, dumb and blind kid is cool and all, but you don't need it. It's frustrating how many very talented people don't seem to realize it, too. It's like opening a restaurant; the first thing you need is the food, everything else is accent, and if you don't have the food no one will care about the ambiance.

As I was starting my first webcomic, I read the advice of someone who seemed to be running a successful webcomic (she was able to support herself financially).

The first bit of advice that she gave was to commit at least four years of not breaking even and simply doing it as a labor of love.  You maintain your day job, and all your spare time must be devoted to working on the comic.  Personal relationships and social events need to take a backseat.

She went on to say that the most important thing to do for your webcomic is to STICK TO YOUR SCHEDULE.  Even if it's a squiggle or some kind of cop out, post it.  Life happens; that's why God created fillers.

When I've been good, I've stuck to this principle.  Mostly, I've got caught up with "things" and would go on long hiatuses.  The readership has always suffered when I've been gone for a long stretch of time, so I believe her advice to be sound.

She offered other tidbits of information, too.  I'll share them at later points (when I can find where I saved them).

The best example I can offer of this is by comparing one comic to another, but since I don't want to call out anyone's comics I'll use Pictures of You and Our Time in Eden, both being webcomics written by me. Pictures of You has been growing steadily in popularity since it started, Our Time in Eden had strong audience when it started but has faltered long since. Now, Our Time in Eden is a much better comic than Pictures of You. The art is far stronger, illustrated by a stronger artist than I, and the story is better, moves faster and is more compelling as a whole. I'm not saying Pictures of You is terrible, just that one is a stronger piece.

While Pictures of You has maintained an almost unbroken schedule for over 3 years, Eden is sporadic in its updates, sometimes taking as long as two months between pages. At first, Eden was regular, updating twice a week for a few months, and even though Pictures of You had been around a year longer, it nearly had the same level of audience and much greater buzz surrounding it. Then the schedule broke down and readership not only peaked, it fell. A year and a half later, it barely gets noticed when it updates. I've even stopped promoting it because the retention of readers is so low. Conversely, the readership on Pictures of You has more than quadrupled in that same amount of time.

That's the importance of a schedule, of updating regularly and often. A bad comic that updates often has a better chance than a great comic that never does.

When it comes to Louder than Bombs, Jay and I take it much more serious than we should.  By that, I don't mean that we all anal about content or the business side of anything.  We take updating on a regular basis as serious as we can.  It's really the only thing that matters to a webcomic creator.  Credibility.  In a super flimsy business model such as making webcomics, credibility is the only thing that really keeps people coming back.  Think about it.  There are X number of readers out there, some are readers of mine and some are readers of yours,  some are not readers of either.  The edge lies in having a constant and consistent update schedule (as well as good art and writing :P) Jay and I have updated twice a week since last August, and we couldn't be happier about not missing an update.  We feel like we have a commitment to our readership and they look to us every Tuesday and Friday to give them some funny for free.  Another thing that ticks me off is if people don't keep up to schedule and they expect to make money out of it one day.  If you can't keep up now and keep interested while you're not making money, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.  I'm just talking about the people with aspirations of being a webcartoonist.  You need to understand that readers don't care if you have a test, if you're sick or you have to take care of the kids... it's terrible but true.  They just don't give a shit.  All they want is to come and read your comic and leave.  That's all, no more, no less.  You need to work hard to get them to be dedicated readers as apposed to casual readers.  The difference being that dedicated readers will pay money on your merch, put ads on your site, and donated to keep you working full time on your passion.  Casual readers come in once a week look back in the archives to catch up and then leave.  Updating consistently and with good content is the only way to get the credibility to move on with your comic.  THAT and don't forget to have good content.  But those two together and a bit of luck will give you a huge edge in the mountain of webcomics all fighting for the same readers.

P.s. Sorry about the long post, lots to say :P     

It's OK, long posts are nothing new around here (Mmmmm....discourse)

I think we can all agree that sticking to an update schedule is important, and a couple of us know it for a fact through personal experience. Shitty fillers are fine because something new is better than nothing (my own Square and Circle series of filler comics was surprisingly well received), although if your comic starts consisting entirely of shitty fillers then you're in trouble (it worked out for Bob and George, but that was a special case).

Personally?  I almost refuse to do fillers.  The only time we've done it was for a week and a half where I almost died in a car accident.  Then we got a few friends to do some guest strips.  But even then, as soon as the cast was off, I was back at it.  I'm a little strange that way.  For me, filler is like saying 'right, I forgot about you and I shit on this piece of paper for you to look at instead of what you actually wanted, a comic'  That may be a bit harsh, but that's my view on the filler thing.

I don't much care about how professional a website looks, but what I do really care about is how professional a cartoonist acts. Nothing turns me off of a comic faster than watching it's author engage in mud-slinging, perpetuating drama or acting smug toward 'lesser' artists. Even if it isn't directed at me, it makes me think that associating with that sort of person is something that I don't want to have to dig myself out of at a later date. If your comic needs a constant stream of drama to flourish, that says to me that you don't think that it can flourish on its own merits.

Represent yourself in a professional, genuine, courteous way, and regardless of skill, I'll probably respect you for it and stick with you.

I definitely think we've got some good discourse happening here. Some points really stick out that we seem to agree on so far:

It needs to be a labour of love, and it's ok to take it seriously
You need to pick an update schedule that actually works for you and stick with it to engage your audience.

Sticking to an update schedule is definitely important, which is why I recently moved away from two comics a week to one. Working full time and producing two comics just wasn't fun, and I was worried about burnout. By moving back to a single issue a week I get to spend more time on it, think about my ideas for a bit longer and just take it slower.

It keeps being enjoyable without becoming a chore. Beyond that, I also get to keep on that ever-important schedule that keeps people coming back.

It makes all the difference in the world when you keep to a schedule.  People are creatures of habit and want to see their favourite comic up when they expect it there.  Sorry if I came off a bit harsh on some webcomikers Ran.  My view is on it, if you can't really draw then find an artist to work with.  When I say this I don't mean that everyone is shit.  I mean, stick figures work for xkcd and sprite art works for Dinosaur Comics.  It works for what they are trying to do with it.  When I see loads comics with Mega-man or Sonic sprites, yeah I get a little ticked.  If writing is your thing, stick to that.  Don't fuck about with terrible art.  That's just me though.  Alot of the most popular webcomics out there aren't drawn well at all.  It's safe to say that writing for most people is the thing that keeps them coming back.  For my background though, art is just as important as the words are. 

Quote from: mcfadyn on June 02, 2010, 07:40:24 PM
Sorry if I came off a bit harsh on some webcomikers Ran.

Er, what? I wasn't really aiming anything at you. I was just pointing out that when people say professionalism, they're not always talking about someone's comic. Example:

That dude who won the platinum studios competitions, who did Hero By Night (I think that was what it was called). He's always seemed like a pretty nice guy, but very recently, he's decided that he can get more pageviews by using his comic to openly mock Scott Kurtz. I am by no means a crazy Scott Kurtz fan, but that lost me a lot of respect, right there. When questioned about it, he spouted off some 'bad publicity is the best publicity' excuse. I don't know...I think I'd rather talk with webcomic authors who would rather be well known because their work is awesome than webcomic authors who are well known for being a dick to other cartoonists. I certainly would rather be known for the merit of my own work over how much drama I could hypothetically cause.

I'm pretty sure what Ran meant was people who spout hate and bullshit specifically on their comic site. Trust me, Ran and I have both slung a lot of shit OFF our comics not to have a problem with that, but using your comic as a personal soap box to get muddy about other people is unsightly and will generally either turn off readers, other comickers or both.

The DJ Coffman (http://www.djcoffman.com/tikibar/) (Hero By Night/Yirmumuh) Scott Kurtz (http://www.pvponline.com/) flame war is like the Springfield Tire Fire. It sputters but it never seems to go out. I have some personal involvement in this to a certain degree and I don't honestly believe either one of them takes it all that seriously.

And I don't even know if you can call DJ a web comic guy anymore. Hero By Night has been dead for a long time due to contract disagreements and he ended Yirmumuh last month. He told me the other day he's working hard on an OGN (I had to ask him what an OGN was [original graphic novel] and then I tried to pretend I was cool and knew what he meant all along) which I believe is intended for print only.

But tastes differ. Some people appreciate the rapier wit involved in a good insultfest and there aren't many people as good at that sort of thing (at least not in webcomics) than Scott and DJ.

I can see you not liking that Ran. Personally I like them both even more when they do stuff like that. I find it fun. If I felt like the drama was real I might think differently about it. But I don't. I tend to see it as a sort of never ending, mutual roast.

Then there are the comics DJ did about Scott. I don't know what to say about that. I mean you live in the public eye people will mock you. Scott seemed to have no problem with Gabe and Tycho making him look like a pervert who wants to suck mother's milk out of Gabe's wife's breasts last week (and that is hardly the first time Scott has served as a foil for Gabe and Tycho). He even made an extremely homosexual joke about himself and Kris Straub in his own strip recently as well. I don't think the potshots DJ took at him were necessarily any worse. If you're the kind of person who only wants the people you approve of to mock you publicly you are probably going to be disappointed.

But if it turns you off it turns you off. I think there's a lot of forgiveness that comes with success. I love Hero By Night and I love Player vs Player so they would both have a lot more to go before I felt like they were alienating me as a reader.

It may be that DJ Coffman and Scott Kurtz are mostly kidding when they trash on each other, but I think Ran's point of trashing other webcomickers, or anyone else for that matter, on their site is valid. I agree with her, it's crass and always makes that person look small. Hollywood does it all the time, and it always leaves a stain. Satirizing someone in their comic may be different, I suppose I don't really have as much of a problem with that, but in general I think peer evisceration is bad form. Maybe they're both into it, but like I've said in another thread, don't be an asshole on the internet unless you're good at it, and most people aren't.

Well it still goes back to professionalism, to whit: professional courtesy.  You're supposed to be nice to other creators: if you send an unsolicited guest strip to Kris Straub, don't bitch about him in your blog if he doesn't post it. If you put someone else's characters in your strip as a cameo appearance, acknowledge where those characters come from and post a link. If you're flat out stealing someone's ideas, punch yourself in the face as hard as you possibly can and come up with something original.

I  don't see anything wrong with a little inter-comic rivalry to spice up the blog, but if it degenerates into an actual enmity between creators I tend to lose respect for everyone involved.

One of the good things about this board is that there's a lot of mutual respect. Criticism of others' comics tends to take the form of suggested improvements and links to tutorials and resource sites; nobody takes it too personally. There's been very few ad hominem attacks, and we have yet to see a proper flame war break out. Turns out 'be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes' really IS a good foundation for a society (or at least good concise forum rules).

Well, as is the point of the article, I think we've veered off into the land of personal interpretation.

From my perspective what goes on between DJ and Scott is funny and it doesn't make a whit of difference to me. I happen to think they are both the high water mark in assholery in webcomics and I enjoy the antics.

On the other hand when Scott took three weeks off and ran nothing but guest strips I was like "whaaaaaa?"

My point in all of this is that the cornerstone of professional webcomickry is that on time, consistent delivery of compelling content. All other things are lesser and as we've seen, of varying importance from person to person.

It's like that old expression you can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time. My own personal take on that is that you can please all of your fans all of the time by delivering that on time, consistent, compelling content (exception to the rule perhaps?) but all other things are open to varying levels of personal interpretation.

I may not care about silly flame wars but it obviously puts some people completely off their feed. That doesn't make their point of view any less legitimate. Just different from mine.

I may think someone's bad art or ugly website is a mark in the loss column for the quality of their comic. Other's may read the comic, never notice the website and appreciate the clever writing.

Ultimately though that foundation of content delivery is the only thing that truly matters. And I should emphasize that this is a personal belief. If after a long period of time of delivering on time, consistent content you aren't reaching your target audience your content is probably not compelling. If after delivering  compelling content in a haphazard manner you are not reaching your target audience you have to look at the update schedule. I really do feel it is as basic as a math equation in this one instance. If not "A" then "B". If not "B" than "A".

And I think all other things, great public persona, accessibility, social networking, great merch, fancy websites; basically anything else that has anything to do with the business of webcomics are simply enhancements to that basic foundation.

To whit.

Many will call Harlan Ellison an asshole. Few will say he's not a professional.

it's nice to be able to use the phrase "to whit" legitimately  :)

I don't think we've veered off into personal interpretation, I think the article itself was about personal interpretation. Personal interpretation is a great thing, it's how ideas move.

Quote from: Rob on June 03, 2010, 08:01:18 AM
My own personal take on that is that you can please all of your fans all of the time by delivering that on time, consistent, compelling content (exception to the rule perhaps?)

Sadly no, since immediately upon posting that page someone will complain about how derivative the punchline is, delivering on time is still pleasing all of the people some of the time.

Quote from: JGray on June 03, 2010, 09:41:43 AM
To whit.

Many will call Harlan Ellison an asshole. Few will say he's not a professional.

Yeah you and I have talked about this. I find the guy absolutely hilarious and love his comics. Maybe I'm just weird. But I'm ok with that.  :-\

I don't think someone being funny when they sling shit is really an antidote to being unprofessional, but in itself I'm okay with someone being an asshole...I suppose I kinda have to be...what I have a problem with is someone being petty. I have no idea if the Coffman/Kurtz war qualifies as pettiness, I'm not a reader of either of their works so I've never seen it and don't care, but on the general level if I see an author engaging in petty squabbling or complaining or whining or what have you, my opinion of them and what they do tends to suffer. I think that's a big part of why I try not to talk on my comic about things that aren't my comic or what influenced its creation. I've been in many many situations where I wanted to cry and rant and bang on people's heads or call somebody's comic out for the garbage that it is, but I don't. It's not because it wouldn't be funny, I got the funny down, but because it would be really amateur if I did.

I think another thing, kind of in line with both this and the original points, is when authors make excuses about why their comics are late, or even when they're poorly done. Note the difference between a reason and an excuse. Of course it happens that people miss deadlines, it happens to us all, and not everyone has the ability to have guest strips sitting in a drawer somewhere. I'm not sure anyone would call it unprofessional when these things happen and audiences are generally understanding when they do, but it drives me batty when I see someone who hasn't updated in months and come back with a comment like "I had school and my parents were like such n00bs. O wellz LOL!"

It's not O wellz, you illiterate dunce! At least have the respect for people reading your work and the patience they show in dealing with your slow ass to apologize. Reading our work is not a privilege, it's quite the opposite. We have a contract with our fans that we will entertain them, and they pay us back by giving a shit that we exist. When we lapse in our commitment to that contract, the least we can do is mea culpa, take ownership and work to make it not happen again.

I think it might all boil down to respect. Respect for your readers, which you show by delivering what you promise and sending them a little fan service here and there and not being a stuck-up shithead when you meet them at cons and so on, and respect for your peers, which includes not spouting off petty snipes at them and showing support for their accomplishments. The more respect you have for your audience and your craft, the higher your level of professionalism is going to be.

...although it is sometimes fun to abuse your audience a bit....

I don't know what it is like to have a comic with tens of thousands of hits and a media empire. I hope that should I ever reach that point, I'll still be able to make time to reply when people send mail or post messages. Being an active part of your own community just seems like a no brainer to me.

Yesterday Scott Kurtz sang me a song.... about what a douche he thinks I am... during his Usteam. Background vocals by Kris Straub.

So yeah he's down with his fans. LOL.  :D

I'll steer clear of the personalities and their conflicts. :-)

I can offer this as far as update schedules.

A quick bit of back story first:

The idea of the Wannabe Pirates webcomic was as to act as an introduction to the characters and ongoing content to supplement a series of short animated movies. Because of the long production times, it made sense to have something to fill in the voids and hopefully build up an audience that would be familiar with the characters. McCrary could only find the time to do two strips a week and after a year and a half, finding the time to do those was becoming difficult. He wanted me to take over the art chores on the strip, but I didn't see how I could do that and ever finish one of the movies. The compromise was to put the movies on permanent hold and do the strips in 3D (so that all of the work I'd done wouldn't have been for nothing.) I also committed to taking on a 5-day a week schedule.

I started doing the 3D strip on that schedule at the beginning of November and on this coming Monday, we will have more 3D strips up than the 2D strips that took a year and a half to put up.

Although we haven't seen huge increases in our number of readers, our page views have definitely increased because new readers now have more content to pour through. This will only increase as long as I can stay on schedule and I think that's a real key.

I'm of the opinion that doing only one or two strips a week is taking the long way to having that huge archive which I'm thinking equals huge page views. The 5-days instead of 2-days means 260 strips a year compared to 104. Plus, we're doing a Saturday strip that gives us another 52 a years.

As tempting as it has been to skip a day when other things are going on, I've forced myself to keep updating. My thinking is that we won't get the full benefit if I do that and it's letting the readers down to do that.

I overheard a relatively well-known webcomic creator telling someone at a con, "You never know when I'm going to update, so you should check my site every day." I thought that was terribly insulting to the audience. Essentially saying I'll throw you a bone when I feel like it.

My belief is that you get longterm readers by becoming a habit and if they go there and there's not a new strip, then you are creating a negative that will not reinforce the habit.

Quote from: Largento on June 04, 2010, 03:20:15 PM
overheard a relatively well-known webcomic creator telling someone at a con, "You never know when I'm going to update, so you should check my site every day." I thought that was terribly insulting to the audience. Essentially saying I'll throw you a bone when I feel like it.

My belief is that you get longterm readers by becoming a habit and if they go there and there's not a new strip, then you are creating a negative that will not reinforce the habit.

This is true and brings up an interesting point. I don't read any webcomics that don't update regularly, except for the ones done by friends of mine. It'd be interesting to find out how common that is.

But that's what RSS feeds are for!

One good one I can think of is Wasted Talent (http://www.wastedtalent.ca/).  I subscribe to it, and its irregular update schedule is completely inconspicuous. :)

It also depends on what you mean by regular. Order of the Stick doesn't have a set schedule but does update several times a week.

Quote from: Rob on June 02, 2010, 08:15:57 PMI have some personal involvement in this to a certain degree and I don't honestly believe either one of them takes it all that seriously.

And that is my point. To either side's loyal fans, who have invested a certain amount of time in getting to know a comic author (because as a creator, it's in your best interest to sell yourself to your audience--the more personal it is for your readers, the more they'll invest in your works), it may look like hilarious fun-poking. To the random potential reader who wanders on to your website for the very first time only to stumble into a crazy drama explosion? Not so much.

First impressions are absolutely important. It's really in your best interest to make sure that anyone finding your website for the first time has a nice experience that'll make them want to come back.

I had a really similar discussion in another forum this week about webcomics. From what I've seen and experienced quality takes a distant backseat to regular updates. Which seems...almost backwards to me. But then I still view all comics from a print comic perspective I guess. When I read a comic no matter if it's a full length type or strip type I want it to not only have quality art but quality story. If either are lacking it causes the whole thing to suffer. But in webcomics that doesn't seem to be the case. People will put up with and often heavily support an artist that's really not that good, or at least no on par with many others because they update several times a week. I think that's great because it certainly gives me hope, but I also find it weird.

So...what do you value more in your webcomics? Regular updates or higher pro looking quality?

I think it's pure luck. (unfortunately) if a webcomic artist will ever succeed on the net these days.
There are simply too many web comics out (in the thousands)... the competition is huge...and if you are a one man show its makes things only more difficult.

The guys at webcomic.com themselves in the "how to make webcomic" said sometimes even if you do all of the above you may still get no
return on the very hard work done.

Personally,the work we put into web comics shouldn't be free at all, these are different times we should work on changing it...paid content but in a way that works.
We should create full stories and simply advertise them on the web like the movie trailers along with the merchandise stuff..

probably most will disagree.....

Well, let me be the first.

While I won't say there isn't an element of luck to success in webcomics, it's by no means the dominant factor. The quality of your product along with a decent marketing strategy built on top of a solid posting schedule has been the success of many comics, and the only element of luck is catching the right person/people's eyes at the right time.

Yes, there are bad webcomics out there, but they all have something tangible to offer, something for which their audience is looking. Success is a balance of how much people want to read your work and how effective you are at getting it in front of them. People who succeed in webcomics work damned hard at it, or at least the ones who succeed without working hard are the rare exception, and diminishing the results of that work by saying they were lucky is more than a little insulting. No, not everyone who works hard makes it, but not everyone who works hard has a product that people want to read. Hard work alone won't do it, and that's what the webcomics.com guys were talking about.

And as far as charging for comics, that's a pretty surefire way to get people not to read your comic. I can't speak for everyone else, but I do charge for my comic, through advertising and merchandise. You can't think of webcomics like a product, it's more like a service where you sell on the back end, like television and radio. There are television shows that charge money, yes, but their audiences are much much smaller and they have to bundle their services to sell them.

Cary, I sometimes scratch my head when I look at certain webcomics too and wonder how they got so popular, but I keep coming back to the idea that there must be something about it that catches readers. Plus, I think there's a level of lowered expectations, kinda like in your local music scene where a band who isn't so great and their bass player sucks but they still get gigs because there's just something about them.

Quote from: Rob on May 31, 2010, 10:57:35 PM
A lot of folks have been chattering on in webcomics for a really long time about how important it is that we look professional (I'm guilty of it myself). "I want my booth to look professional," "I want my book to look professional," "I need a site redesign so it looks more professional." Yet I can't think of a single instance in which professionalism has provided a proven benefit to a webcomicker I know. I can't.

My day job recently had a professional development day and hired a motivational speaker to present to us. Part of his spiel was a little personality test that segmented the crowd into four groups. I am of the belief that the folks you are mentioning (in the quote above) fall into the category of The Analytical Thinker.

Quote

• Wants accuracy
• Loves details
• Values numbers, statistics, raw data

Analytical's fear being embarassed or losing face. They hide their emotions from others.

Strengths

• Thinking
• Thorough
• Disciplined

Weakness

• Excludes feelings from decisions
• Perfectionist
• Too rigid and demanding of self or others

I'm guilty of being a part of this segment and as much as I understand and believe that my success is not linked to professionalism... I still demand that I behave professionally. It's sort of my own personal measure of success. Stick-figure comics may be excellent in their own right and merit... but I wouldn't accept that of myself.

-tony

Quote from: LegendWoodsman on June 06, 2010, 01:44:53 PM
Stick-figure comics may be excellent in their own right and merit... but I wouldn't accept that of myself.
-tony

If you were making the kind of money XKCD or Cyanide and Happiness make you might feel differently. With them it's the writing that is exceptional. I'm not sure good art would even make a difference for them.  :-\

Good art would ruin those titles. Can you imagine anyone being interested in Dinosaur Comics if, all of a sudden, the art was fantastic 3D rendering? Part of why the popular poorly-drawn comics do well is because they are drawn poorly. It's part of their character, sets them apart. It's not something you can plan for, but when it works it works. It's like the vocal ability of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits...quality writing can not only make up for lacking talent in other areas, it can make that lack of talent an element of the art.

QuoteSo...what do you value more in your webcomics? Regular updates or higher pro looking quality?

I happen to have a very similar poll on my site right now.  Go ahead and take a look, the results are fairly interesting.  Maybe I didn't phrase the options completely evenly, but it looks like readers (at least my readers) prefer quality over quantity, to a reasonable extent.

Quote from: Alectric on June 06, 2010, 11:05:56 PM

QuoteSo...what do you value more in your webcomics? Regular updates or higher pro looking quality?

I happen to have a very similar poll on my site right now.  Go ahead and take a look, the results are fairly interesting.  Maybe I didn't phrase the options completely evenly, but it looks like readers (at least my readers) prefer quality over quantity, to a reasonable extent.

To quote Gibson...

QuoteReaders Lie!

My experience flies right in the face of this. And I'm not talking about my comic I'm talking about what I know of the numbers and success of other sites. Consistent updates are more important than quality. Of course if it's crap on a stick who cares how many times you update right? But a "good" update three times a week will beat a "great" update once a week every time. IMHO.

Ha, I'm actually inclined to agree.  If I can manage it, I'm going to try to update twice a week (instead of once) for my next story arc, dumbing down my art as much as I have to.