change in the weather

[gazorenzoku]

I was just about to take a break from the online comic and try my hand at print comics due to the difficulty of getting people to come to my site, when I finally got my first e-mail from someone I have never heard from before telling me that they dug my site. What a pleasure.

I still want to make that print comic, but the web site might just survive as well now.

This message doesn't really have much value in the way of discussing comics in general, but I just wanted to share that...

[Jason Tocci]

I know just what you mean -- it's tough to motivate yourself to do an online comic when you look at how many hits you've been getting and it seems a little sad. As for me, I found it a little disheartening that just about all the readers for the web comic I started with friends happen to be acquaintances of ours (and since we reply to every email of praise we get, the strangers who read it often end up becoming friends though frequent lengthy online chats).

Now my online comic site is still up (Comics Ex Machina), but we haven't updated since August (I have drawn the next strip, it now needs to be colored by one of my co-creators; hopefully it'll be up by Christmas, but even then, I dunno if we'll update more than once a month, and our old schedule was twice a week).

All the really motivating opportunities to draw seem to be in print: draw for local newspapers/magazines (maybe getting paid), drawing for the comics anthology the Comic Art Society is printing at school ... I even got an email from someone looking for a cartoonist for propagandistic comics for the Arts Administration office at school. It's hard to motivate myself to draw when I know only about 50 people are actually seeing the piece, and most of them are friends, or friends of friends.

What about you folk out there who have online comics? Is it easier to keep going because you have a large, vocal readership? Do you feel that a well-designed web site has contributed to your success? Have you been able to maintain a consistent schedule, and if not, how has breaking that schedule affected you? And heck -- will people even go back to visit an online comic if its "consistent schedule" is only once a month?

Jason

[gazorenzoku]

(this message is a little long, so please bear with me)

I don't have the hard core experience to answer those questions, but the other day I had a discussion that kind of addressed some of them. I was talking with a fellow student who is trying to start his own company. The company is not related to art or comics in any way, but I started to tell this guy all about my attempts at an internet comic, and we talked all about starting businesses in general. Even though my comic is free, I view it as a business because payment is in hits (ego satisfaction) instead of money. And someday, if it gets popular, I would like to sell stuff related to the comic (and even the comic itself if micropayments work out).

Anyhow, this guy has been going around to different companies trying to find one that would lend him money to start his enterprise. He told me all about the difficulties of doing this, but I won't go into that here. The basic point is that both he and I were basically doing "sales" work: going to people or companies and trying to convince them to invest something in our projects. For him it is cash, for me it is time and appreciation.

I told him about the low turn out at the site, and how it was kind of depressing (this is before that ray of hope that I got when the e-mail came in). But he told me just to calm down and wait. In his words, "You should just look at the first year or so as a period where nothing is going to happen." He said it might even take 2 to 3 years to get popular, or even more. But the thing about the internet, he said, was that at least it is possible to get popular if you have a "good product". With what he is doing, his chances of success are probably not as good as mine, though if he does succeed it will probably happen a lot quicker.

A Canadian acquaintance of mine wanted to start up a construction company here in Japan. When I first got to Japan 3 years ago, he was busy doing lots of sales work, but hadn't built one house. I saw him a couple of years later, and still nothing. But the other day, I heard that he has now built several houses and is working on a project right now. That is about a 3 year period where he was paying for his business entirely out of his own pocket and not seeing any success.

I suppose the moral to all of this blabbering is that it all just takes time. It is really difficult when you spend so much time on your page and no one looks. But just remember that you are not drawing for the people today, but for 2 or 3 years down the line, or even later than that.

All of the stories above gave me inspiration. I have calmed down a lot, and realized that it isn't something that will happen in a couple of months, or maybe even a couple of years. But if you plug away at making a good site and also put some time in doing "sales" (leaving your URL in forums, guestbooks, sending out e-mails, doing some of the things discussed in the "promoting your site" string in this forum, etc.) there is probably a pretty high chance for success.

I don't even expect people to come and look now. I am making my site for the future. One day it will be a success. Why? Because I love doing it, I am good at it, and I have a really critical eye so I won't stay complacent (I am always trying to improve). I think people will recognize the love for the work when they see it.

Some of this kind of thing seems to be missing from some of the more popular works that offer daily or weekly updates. I imagine it must be hard to provide a high level of quality when you are working on a tight deadline for something that doesn't bring in any cash. You have your real job to worry about too... Not that they all suck, there is also a lot of good stuff out there. But if you scan over the sites that don't update as often, most of the time you will find a higher level of craftsmanship. But that's the same in print comics as well. The best guys put out their comics the most infrequently, which is infuriating to a fan sometimes, but maybe necessary for high quality.

So here is advice from an amateur (using the original meaning of the word: someone who does something out of a love for that thing): keep investing your time in the quality of the work, and don't even worry about hits right now. Don't worry about them for a long time. Your audience will come eventually. Oh yeah, don't forget "sales". Do fun sales, not borring sales, or you will go insane. I did sales at a job for a while, and it was excrusiatingly borring. Never again. Now my sales activities include checking out other cool sites and contacting the people that run them and telling them about my site, leaving my URL on forums and guestbooks, making cool business cards, fliers, and stuff like that. Local sales are fun because you can see the people with your own eyes and feel good handing them the business card or flier... you get real personal contact. Internet sales are great because you get to check out lots of cool sites, and you can still say you are being productive.

It's a blast, but only because I am not expecting too much from it right away. When I was expecting over night success, it was nerve wracking! And I can sleep at night because it isn't some kind of marketing scam or something: I am offering a service for free, for crying out loud. And going to people's sites and saying "hey" is great because it gives them an ego boost, which is great cause they deserve it. So it is all cyclical because you are supporting other online comic artists at the same time as promoting yourself. Of course, it is best to branch out and try sales outside of the online comics world as well... but all those positive elements mentioned above carry over into sales outside the comics world as well.

I imagine that most of the people with successful sites (sites that get a lot of hits) have been around for quite a while... am I wrong?

vince
(check out my site!)