The secret to webcomic success in 30 tweets
Repost from here:
http://twitter.com/drowemos
1-Webcomics are advertising not a product. They are about building and audience that trusts and likes you.
2-The more you cater to and undeserved community the stronger the trust/like of you there will be.
3-Copying a popular webcomics will not work because the audience already has a webcomic for them.
4-You can only make a webcomic about something you know. Posers will fail horribly even if the idea is good.
5-To succeed in building trust/like you must stay actively involved in online communities related to your comic.
6-Once you have built and audience that trusts/likes you (apr 5K reader) you can sell them things to make money.
7-It generally takes 3 years for a webcomic to see any type of financial success.
8- No one will buy anything from a site that has been around for less than half a year or has less than 30 comics. (unless you are famous)
9-You can only sell things that the audience would buy normally and the product must be quality.
10-People won’t buy things with your logo/characters on it. Sell things that people would buy without the comic.(unless you’re famous)
11-To build an audience you must bring people back to your site every day with new and engaging content.
12- Paysites, T-shirt, prints etc can all sell to a receptive audience provided you have free content to bring people back every day.
13-The harder you make it for people to view your site the smaller your audience will be and the less sales you can make.
14-Flash viewers, animation, sounds make it harder for people to view your comic thus lowering your audience.
15-Sex sells but sex with no substance of story and quality of art behind it will turn your readers off.
16-Most new viewers to your site only spend 45 second on your site. You must catch them in that time.
17-The art and web design must be clean, understandable, evocative and constant style to catch a reader in 45s.
18-Art does not have to be good. Just easy to understand and matching the comic theme to catch new readers.
19-Good writing will help keep reader, built trust/like and help market your comic virally. It will not catch new readers.
20- Paying for advertising works as long as you spread your money out over a long term instead of spending at once.
21-Participating in forums/twitter/facebook can be free advertising of your site provided you don’t look like your advertising.
22-To advertise without looking like advertising have intelligent conversations and your comic link in your signature.
23-Troll are to be ignored. Do not speak to them of or of them. Anything else will encourage their actions.
24-Put your comic up today. It will never be “good” in your eyes but it is “good enough” right now.
25-Your skill will improve through practice and dedication to putting a comic online.
26-Be open to criticism. Your readers will tell you what you are doing right and wrong.
27-But don’t be bullied by your readers when it comes to story. Technical flaws should be corrected the story is your own.
28-It is possible that you suck and you won’t have a career as a webcartoonist. You will never know till you try for 3 years.
29-Webcomic creators are lonely people. Send them questions on email. They will probably respond and help you.
30-Everything you need to know about making webcomics is online for free. You don’t need to pay for the knowledge.
2-………………….cater to and undeserved community ……..
You meant “cater to an under served community” right?
As a reader of many web comics, I see many good truths here. I would like to comment on 28 though. There are very few commercial successes out there. That doesn’t mean everybody else sucks. No 16, about the 45 seconds… is overly optimistic. People don’t stay that long.
The only quibble I have with your list–which is excellent, by the way– is with number 4: “4-You can only make a webcomic about something you know. Posers will fail horribly even if the idea is good.”
So, you’re saying you can’t write about magic unless you know all about it? You can’t write about living on another planet unless you’ve been there? You can’t write about being a spaceship pilot unless you’ve actually gone into space?
I think what you really mean is that you have to have either a detailed idea about what you are doing (i.e., a carefully thought-out magic system) or have done the research necessary to make your story “feel” realistic. And there is also the problem of too much knowledge (the infamous “info dumps” in novels where the author goes into far too much detail about his/her story’s background to show off all the research s/he did in preparing the book).
I’d like to add a #31
Have a system such as a comment field like this, or even a dedicated Forum, for the readers to talk to you and each other in. This will add to the community in the long run, and also make the creator a little less lonely. Make yourself visible too, readers like that.
@Terry Kepner: “Knowing” about a subject that does not have a basis in this reality means having an internally consistent set of rules and sticking to them. Even if you don’t spell those rules out to the audience, being aware of them will help the narrative in good shape. If, in your story, mages cannot normally rearrange continents on the face of the planet, and then one comes along who can, you should probably have an in-story reason for this exception.
Similarly, if in your story about life on another world you mention to your audience that a day is 47 zerflags long, don’t have the character start something that will take 70 zerflags and state it will be done later on that day (unless there’s sarcasm involved).
Also, completely read comment posts before replying to them. I only read the first two paragraphs of your post before writing the above. And now that I’ve read the third, I feel a little sheepish. 🙂
Hi, new here. Can’t help but notice that a lot of people are dissing Drowemos, and this I have never understood. He’s just a man trying to put together a somewhat silly, periodically plot-interesting webcomic with lots of fanservice and good art.
I’m a girl, and I still have no idea what the problem here is. Although I am somewhat bisexual. :3
Sorry, can’t seem to find the other place to post this.
#1 is awesome. Any webcomic trying to make a living by selling itself will fail. If you want money, every few months run a donation drive, with a reward of extra pages being posted for a while(MAKE SURE IN ADVANCE YOU HAVE THE TIME!) and you may be lucky enough to get an overwhelming response. (twokinds did well, and Yosh makes 100 almost monthly)
what I think is funny is that he makes comments about the commercialization and all that, considering the fact that this site has a members section…
11, I must say, is ironic. I almost never see new content on this site, despite checking back almost daily. I’m not even sure if he has a schedule or not at this point.
among other things, I would add “make update schedule clear” and “once you have a decent sized fan base, try creating a mirror site on another free hosting site. Some sites don’t work out well on some computers. Even having a deviant art page dedicated to the comic can help it grow.” seriously, any comic without a mirror site can miss out on a large chunk of audience thanks to a bad connection to a site, and if the server your being hosted on goes down, you can lose huge chunks of data(refer to early Casey and Andy strips if you want to understand what I mean). Oh, and “You may never be as big as some of the classic ones, but if one person enjoys your work, it’s worth it”