The Eight Things I’ve Found Helpful in Creating a Webcomic

This is the second draft of what I have observed from creating, managing, and promoting a webcomic.  My comic is nothing but my hobby – it’s a fun one and I enjoy it, but these tips may not be useful for everyone.  If these are relevant for your webcomic (or blog, or online project, etc.), then I hope they can be of use.

First - Traffic doesn’t really matter. This is a hard one to wrap our minds around because it’s very counterintuitive. We recognize that the single greatest purpose of our webcomics is to have a readership, and that the more readers we have, the more the comic will thrive. Because of this we make the leap that traffic matters because traffic equates to readers.

Well, no, it doesn’t. Not really. Not even close, actually. Traffic does matter to some extent because it’s the lifeblood of your comic’s potential, where more eyeballs equals a greater potential overall readership. However, surges in traffic are typically fleeting and maybe one out of every hundred persons who initially “Stumbled Upon” your website will bookmark your page and come back later. Any traffic spikes you receive are, essentially, nothing but advertisements for your site.  And we all know how quickly we forget about commercials.

You aren’t aiming for traffic. You’re aiming for readers. As a webcartoonist, your purpose is to build a relationship with your audience because your audience is comprised of people who take the time out of their day to visit your website and, sometimes, write an email. These people are readers. Yeah, we all want more readers. More readers implies that you will be able to get your message out to more people, sell more products, and not be resigned to doing that sad twiddle-thumb thing at conventions. But the ones you already have should be important enough so you don’t have to get hung up on how much traffic you get. The number of visitors you receive is ego-candy, but it's the readers who make your comic an actual experience as opposed to a one-shot ad campaign.

Second– Your audience will create an image of you, so control it.  This tip goes beyond maintenance issues such as consistency in updating and so on; this tip refers to the fact that your audience has defined you in some way.  It might be because there are so so so many autobiographical or self-insert-as-main-character webcomics out there, but your readers will inevitably associate certain traits found in your characters with you as a person.*  The genre and topic of your comic will create a context for these interactions: comedians are expected to be funny, fiction writers are expected to be insightful, gamer are expected to work blue, and so on.  Additionally, publishing to the Internet removes some of the barriers between consumers and creators; when your audience creates one set of identities for your characters and another identity for you, there will probably be a lot of tradeoff between these.  This is especially true if your news posts or press releases or whatnot contain content that supports these assumptions.  People will develop their idea of your identity based on what you give to them, so it’s important to control what you’ve let them work with.

* I could go off on a rant here and complain about how I’m actually insulted when people think my main female character is a self-insert, since she’s written as a downright rude person with some pretty questionable social boundaries.  But, hey, this brings us directly to the third point…

Third - Don’t whine. Ever (or as close to ever as humanly possible). We all have bad days but people are reading this stuff. The salt of human drama doesn’t have to get purged all over your news post. Sure, it sometimes makes for interesting reading but is it really necessary to tell the world about the minutia of your love affairs, breakups, and family issues? Hell, over the last two years I’ve had two minor car accidents and Brown and I hit some extremely significant milestones in our lives, but the only time I’ve gotten really personal was vaguely sorta not-really confessing that I was dealing with a very scary health issue. Remember, those eyeballs reading your comic are attached to living people, and it's very easy to alienate people by whining.  They might forgive you a few offenses but if every news post or comic is nothing but gloom-and-doom, most sensible people will lose interest and those who stick around may be a little bit scary.

Fourth – You’re broke.  Get over it.  Times are tough all over and odds are extremely good that you aren’t going to get rich from webcomics.  You can add a Paypal button, do donation drives,* or hold your comic hostage until certain financial goals are met, but none of this guarantees your readers will donate.  It probably means you’ll just piss them off and lose them.

You need to understand that you and your readers perceive your comic differently.  From the perspective of the webcomic creator, your readers’ reluctance to donate seems extremely selfish since you are working to provide free entertainment on a regular basis.  But from your readers’ perspective, it is free entertainment.  The very reason you have so many readers is the same reason the majority of them will never give you one red cent.  Again, traffic implies potential outcomes, it does not secure them.

That’s not to say a fraction of your readers won’t pony up some cash on a regular basis, but you can’t keep going back to the same well over and over again without it running dry.  Every time you ask for money, you drain your available resources.  Again, this is a perception issue: if we stopped to think about it, we are fully aware that a donation of ten dollars is as good as gone because you can barely buy lunch for that these days.  Unfortunately, that’s just not how the minds of human beings work and we’re more likely to think: “Hey, I just gave this person ten bucks six months ago!  I’ve done my part - it’s not my fault they can’t manage their money."

So you better be doing this for something other than donations.  Maybe you’re an artist and your webcomic is an advertisement for your other projects.  Maybe you can sell enough products to supplement your income.**  Or maybe you just really enjoy creating something that other people want to read.  Whatever it is, money shouldn’t be your priority.

* Full disclosure - I do one donation drive every six months to pay for bandwidth, art supplies, and any computer-related expenses .

**And then you’re working two jobs; you’re making a webcomic and you’re a sales representative and product distribution center with all of the customer service hassles that entails.

Fifth – Nine-tenths of everything you try will fail, so plan, plan, plan.   There is just so much stuff on the Internet these days that people are oversaturated with brilliant ideas, fantastic blogs, cutesy products… you name it and there’s sixty of them out there.  That’s a lot of competition for you and most of them are probably doing it better than you are. 

Planning helps reduce the chance of failure, especially if there’s money involved.  Recognize that any project, product, or tangent (e.g.: advertising, guest art, etc.) will most likely result in some loss of time, money, or other resources.  Plan in advance how much of this you are willing to lose before you start and do not exceed these limits.  This is especially true if you agree to work in partnerships with other people since the stakes are higher.

Sixth – You can’t please everybody.  Yeah, we all know this one.  It’s a big Internet and some readers will love one strip while others will hate it.  Story arcs that garner praise will also generate criticism.  You will get yelled at.  It’s a fact.  My only advice is you shouldn’t feel obligated to yell back.  Which reminds me…

Seventh – Good manners are essential.  Don’t be a jerk, and if you are a jerk in your personal life, do not be a jerk when managing your webcomic.  Some part of the success of your webcomic is a direct result of how you interact with fans and with other creators through email, at conventions, and in blogs and forums.  Networking is promotion; good manners help you sell yourself better than pissing in someone’s eye just because you can.  It’s a small world - try and make it a better one.

Last and most important, don’t expect people to do things for you. The fact that you have a webcomic does not obligate anyone to thank you, pay you, or link to you. The fact that you have linked to them does not obligate them to thank you, pay you, or link to you. The fact that you have created guest art for them does not obligate them to thank you, pay you, or link to you… I could go on, and maybe I should go on, because it’s a message that some people simply do not seem to understand. If this is a hobby for you, then anything you do in the context of your webcomic should be motivated by personal enjoyment and not by the notion that you’ll get any other sort of payout.

Similarly, other people with websites and so forth do not make decisions about their content based on what is good for you; for example, if you met a popular webcomic author at a convention and he didn’t send any traffic your way when he did the writeup, that’s his prerogative. It doesn’t mean he didn’t like you as a person, or didn’t value your work, or so on… it’s just that he offers content based on his goals, not yours. And don't carry a grudge because someone didn't shill for you or pimp your work - that's your job, not theirs. The open nature of the Internet makes it easy to think we are all participating in a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" transaction and this is just not the case. No one is obligated to make your projects work except for you and maybe your mom, and isn't she busy with her own stuff by now?