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Long time, no speak! I’ve been kinda, well, BUSY lately, you can see here for details, but things are going on and I DO still have plans to start a weekly column of some kind about making money with your webcomics and MORE.

I just got an e-mail from a guy named Lou, asking me what Ad system I use to manage my ads, etc. I’ve gotten at least 20 e-mails like this in the past that I’ve answered, so I thought it might be something to publically post about. The ad system I’m using on yirmumah.net is phpADsnew, and it’s free. Now, I can’t help you install it, you’ll need to teach yourself like i did, or get someone who knows a little about php scripts to get it into place for you, and then just experiment with it, but it’s a very powerful tool. It allows you to do ALL sorts of things, like show ads on certain days of the weeks, limit it to so many impressions or click throughs, automatically notify advertisers that their ads are expiring soon, AND it also allows you to set up javascript files so you can feed in images to other sites…

Now, that last feature could even be used to feed your actual comic to other sites or ads, or create your own shared ad network like Blank Label Comics runs. So, it’s free! Give it a whirl– http://phpadsnew.com

Thanks for reading!

Hey there! Wow it’s been a very long time since I’ve updated this section of the site. I’ve been VERY busy with my own efforts of publishing — I’m glad the some of the tips and info here have been helpful to so many webcomic creators. I get at least one e-mail a week from someone thanking me for this blog, and that makes me feel guilty that I haven’t updated it with any useful information. So here we go! READ ON…. (more…)

I already know this for a fact, and I’ve encouraged other web cartoonists to deliver content for specific sites, for a fee.

I just found a webcomic called “SPUN” by John Moore, and it’s a sports based webcomic which is now featured on CBS’s Sportsline site. - You can see John posting the news over in the Toontalk forum. — This isn’t a knock on John Moore’s cartooning ability, but his strip isn’t the most polished work around, and will show some of you out there that you don’t have to be the Rembrandt of Cartoonists to be paid for your work. Man, that really seems like a slam on John, but it’s not meant to be at all. I meant, put his comic next to something like Penny Arcade or Atland and you can see varying qualities.

So what does it pay? What do you charge? Well, it’s all negotiations, and there are no real set rates. You have to make your work WORTH paying for, pitch the idea that a regular feature WILL keep people coming back to their page. They already know why that’s good for them. Play TO THEM. While I don’t find the sport strip that compelling personally because I don’t follow sports much, I’m sure the editors of that site were totally thrilled by the humor.

Here’s my suggestion for approaching bigger websites with a pitch:

- Find a topic you can do well. Maybe it’s something you like like or follow like sports, politics, music, etc.

- Make a small list of sites in that category that you’d pitch an idea to. Since we’re already talking about the sports comic, let’s use sports themes as an example, so you’ve collected several sports websites. Collect at least 8 or 9 with webmaster’s e-mails or contact informations for the site owners.

- Before you contact them, draw up three samples of theme you’d like to pitch. Make them as awesome as you possibly can, but follow the simple rules you should already know by now. “Keep it simple, stupid” is almost a golden rule. Don’t be like me and over-write your comics.

- KNow who you’re pitching to. If you’re going to pitch to Sports editors, they KNOW their sports. Same with any other theme or genre. You don’t want to send them a boring e-mail about how you’re a cartoonist and all the cartoony things you’ve done.

- Write a form letter that you can use and insert the different names of the companies, keep it brief and be sure to triple check that you’re sending it to the right people. If it’s addressed to ESPN-ZONE and you’ve sent it to CBS, uh.. you’re doomed.

here’s a sample note:

“Hi guys, I’m a webcartoonist who loves sports and I thought maybe your site could use a regular sports themed webcomic. I’ve went ahead and done up a few samples (insert links here or attach to e-mail) for you to check out. I’d really love to work with you guys and have my work featured on the site. If something like this sparks your interest contact me at (insert email or contact info) and we can talk over details.”

Notice, there is no mention of money. They may offer you the spot for free, which would suck, but bring your work extra exposure. If you’re a smart businessman, you might ask them friendly in a follow up e-mail or phonecall about what kind of budget they could work out for such a thing and what you could do for them. If they don’t have a budget, NO WORRIES! You can most likely easily get them to agree to some adlinks under your strip that you can patch in remotely through an iframe code or javascript. Check out my comic on Crapville.com, look under the strip and you’ll see my googlead code, which helps me pay for bandwidth, etc.

If there’s absolutely NO money in it, consider how big their site is, and get them to link back to you prominantly. Then, keep pitching the same feature to other sports sites for a price or negotiation, saying you’re also featured on that big site already and they could have your feature exclusively for a negotiated price. Pretty nifty, huh?

OR…. if you’re super creative, you could maybe convince the website to sell advertising right on that days comic, and you split the revenues. They likely already have an ad salesman, and they’d see the value in that. Imagine if DICK’s SPORTING GOODS put a little ad saying “Brought to you by DICK’s SPORTING GOODS” under your comic. You could be talking about splitting up a nice $5000-10,000.

If you’re a mastermind… you can work several of those deals into one plan. Ads sold to sponsor that day’s comic feature, your own affilate ads, an a flat rate for having your work on the site, or larger money to make it exclusive.

The sky really is the limit. You can’t sit around and have these offers drop in your lap. You gotta go out there and get em yourself.
And now…

Sponsored Links:

I just discovered this new online software called FILM LOOP– It’s the premiere photocasting tool , allowing you to either setup your own photostreams, or have shared photostreams allowing your readers to add their own images–

Download it now and subscribe to my Yirmumah Comic Loop, it’s free and safe:

This sort of thing could be pretty big for webcomic or independent comics– especially for users who don’t have much knowledge of web design, this pretty much does it for you– when you want to add a new image or page to your stream, you just drag and drop it over. It automatically gets delivered to subcribers desktop browsers– also, when they click the thumbnails in the stream, it opens in it’s own browser windo that becomes it’s own archive of next and previous buttons, which allow users to comment on the entries, etc.

A creator without much web experience could create his sample feed and enourage people to subscribe to new issues– Right now, it’s for non-commercial use, but you could possibly charge access to a new issue feed, and add the persons e-mail to the invite tab of a private feed.

I’m thinking about having a CLUB feed for my club members, they get to see the newest strips I do in my buffer in my forum currently, but it would be even cooler just to have a drag and drop action that would allow readers to open up the loop browser and check for new content remotely.

There are also several other types of feeds available, and I guess you can add RSS photo feeds to the service as well.

The program itself is pretty broad, with lots of possibilites for the creative. There’s also little neat options enclosed, that allow users to have the streams play as their screensavers, etc. Pretty neat stuff. I expect many other webcomics to use this sort of technology in the future. I have seen other small groups attempt this same sort of thing to no avail– but this service seems like it’ll be used ALL Over the internet soon, so get in and learn about it while it’s hot.

I haven’t written in here for some time, but this is pretty much geared toward indy comic book creators who are toiling away trying to use the old systems of getting their works out there and no one knows who they are or cares about their work.

I’m going to use APE Entertainment as an example here, just because the link is handy, and this really could relate to anyone if they have their creative shiit together. In fact, it’s torturous for me as a creator with several ideas I’d LOVE to do and try this plan out with, but it’s just so happened that it’s already working for me in a way with my Yirmumah daily comic strip— but from what I’ve learned, I can see how this plan could benefit other independent comics– Let’s also, for humor’s sake keep in mind a 5 year plan for now, everything I write is within a 5 year plan– I’ll probably only write in year one here for now… but let’s be honest here, if you’re not willing to dedicate a year to a project, it’s probably not worth your time and will just piddle out anyway. But if there’s an idea out there you have that gives you JUICE– BAM follow this..

Let’s look at their Justice City Chronicles as an example I’ll use in what I’m talking about — http://www.lightningage.com/jcc/index.html

Right now, many indy creators have nice looking websites that aren’t really more than anything but a preview of thier print book and previews. That’s fine, of course if you’re only focused on going through Diamond— which in my opionion is an outdated system for distribution. Here’s what I would do if say I was working on something like Justice City Chronicles– (and please, this is just an example, I don’t know anything about it really, but it really would work with anything that’s well thought out)

- Start a regular webcomic series online for free. Make it Monday through Friday if you can, but M-W-F if at all possible. Weekly comics don’t do too well and seem to have trouble gaining a regular readership. It might be hard to afford someone to draw this daily for you, but using online ad money or affiliate programs to pay your creative team is a great possibility if you all can form a regular readership. Look at this way— I know a guy who does a webcomic, and gets good traffic because he updates every day. He makes about a grand in GoogleAds money alone. If that was split up between a creative team, or heck, even given over to a one man army show, it would end up being a lot more than any indy artist is making on a REGULAR basis.. not to mention, that once the stories are up online, they are there practically forever…

- Use the running comic on your site to flesh out your world and characters, minor plots and twists that can come up later. Build your universe this way and let the readers in for free. Give your daily updates, and also a nice Wordpress blog will totally bring in readers from ALL over the world thanks to RSS and tag tracking capabilities… say for instance, in my Friday comic, I made fun of Scott Stapp and Kid ROck’s new pron video, and already I’ve received a TON of traffic for searches on that topic, especially since it’s topical right now in pop-culture… now, this wouldnt work for an adventure story or comic book world, BUT– this also goes for general topics that might come up in your story for that day– I mean, I wrote a gag about Qtips last month, and if you search “QTIPS are bad for your ears”, “Qtips bad” or anything about qtips being bad in your ears, my site comes up in search engines at the top of the lists. Nifty eh??? I mean, I don’t know how this would help an adventure comic, but it definitly could. Imagine places or locations in your comic that you might bring up– you’d definitly get search engine traffic from those topics and various plots in your own stories without even trying…… think about that right now, as all you may have is a little info site with broken links and info about your book that MIGHT come out…MAYBE. Heh.

- As the regular comic is unfolding online as your “flagship” and building an audience– work on the COMIC BOOK. You can either collect what you’re doing online, which works fine believe it or not, OR If I were you, I’d take the main characters from your webcomic and make special comicbooks or plots or an ongoing story that can weave in and out from the online webcomic and reference back and forth, but each one could stand on their own. Could you imagine if XMEN would have been a webcomic when it started– then suddenly they bring out WOLVERINE #1 in print form… BAM.. to the moon. –

- Know that it takes time. You couldnt pop out a regular ongoing webcomic for a month or maybe even three and then expect to pop out a book and have it go gangbusters— BUT…. if you’re smart and creative, you can find some really fun ways to interact with your audience while you’re making the online comic– perhaps make prints available or miniposters, limited and signed– I mean, heck, it costs like 50cents for a 11×17 poster at comixpress.com, and I think if you wanted something at Samsclub or Costco would print you photo quality prints from a PDF 12×18 for 1.49…. You could totally sell those as you go for 5 bucks.. maybe more?– who knows with that. The point is to not worry about money starting out. But it is nice to have things going with your site to make a little steady income.

- Let’s say– JUSTICE CITY CHRONICLES is online for 6 months as a daily feature, 5 days a week in an adventure style plot pacing, but also some days it could be like character cards, or location specs for buildings, or specs for vehicles or weapons. I mean, you can REALLY build up this world that your characters and stories are in– then while you go on the daily, you work on an ISSUE one book to come out at the 6 month mark.

- Also, during whatever period you’re online and doing your thing, it’s important to advertise… this can be done pretty easily and cheaply. Many sites, including mine, offer sponsor spots at different prices.

I’m willing to wager here, that something of a high quality, it doesn’t really matter what he story is or setting as long as it’s of a high quality (because there’s an audience for everything online) — if you gave it a year online without missing updates and kept it a solid FUN thing to do and visit daily, you’d have a nice hefty audience of regular readers. And I know for a fact,w hen people are into something as a regular fan, they don’t bat an eyelash if you offer a book for sale or ways to help support your work.

I mean, this is geared mostly at people from the Comic Book crowd… could you imagine how MEGA awesome Savage Dragon would have been if done this way online from the get go? I mean, Savage Dragon was mega awesome anyway with all the work and characters Erik Larsen puts into his issues– but that’s just an example of how one guy created his giant world of characters, and he has a nice core fanbase as well. He did it all without the net… imagine what it would have been like NOW. Holy cow. Of course, such an effort might take more than one artist handling chores—and I honestly believe that creators can find this much more fulfilling knowing that they’re making money from something they’re putting out, beyond knowing that people come there every day to dig on their work.

– And that’s year one. (also, year one doesnt start the minute you think of doing it– year one has to start at DAY one of you launch.

If you think one year is a long time… you’d best take a look at webcomics that have been around for almost a decade already, and take notice. Because other BIG smart companies ARE.

Tyler Martin of the “on the rocks” webcomic, has put together a nifty theme for wordpress that allows you to basically have your blog/news and daily comic all in one. Remember when I blabbed abouting using RSS to it’s fullest, well Wordpress is free and so is this template, and it’s got all sorts of RSS built in, as well as other great tools. — Heck, there are plugins out the wazoo for Wordpress, some even allowing you to pop your ADSENSE code directly into the posts with a simple tag.

Anyway, check out COMICPRESS — Tell Tyler if you use the theme, he’ll put you in the link list on the main page, I reckon.

This past week, I’ve been performing a few experiments with Chitika that are working out nicely, and I’ve heard from many of you out there who are thrilled with the service. I was talking with Punks and Nerds creator Josh Mirman about getting him signed up, he was actually turned down the first time, but I told him to submit another URL, and that worked out for him.

When I was thinking about those of you who are interested in increasing your traffic, as I am always as well, I thought to ask Josh how he went about doing it for his strip, Punks and Nerds. I was surprised to hear him say that he simply advertised on some other popular webcomics sites, like Something Postive, etc. He went step by step and those links built his numbers up every time. Now, it’s not necessarily cheap to advertise on some places, Something Positive is 25 bucks a day, but I’ve heard from several creators that it was well worth it. —

How I made money advertising on another webcomic’s site:

Josh himself offers his big banner out at about 9 bucks a day, and I really like his strip and the “dark humor” vibe, and thought his readers might like my strip, Yirmumah, so I decided to buy up the spot for a week, around 40 bucks I think. The ad started running late Friday night I think, and by the end of the weekend, I had made that money back AND MORE simply by having him link to my archives instead of my main page. Then the tip hit me….

If you’re paying to advertise, you’re increasing your readership, BUT make sure you link back to a page that has some GoogleAdsense or Chitika ads on it, and if you advertise in the right places, it’s actually going to make you money. Or link to a specific product you might be selling. Actually, the adsense and chitika links are great, because it it doesn’t cost the reader anything to browse, and you make money every click. I think to date, I’ve probably made 35 bucks more than my cost– so by the end of the week, it should generate enough revenue to maybe schedule advertising on some other high traffic webcomics.

How do you know they’ll click? Well, you don’t BUT, if you’re smart with ad placement, you’re giving the readers a nice exit point, near the nav buttons or menu buttons of your site.

I’ve known about link baiting for some time, and you should probably go and read the original article for a good solid run down on “hook” writing. I’m going to include the main listing posted from there in this entry.

Using the link baiting tactic can definitly increase your traffic, especially when you’re using it in conjunction with such things as your RSS fed blog, or places like technorati, which I’ve spoke about in previous posts. For webcomic authors in particular, these are good things to keep in mind for your news posts, blog posts or forum postings.

Resource Hook

• A comprehensive list of blogs in your niche - link out, and links will come in, i promise.
• A practical/useful or even fun tool related to your niche
• A How To based on your niche
• A compilation of news stories on a theme. Sprinkle a little analysis in there, and you’re good to go.

News Hook

• A genuine Scoop. Get to the news first
• A compilation of news, as above, its a resource aswell as a news hook.
• Expose a story for a fraud, or to be flawed. You really have to know your subject to do that, but links flow like water if you can debunk a popular meme

Contrary Hook

• Be the only one in your niche to find something to not like about a story, or like about a story/product.
• On the same theme, post “Why <insert prominent blogger name here> is WRONG about…”

Attack Hook

This works much the same as the contrary hook, you just get to be much, much ruder. It’s a tough one, because just posting about such a thing could land me in hot water. But then im not here to play nice, i’m here to talk about gaining traffic, and whilst an attack hook is 99/100 NOT the way to go, sometimes it’s absolutely killer, and can gain you credibility and reputation overnight.

Really though, careful with that one. It can just as easily go the wrong way.

Humor Hook

These kinds of hooks are just too easy.

• Search flickr, or photoshop a bizzare pic of your subject
• Post “10 thing i hate about…”
• Post “You know you’re a <insert here> when…”

These are probably also great things to keep in mind if you have a regular newsletter of some kind.

This is the first post in the “Guerilla” category. I’ll post under that tag when I come up with ideas on promoting your work in an affordable and effective way.

I was thinking yesterday about the future. Looking around my own neighborhood where I live, it’s sort of 10 years behind in the times, and people are finally accepting the internet into their homes. Simply walking outside and looking around I see 8 out of 10 homes with the net. And that got me thinking about webcomics.

Localizing. Does your own community know you do a webcomic? Why not?

I read an article online that stated about 90% of families would have high speed internet in their homes within the next 10 years. Even the local people in my neighborhood, I think half of the 8 I stated actually had cable internet. So, maybe an answer to some creators seeking a larger audience is to start locally.

Imagine this….. Find a popular pizza place in town. Maybe even one you enjoy the best yourself. Do up a sample comic strip that could fit on their boxes or flyers and approach the owner with the fact you LOVE their product and you want to help promote it, and promote your comic at the same time. Perhaps you could do an online only coupon people could print out from the special URL on the flyer? Wow, that would work great in a college area. Of course, your comic would probably have to be something PG– this would never work with my comic, Yirmumah, which takes more of a PG-13 to R rated leaning. And I make fun of the locals sometimes too… so this would be a no-no for me! hahah…. but wow, I see great possibilities for other webcomics out there. If I got a pizza with a JOE and Monkey comic coupon attached, not only would I love that comic, but I’d love that pizza even more too. Don’t just think Pizza… there are other businesses like video stores, etc… heck, even ISPs!!!

Why not pimp your webwares directly through a local service selling internet connectivity!!??!! WOW! Imagine when the cable guy comes to install the internet, and get the browsers installed– there’s a little link that says WEBCOMICS, and your comic is on that list.

Think along those lines though, and you’ll open yourself up to a lot of opportunities for your work. People’s computers are becoming their “morning paper” and giving them a good reason to read your work is a great thing. Plus, people love to support the home town folks as well. Especially in smaller towns. “Word of Mouth” has to start somewhere… why not right in your home town?

If you try any of these things… let me know how they work out for you here.

Last time I spoke of RSS feeds and how they can be utilized to bring you more readers. Now I’m going to show you how people find you, and how YOU can find them…

Technorati is probably the most popular blog search engine. Check it out. And let me tell you something that’s great about it, and using a blog setup for your news pages or main site engine…. #1, every time you make a new post, it automatically pings/alerts technorati. And your topics can even be “tagged”, whatever category you write your posts in, most likely has it’s own tag at the technorati search engine. For example… check out the tag list for “webcomic” — But beyond that… there’s a SUPER way to bring a flood of people to your site…. Ready?

Look at Technorati’s main page again. Go on, I’ll wait………. Notice how they have the top searched items of the hour? WOW… what can you do with that??? For one, it’s a goldmine for conversations about what REAL people are talking about. Often times, you’ll read about topics that you’re going to hear about in the news in a few days when they break. It’s kinda like the “pulse” of the blogosphere. And YOU can tap into it and make new readers. I don’t suggest just blogging about some hot topic or popculture thing. Write or draw about WHATEVER YOU WANT!!! BUT, here’s an example of something I could do today, and earn a good many readers…..

GO FISHING: The past couple days, my comic has been about Halloween related stuff. Let’s see what Technorati yields… I did a post for “Halloween Costume” — and it brings up a list of blogs that are talking about their costumes. It even tells you how many minutes, hours, days ago they posted. It’s usually up to the minute too…… Now, I don’t suggest spamming these strangers, but it wouldn’t hurt to actually take five minutes and read about people trying to figure out last minute costume ideas, and maybe directing them to my “YOU PICK THE COSTUME” strip today. Now, personally, I rarely do that sort of thing, but if I were just starting out, it’s all about “word of mouth” and it’s gotta start with your mouth. So, no, don’t spam them, be sincere. Every new reader coming in could be a long time reader….. You don’t even really have to contact people… they’ll find you. Imagine how many people will be searching for “last minute costumes” this weekend? Nice… if they type in Halloween… chances are they’ll find my blog and webcomic. A seasonal strip is probably a BAD example, but it’s the only one I had off the top of my head that was fresh. Just about ANY topic you write about in your comic, you can go fishing around and bring people who are interested in that topic, and who might likely fall in love with your work.

Now, if you want MY suggestion– it’s to use Wordpress, which can be easily installed on any webhost you’re using. If you don’t have a webhost, I suggest Dreamhost, they actually have a “one click” install on the wordpress blog, forums, etc… pretty nifty, an only runs about 7.95 a month for more space and bandwidth than you’ll ever need.

If you have ZERO budget for hosting, like I said, several online blogs have built in RSS… Livejournal has it, Blogger has it, Myspace has it, Xanga has it…..

If you’re SUPER FANCY and got skillz, you could be like Brandon Carr, who’s currently transfering his whole comic site to run on the wordpress engine. Can you even tell? Take a look! http://www.thekenmorecomic.com/kenmore/ Now THAT is pretty darn slick. But don’t sweat it if you can’t actually get your comic to show up in your blog, you can still link to it and post a NEW COMIC type update, and pimp your RSS out to folks.

Beyond technorati, there are other blog search engines you can submit your blog or rss link to as well. Do a google search on that. —

FeedBurner is another great system, that even allows you to have a little graphic in your message board signatures which rotates the last couple of post headlines from your site!

I know that’s a lot to absorb, but soak it in. Sit and ponder how your webcomics can get out there in a massive system like that, and just how easy it is to do. Don’t be intimidated by this information, I know it can seem overwhelming at first, but seriously, if you want to make money with your webcomic, than increasing your readership is a GIANT investment, and you should really dedicate 15 minutes to a half hour a day doing so, be it learning about RSS, or a little CSS style sheet stuff to move those wordpress templates around.

Get to it!

Next week… I’ll tackle the monster that is Google Adsense. I’ve heard back from a handful of people who are amazed that they made 3-10 bucks in one day from their Chitika ads! That’s great! Trust me, it’s just the tip of the iceburg.