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!

Another aspect of why I haven’t updated the blog– honestly, I’m coping with sharing information freely. Deep down, I’d like to tell you amazing little things I’ve discovered that work great for me, but then deeper down a little voice tells me to keep it to myself. After all, if EVERYONE starts doing it, it could work, uh, less so great for me. So I guess that’s one of selfishness– and I’m a little sorry about that.

I only ask that if YOU get some benefit from any of this information here, then link to this blog somewhere on your site, or share the information with other creators. Maybe on your links page? Don’t let that deeper voice inside you be selfish like I have!

That’s not why you’re here though! You’re here to find out how to increase your readership and learn. Here’s a quicky recapped idea and an update on it:
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Tracking the SPONSOR SPOTS… an idea that works well… but which side should you be on?

For well over a year now, Yirmumah has been successfully using little 100×31 button banners for other creators to buy and calling them MONTHLY SPONSORSHIPS. They’re 10 bucks, which might be some of the cheapest advertising you can find for you own webcomic. I also blog about each sponsor as they come on board, and if they renew the ad. Many of the sponsors have been there for months, and some for the entire time I’ve had monthly sponsor spots….. Not that Yirmumah invented this idea, I’m sure other comics have done this in the past— but after the success of keeping almost 20 spots filled a month, I saw several other creators take up the idea.

Punks and Nerds creator Josh Mirman told me he got the idea for his sponsor spots here, and they worked well for him. He charged 15 bucks a month and filled his spots up (they’ve since gone away as he spends less time on his comic)

Then, before you knew it, Sponsor spots started popping up on other popular webcomic sites like Starlslip Crisis, Evil Inc , and The Noob — Starslip and Evil-Inc charged 20 bucks starting out with bigger button sizes which is nice, but Starslip has since moved to two different sizes and 10 and 15 buck spots– The Noob, charges 10 bucks a spot.

Then, I saw many smaller comics trying out sponsor spots, some filling their spots, some not.

How do you know if you should offer these spots out on your own site? Here’s my opinion:

If the ad your selling will actually deliver some noteworthy traffic to the buyer, then it might be worth it to you. I can’t give you a solid number for your own readership to be before you do this. One thing is for sure, if you put these spots up and they’re not selling, it’s likely your price is too high, or you don’t have a big enough audience yet to put this successfully into motion.

GOOD NEWS THOUGH! You CAN successfully grow your own readership by taking advantage of some of these sites that offer very low ad rates. I’ve heard good things from my own sponsors and the proof is in the pudding there, but I myself have advertised on other creators sponsor spots and it worked out great. You simply can’t beat it… 15 bucks a month for a nice spot on Starslip Crisis is going to bring you some decent traffic, well worth the price. Here’s a nice little menu for an ad budget you might consider: Starslip Crisis $15 - Yirmumah $10 - The Noob $10 - That’s 35 bucks to put down on ad money for your own comic. If that’s too high for you, try one or two out.

Where your link goes:
Sponsor ads work…. and they work even better if you’re smart on where you actually link your work to! You might not want to link directly to your main page. Instead, try picking out one of your BEST comics to link directly to in your archive. A good example of this is, when I first advertised on Starslip my link went to my homepage and tracking the average pageviews from a visitor from that link it was maybe 4 or 5 page views per visitor– BUT , my current ad on Starslip is a mock Superman logo, and it links directly to my SUPERMAN vs JESUS comic strip. The result? 17-18 page views per visitor. Sometimes I get people going through my entire archive of comics, which is great. — This tip doesn’t apply to just using a sponsor spot somewhere, think about it for other links you might have out there, perhaps in your own web signatures on forums and beyond. It REALLY puts the reader into the meat and potatoes of your work, and putting them right into a strip that shows off your best stuff or flavor of humor– they’ll either love it or hate it and chances are you’ll have a regular reader hooked on your stuff, or not.

I also have other ideas using the sponsorship model as a base and expanding on it in the future.

So, the moral is… you might not be ready to sell your own sponsor spots on your site, but you can still utilize other comic’s sponsor programs to help build your own readership cheaply and effectively.

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:

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’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.

I really wanted to do a full run down on Adsense from start to finish, but i take it there’s enough information out there to get you going into the program, as most people I refer sign right up and put their code in place. The next thing I usually hear is… WHY IS IT ONLY SHOWING COMIC ADS!???

I also hear, “I’m making VERY little from Adsense so I took it down.” — In fact, it’s the SAME thing I did a couple years back when Adsense debuted. I made like 3cent clicks. WOOHOO!–

Google keeps a tight lid on how exactly their little bots work and what they look for, and they seem to change it up quite a bit, and sometimes it’s a combination of terms, keywords, page titles, subjects and the overall content of your site. One BIG thing is the page’s properties name itself. Let’s look at a fast example of someone I helped out recently….He’ll most likely make changes as soon as he reads this, but trust me, whatever I say is in his code, was in his source code…

“BUTTERFLY” by Dean Trippe– first of all, his placement is BAD, it’s all the way at the very bottom, but forget that, just go look at the ads it’s serving. COMIC ADS. Now, right click and hit VIEW SOURCE… then if your on PC, do a CTRL+F and find the word COMICS in his source code. It’s EVERYWHERE!!! So, literally, the googlebot is overloaded with the word COMICS. And, you know, maybe those ARE the right kinda ads to have on his page since his comic has a lot to do with SuperHeroes. You can avoid getting so many comic ads to come up by simply not overloading your source code with the word. Also, something else that could definitly be bringing it up is the buttons that say PREVIOUS COMIC– you can change that to say something else besides COMIC.

If you’re working within a nice database driven site, like Joe and Monkey has, your ads will often reflect the titles of your strips themselves. So if Joe and Monkey for that day is called “CHICAGO STYLE PIZZA” and it has Joe and MOnkey arguing over pizza stylings…. BAM, the ads that come up are for CHICAGO and CHICAGO STYLE PIZZA. Pretty nice, huh?

Another person who is just launching a new webcomic with a Super Hero genre is Scott Reed’s WEBSBESTCOMICS.COM Which launches CHAMPION OF A LOST UNIVERSE on January 9th 2006– - WOW! I mean, the word COMICS is used so much in his source code! I’m working with him now to fix that. His main page up top in the browser currently reads “WEB’S BEST COMICS” — I suggested maybe changing it to something like “HOME OF CHAMPION OF A LOST UNIVERSE” , which he’s done now it looks like— even better.

So, it takes some tinkering. And one thing you need to know– sometimes the changes don’t come instantly! It can take the googlebots two weeks sometimes before things change up.

On my own site, something really odd happened. I cleaned up the code so the googleads would run based on the titles of my comics, and they did do that occassionally— but I put a text link to this very blog on the bottom of the page that says -

Learn how to make money online with your webcomics @ MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR WEBCOMICS —tips, techniques and random thoughts on making money with your online content - By D.J. Coffman”

And lo and behold, MONEY type ads started appearing. — So, HEY! If you feel like actually linking back to my blog here about making money, it might actually help your ads change a bit and help everyone out.

Keep all of these things in mind. Blogs like Wordpress have POWERFUL engines that love to feed google quality NEW content. The better you are at changing your actual content and providing NEW content– the better your adsense will do.

Man, for daily comics out there, the sky is the limit!!! I know 3 creators now who put a few of my suggestions to use and they’re making roughly a grand a month now. Congratulations guys!!!

#1, I have to fix the RSS feed, I may do a fresh install of the blog to make sure it’s all good.

#2 I want to delve into Adsense, it’s a big topic with lots to cover. I’d just tell anyone to sign up now, and get your site approved and read up on it if you haven’t already. Word on the street is, Google has some interesting things for adsense publishers in 2006. They recently put into effect the “ADVERTISE ON THIS SITE” link, which allows you readers to advertise their site in those designated units. That is really nifty, and also brings more advertisers to your site. I’ve noticed a nice upswing in people buying batch ads for set amount per click. Normally, you can tell who these are if they own the entire ad spot, especially those that show 4 or 5 ads normally.

I’ve been SUPER BUSY doing online caricatures on the side through my site. The funny thing is, I was working on a revamp of that section and about to announce it publicly, when a RUSH of orders came in, some returning orders from last year. This is a great market if you can swing it. People LOVE the vanity aspect of having themselves or people they know drawn for gifts. So “Online Caricatures” has gotten me a good many search leads from Technorati, since it pings that blog setup as well. So, this goes to show you cartoonists out there, that if you have a unique service you can offer, it might be worth looking into it. If I had more time, I’d do custom greeting cards or full on poster comics about people for gifts. I’ve been approached about doing that as well.

Hope everyone has a great holiday!

I’m currently running the theme on Yirmumah.net, and you can see how it works with my new horizontal layout there. I think Tyler is working on another layout for vertical strips as well, but this works great for any height of standard comic strip.

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.