Webcomickers like myself are always looking for new, lazy ways to increase visits to their site. Well, here’s a couple you ought to check out if you haven’t already!

COMICRANK: Comicrank not only works as webcomic promotion, but also as a very unique tracking tool. Imagine a toplist where you never have to worry about voting or updating incentives. For some people who have too much to do already, Comicrank is your cup of tea! Its “toplist” is ordered by number of readers only, so yes, I GUESS you could call it a popularity meter, but I would argue it’s subtly different. That point however, is moot.  To sign up for Comicrank, make an account, fill out the information, and put a small button on your site which functions as a tracker (and does not interfere with other tracking codes like Google Analytics, to the best of my knowledge).  If you are a popular or middle-range comic, you’ll stand to attract some new readers because you will be on the front page of the site. If your comic is new or not too popular, it’s ALSO a good tool for un-inflated reader numbers (Kind of mid-way between Project Wonderful stats and Google Analytic stats).

KAPPUKOOHI BANNER EXCHANGE: Ignoring the very strange, tough-to-pronounce name of this banner exchange, it’s a perfect size for just about everyone  (88×31 button).  This is a great way to reach a very diverse audience. Not everyone who signs up for the exchange will be your comic’s same genre, so your banner could be displayed for free on sites whose readers most likely would not normally stumble upon your comic. Since it’s free advertising in exchange for such a small space on your site, I’d recommend trying it out. I’ve gotten modest results, which bodes well for when more people join, since the exchange circle is still very small. For small banner spaces like this, it is IMPERATIVE that your banner have clearly-readable text, if you include text at all. You have a small space to make an impact, so do it right. I recommend checking out the “members” link on the site to see other banners currently up. (Hopefully this may one day take the place of the ill-fated rubifruit exchange.)

SIGN UP ON UPDATE TRACKING SITES: Bunches of these sites exist, and for minimal work, you can start “advertising” your comic update to all visitors on that site by either merely creating an account, or in some cases, inserting a small code on your webpage. For sites that update many days a week, it’s almost a synergistic effect for gaining readers–your link is always prominent on that site. If you update not so often, it still works, just not as well for those who can update more. Then again, that is a rule of thumb with webcomics: the more you can update, the more readers you will have (dependent also on quality, but that’s not what this article is about.)

Anyways, that’s it from me! Today’s article was more for people pretty new to these kinds of self-advertising. I hope it was useful.

A mirror site should never have as much content as your main site, period. A mirror site is a fallback point in event of the worst, NOT a separate, independent site that is an exact duplicate of your main site. WHY is this important? Because if you don’t differentiate between main site and mirror site, all you’re doing is SPLITTING up your audience into little clumps.  The object is to get readers from multiple other places and BRING them to one place.  If you split up your audience, it only makes more work for you (constantly keeping multiple sites up to date) with less total outcome. By centralizing your audience, it’s like the Power Rangers’ many Zords become a MegaZord; it’s more powerful. You increase your total reputation. Everyone links to the same site. Your Alexa rank goes up, your adspace becomes more valuable, and your site grows faster than it would with all the audience split up.

Let us consider Comic Q, self-hosted at www.comicq.com.  Comic Q also has mirror sites on DrunkDuck, WebcomicsNation and ComicSpace. All of those mirror sites are kept up to date with Comic Q’s most recent page, so readers at all those mirror sites see no reason to leave there and migrate to the main address. The MAIN site ends up with less pageviews than any of the mirror sites, for the simple reason that all of the mirror sites are part of a larger webcomic community (a somewhat instant audience).  Why would Comic Q even continue having a main site if it gets less traffic than the so-called mirror sites?

Now, let’s take Comic X, self-hosted at www.comicx.com. Comic X also has mirror sites on DrunkDuck, WebcomicsNation and ComicSpace, but all of these mirror sites are WEEKS behind the main site.  So the audience that finds these comics on the mirror sites sees that there is MORE content on your home site, and goes there. In this case, the mirror sites function not only as duplicate archive, but also as a means of free advertising. People like what they see, and then want more! If more is available, why would they stay on the mirror sites?   They won’t! The creator of Comic X also knows the importance of NOT merely using mirror sites as only free advertising, because he/she knows that shamelessly whoring one’s comic in other comic communities is very impolite, and therefore makes an effort not to be completely overt in driving visitors to the main site.  (Warning, don’t go to anywhere and say, “this here is the first 10 pages of my comic. If you want more, go to my site.”  That is not a mirror site, that is a whore site. There is a big difference.)

In conclusion, people who have mirror sites need to decide what their goals are. First and foremost, mirror sites should be there in the event your main site is unreachable.  Another goal should definitely be to branch out to attract new readers, but whether you want to split your audience or centralize it will change how you go about updating/maintaining this mirror site. I will always recommend keeping all mirror sites weeks behind the main site (not just one update), and having little of the extra content of your main site. Be aware that extra web content alone will not be enough to drive visitors from mirror sites to the main site, it will require COMIC content.

One last note: mirror sites don’t make up for not backing up your work. Always remember to have backups of your site and your archives on disk or on an external harddrive.  You’ll never forgive yourself if your HD crashes and you lose all your layered, high-res files. You can always retreive web-quality archives from these sites, but nothing of higher quality.

…but I have something better instead!

Those of you who found my Advertising 101-404 articles of use will greatly appreciate Tony Piro (“Tpiro”) extremely informative Ad Service Review.  There are some new advertisers listed you may be unfamiliar with, so those of you looking to expand, or even those of you who have no frickin’ clue how to start publishing ads on your site, check it out!

My DrunkDuck review to come…soonish. Must finish commissions, Cast Q/A and Not Alone comic first. And now, since it’s 2am, I’m hitting the sack. G’night, folks, and thanks for reading!

…but I have something better instead!

Those of you who found my Advertising 101-404 articles of use will greatly appreciate Tony Piro (“Tpiro”) extremely informative Ad Service Review.  There are some new advertisers listed you may be unfamiliar with, so those of you looking to expand, or even those of you who have no frickin’ clue how to start publishing ads on your site, check it out!

My DrunkDuck review to come…soonish. Must finish commissions, Cast Q/A and Not Alone comic first. And now, since it’s 2am, I’m hitting the sack. G’night, folks, and thanks for reading!

The first thing to understand is that if you’re going to put PW in an ad chain, it should be as the final default, or rotated in at a certain (lower) percentage. PW pays the lowest CPM of any advertiser, because it’s geared for cheap advertising rather than the generation of revenue. For example, I could advertise on a really awesome webcomic site for about 1 dollar per day. I might get…10,000 ad impressions that day! When you consider that average market CPM is 2-6 dollars, that creator of that popular comic is TOTALLY getting ripped off for those pageviews (instead of 1 dollar for that day, the creator should be making $20-60 at a 100% fill rate). But you, as the advertiser, you’re getting a really great deal. Welcome to webcomics!

Anyways. PW should always be at the end of an ad chain because you will make the least with it. Period. PW also doesn’t allow defaults, so there’s no use putting it up higher on an ad chain anyways.

The second thing to understand when adding PW as a default is that THE STATS GRAPH ONLY REGISTERS VISITORS AND PAGEVIEWS WHEN THE AD IS SHOWN! The stats are not inflated. The stats do NOT register the pageviews of all the other ads.  So, publishers and advertisers alike: don’t think you are cheating bidders or being cheated! Advertisers will be bidding for the TRUE amount of pageviews registered.

The real question here is one of SHOULD. Should you add PW into an ad chain?  I would say that there is no reason not to, so long as you are getting enough default pageviews to warrant the addition. Fill rates change day to day. Sometimes they can be 5%. and sometimes 50%. This means the pageviews registered by PW change day to day also, and large amounts of fluctuation may scare away bidders. Therefore, the more traffic you get, the harder you should think about adding PW as your final default, because overall fluctuation will seem less. If you are a webcomic hurting for more than 1000 pageviews a day, and you already belong to one or 2 ad networks, you shouldn’t add it. You won’t get enough default views to make any amount of money. (In this case, I recommend actually setting up defaults of banners from your favorite comics, or your other projects, or your store.)

Should you add PW to your page OUTSIDE of an ad chain? Most definitely, and for both large and small comics. Larger comics might want to decrease the amount of ads on their site by putting PW inside the chain, but smaller webcomics who probably shouldn’t have PW as a default might find it more worth it to have ads that show 100% of the time. PW also offers a much wider range of banner sizes, more control over what ads are shown, and ads that are far more likely to generate clicks.

Adtegrity is an ad network that boasts a 100% fill rate. And it does! It really lives up to that part of the bargain.  Most networks, ADSDAQ and Burst Media included, often have fill rates of only 5-15%. Even with those really low fill rates there, I made 3-5x more there when compared with Adtegrity. The problem is, a 100% fill rate often means (especially with a huge archive like mine) that 1 visitor might see the same ad 50 times over, if not more. This means there is no frequency cap, and that means the ad company basically loses money. If visitors aren’t going to click an ad the first 10 times they see it per user session, they’re not going to click it the next 40 times they see it.

All of this is leading to one important fact: a 100% fill rate means a REALLY LOW CPM. No one is going to pay well for ads without a frequency cap. So, if my average CPM at ADSDAQ was $2.00, and I had a fill rate of 15%, I made 3-4 dollars a day. At Adtegrity, with 100% fill rate, my CPM is often less than $0.10, which in my opinion, in unacceptable as a means to earn revenue from my comic.

Those of you looking to make money with ads: Adtegrity is good for the last link in your ad chain only! Never as your primary network. In one month of using them, I have never made more $1.50 a day, and far more often, make less than ONE dollar.  I’ve made as much from a single project wonderful as I make with 2 ad sizes filled by Adtegrity.

In my book, Adtegrity gets a 2/10.

They get 1 point for the 100% fill rate, and 1 point for really great customer service. You won’t turn much of a profit though!

Next up: Webcomic Networking Via Stumble Upon

Here is the result of my first networking attempt, using Deviant Art as a means of free advertising through their pre-existing network of art-minded folks. I call this “networking” instead of “free advertising” because to get it to work, you really have to network (ie, connect) with people there.  You’ll need to do some legwork and make friends with others first OR have art that is great enough people will try to make friends with YOU.

First, for those of you who have not heard of Deviant Art, have no clue how it works, or how it differs from a gallery on your site, an explanation: DA is like the internet of art galleries. In one member’s gallery, you find links to their favorite pieces, and from them, more and more links. It is a web of links, and sharing who and what you like is what it makes popular (and how the whole things works).  You upload your work, and it’s posted on the front page of Deviant Art itself.  If you have people who “watch” or “follow” you there, they are notified of every update you make. This notification and exposure system it what makes it different from a gallery on your own site–AND how it brings you new visitors.

I have been a member of Deviant Art since August 2008.  By posting my comic pages there, with a link back to my site in the author’s notes, my DA account is my 19th (108 visits to be exact) top referrer this past month. And I’m not very active there! If I posted more art, more sketches, made more contacts there, I could easily increase that number.  But my point is that this type of networking is FREE advertising for you.  For the minimum amount of effort (creating a gallery, posting your comics, putting a link back to your site) you get access to a HUGE pool of prospective readers.

So, to summarize, webcomic networking via Deviant Art works with even minimal effort.

I will write articles on them later, but Twitter and Stumble Upon also work well with minimal effort. Most webcomic forums I visit have threads expressly for networking via sites like these. I encourage you to try these places out, one at a time, if you haven’t already. I say “one at a time” because if you are trying these out for the first time, don’t overdo it.  Results can be slow if you do not already have a base of people with which to network, and you may feel disappointed. But, you can take it from me, it DOES work, but how successful it will be will depend on VOLUME: how many people are linked to you as friends/watchers/etc, and how often you update.  Not to mention, of course, the quality of your content.

That’s it for today, just something simple! Next up, a review of the ad company Adtegrity.

Toplists are a popularity contest. Unpopular/unknown comics won’t ever BEAT the popular ones, but these are places to get your comic’s name out. It’s not about winning (getting in the top 10, or even top 100) so much as increasing overall exposure, and places like TopWebComics and Buzzcomix get a LOT of traffic. Even in the 200′s or 300′s, you will definitely get new readers. To get into the top 300′s, all you need is YOU voting for yourself daily, and one or 2 other people helping you out occasionally.  To get into the top 200′s, you need you voting for yourself, and 4 or 5 committed fans voting almost daily.  Getting into the top 100 requires, at least for me, 100 votes a week.  With an audience of around 1.5k, it update my incentive once a week to maintain a standing in 90′s.  BEING there gets me 80 visits a week, the equivalent of a really good link exchange! It’s a good deal, and worth the effort.

How often should I update my incentive? Depend on your audience size and your ambitions. If you’re a small comic, and you want to get on the front page of a toplist, you should update your incentive multiple times a week. I recommend updating the incentive at LEAST as often as you update your comic, preferably on the same day.  Don’t expect people to come back afterwards to see a new incentive AFTER reading your comic.  Remember to make it as easy as possible for people to vote for you! I don’t recommend updating your incentive daily. That’s unneccessary. 3 days a week is good place to start if you have small audience with high ambitions. I am a medium comic with low ambitions, so I update the incentive once a week and I’m happy where I am.

Should I display the toplist button or make my own? It is definitely better to make your own button that is a thumbnail of your incentive. It is even better to include the thumbnail AND provide a written description of what you have up. As a slight tangent, I advocate including this thumbnail in your news area AND another link elsewhere on your site.  For example, you have a permanent vote link, perhaps, in your navigation menu, AND have a thumbnail in the news area (for example, Xylia). Duplicating the link in this subtle fashion means a higher chance of visitors seeing the link.   Don’t be pushy about getting people to vote! Only 1/10 visitors MAX will ever vote for you! So don’t have links EVERYWHERE. That’s just annoying, and no one votes for annoying sites.

Be sure to let people know that voting on toplists isn’t like voting for president! People can vote multiple times a day, but only once each day per comic! We, as webcomic creators, take this piece of knowledge for granted. A LOT of visitors don’t know this! The first time I posted about it, my votes doubled. 0.0

What should I post for an incentive? Art is the favorite.   Ask Dr. Eldritch posts extra comic panels, often continuing the joke or story of the current comic.  Fey Winds often has concept pictures of World of Warcraft characters.  I sometimes post sketches of the following week’s comic page, or sometimes a “the making of” page.  If you’re the author and not the artist, or simply an over-worked artist, consider posting snippets of the following comic’s script (obviously as an image, since you can’t really post a lot of text).

There are so many toplists! Which and how many should I choose? I recommend focusing on one toplist. In the long run, it will be far less effort with far greater reward for a mid-sized comic (large/popular comics like Phoenix Requiem and Cat Legend can easily be high-ranking members of two.  They have a highly active fan base. If you don’t, try ONE list first, and make sure you can stick with it!) It means less updating of incentives, especially if you try to update each list with a different incentive.  Most people won’t vote twice either, just once (if you’re lucky!)  If you’re trying to decide between TopWebComics and Buzzcomix, I recommend TWC. It’s far more reliable. BCX is down too often for my taste. You might also have a lot of luck with smaller lists if you’re not getting anywhere with the larger lists.  For less readers, you can get more exposure there.

Next up! Deviant Art as a webcomic network tool…does it work?

I will start with what not to do, as that is easiest. Do NOT make flashing ads with bright colors and even brighter letters.  These are ads that in any reputable ad network go for $0.05 CPM because–guess what–they have extremely bad performance. No one clicks on ads that annoy them. Instead, they make a mental note NOT to click.

Do not time your animation so fast that even a speed-reader cannot read any text you have. This is not an incentive to read your comic–”Whoops, I didn’t catch that! I should CLICK to see what was written there!” It is an annoyance, and instead is seen as “This person doesn’t know how to make good ads. I doubt their comic is any good either.”  Please note that timing text and timing IMAGES are two very different things.  An image flashing before your eyes is far more intriguing than words flashing.

At the same time, do not time your animation so SLOW that people can read the text 3 or 4 times before the ad changes frames.  If you do this, the flitting attention of internet users will do exactly that: flit away.  My rule of thumb 2 seconds per 5 words.  In English, we see words as entire units; we don’t read letter by letter, we see the whole word almost as an image, and it takes less than 1/2 a second to recognize a word.

Do not “oversaturate” your animated ad with information. As with any ad, less is often more.  No one is going to read an entire paragraph in an ad, even if it’s only presented with 3 words at a time. Condense everything down to NO MORE THAN 2 SENTENCES. Fast fast fast. Don’t be long-winded, put your best foot forward, and keep it short.

Do not make your animated ad too long. The longer an animation lasts, the larger the file size is, and the less likely the ad is to work. Remember! Short attention spans.

What material should you present on an animated ad? Something with a pay off: don’t make people regret spending the extra couple seconds watching the animation. The end of the animation has to have something worthwhile.  Sometimes payoff is nothing more than an explanation of the images shown earlier. For example, you show frames of some art from your comic, and then the following frames show your title, catch-phrase and URL.

Sometimes pay-off is simply the catch-phrase that makes people WANT to click. That is the real kicker, but that is goal of ANY ad, not just animations. You have to make people WANT to click by making them excited or curious.

Showing only images, without explanation, or only text and no art, leaves little in the way of pay-off. The best ads have BOTH art and text.

MAKING ANIMATIONS: This is something actually very easy to do in Photoshop Elements or Adobe ImageReady.  People have already made a lot of tutorials on this, so I’m just going to find some and link them rather than creating my own.

Making Animations in Photoshop Elements 3

Making Animations in Elements AND Photoshop CS2 (with screenshots)

Sorry for the delay in articles here. I’ve been busy beyond heck doing other things…like redesigning the Xylia website! Next up: Vote Incentives and Toplists…are they worth it?

Followed by using Deviant Art as a networking tool.

And then a review of another ad company: Adtegrity.

Finally, Stumble Upon as a networking tool.

Option 1 is usually better. Interested visitors see a higher quality image, and even though there is LESS to see, it is tantalizing in its…lack…of the entire image.  It’s saying “see more! Click here!” without actually saying it.  If you do it right, that is.

Option 2 is what most people seem to go with. What happens though is that the art loses quality, looks squashed, gets blurry and becomes…unattractive.  The only time I’ve seen this done right is on LARGE banners, like 160×600 towers or 728×90 leaderboards. If you have enough room, you can fit more. But if you don’t have enough room, don’t try to fit the 14 co-eds into the telephone booth.

How about some examples? I’m going to go with a middle-size, popular-size banner for linking (200x40px) and a random panel from a recent Not Alone page of mine (last panel).  I need more banners for that comic anyways.

First, I’m going to draw upon my 8 elements of a banner discussed in the first article about this. I’m going to choose a “facial feature” and use my personal logo.  I’m not going to include my URL because Not Alone doesn’t have its own site. I will include a border, action/movement is part of the panel, I’ll be using a monochromatic color scheme, and since this is a panel straight from my comic, the advertising is truthful. If there is room for a tag-line, I will include it.
Option 1, small piece of larger art done wrong, then right:

Why is the first one wrong and the second one right? The first has art that is TOO large on a canvas that is TOO small. It should only take one short glance to discern what is being shown to you.  You shouldn’t have to pause and ask, “what is that supposed to be?”  The second one is “right” because you can easily tell what it is, yet it’s still large enough that it’s only a PIECE of the entire image.

Option 2, “zoom out” done wrong and then done better:

Again, what makes the first wrong and the second right? In the first, the image is so SMALL it is you can’t tell what it is without squinting, the same kind of problem that the bad option 1 banner had, but in the opposite way. The second version of this type of banner is better because you can still see what it is without compromised quality. I don’t call this one “right” because to do a far-zoomed-out banner, you need to choose the right dimensions for the job. This image could not be placed in a way that satisfied me. It is only better, not “right.”

Some other things:

When the image that you choose is facing a certain way (for example, the character on the banner faces to the right), it should face your logo on the other side. The two should face each other, drawing attention INWARD. If the elements faced opposite directions, attention would be focused OUTWARD. Draw the person in. People will look where the character in the banner is looking. So, focus that attention on you, not away from you.

Second, another common mistake I see with small banners is people not wanting to include text at all. It is amazing how small text can be and still be readable. You need at least your comic’s title or logo on every banner advertising your comic. If you can fit a tag line it, do so. The phrase, “fate is a choice” on these banners is set at only 10px high. It was still readable at 8px high, but there was no reason to make it that small.

Making Banners: Animations to come after the holidays are over.