On the other hand, if you’ve kept up with Bengo’s The Floating Lightbulb, you may be a little put-off by the choice. I am not involved in the disagreement (to use a PC word) between Bengo and Half Pixel, but I feel it’s important that all sides of any story be represented. I guess the question would be, if not a member of a leading webcomic collective, who would you choose? Perhaps Gabe or Tycho? The Crosbys? Kazu Kibuishi? I’m none too sure, which is where Bengo’s calls for some good, solid comic leadership and rolemodeling really hits home! I have personally given 2 talks on webcomics so far, with a 3rd scheduled in April. I know a bunch of other people have hosted panels at conventions.  Get OUT there, OFFline, at tell people what you do.  Meet with people and share your craft! Go that extra mile to push for webcomic greatness! Not necessarily “PRINT webcomic greatness” but also WEBCOMIC greatness! We’re all pioneers here.  It’s a brave new frontier, so go and conquer it!

My dog wants to go for a walky now. There may be another article up tonight, as this one was impromptu. Thanks for reading, peeps!

More Attention: it is really hard to get noticed when you are part of a large group. Readers will find you less often, and will automatically gravitate to the “already” popular, “tried and true” comics of large groups. This is the main difference between a HOST and a COLLECTIVE. A host is somewhere like ComicGenesis; thousands of comics, but little in the way of sharing readers or spotlighting the talents of everyone. Speaking of talent…ANYONE can get in. There is no quality control, and there will always be comics you don’t wish to associate your work with. True collectives require some sort of admission process, and everyone who is part of the collective has proven their comic is WORTH it. If you are part of a “worthwhile” group, more people will find your comic, read it, and like it. Even if the collective is SMALLER than a host, your readership will increase.

Solidarity of Purpose: even small collectives provide huge amounts of encouragement. Let’s face it: as comic creators, we all get down on ourselves. A collective gives you the confidence to keep going, and the advice of others to help you improve.  Sometimes, you can get this from just friends you have, even if you are not part of a collective. MANY of us, especially creators of new or smaller comics, do not. If you are part of a collective, you have this at your finger tips. Granted, in every collective, solidarity will vary. Before joining, I would recommend being a member of the community FIRST (through public forums) so you can see how much people in the same collective are interested in BUILDING each other up (not just with viewership. YOU have to count more than your comic).

Cross-advertising: A well-planned and executed collective has methods to advertise each and every member equally on other member sites. A collective is not merely a HOST (as in, everyone has a site but no one really cares much to be associated with everyone else), it is a solid group of people interested in the same thing: making comics and getting more readers. If you are in a “collective” that has no connecting name or theme, no means of letting the readers of one comic know that 1) that comic is part of a collective and 2) there are all of these OTHER comics there too, that collective had failed.  It is NOT a collective, it is just a host. Every comic that is part of a collective must add their readers to the pot, or else what is the benefit of being there?

Free and/or Quality Hosting: The great majority of collectives out there are free.  While donations may be encouraged to support the group, they are not necessary. Even if collectives are not free, the hosting found there is ALWAYS of higher quality than free hosts like ComicGenesis or DrunkDuck. Even visiting DD makes me crazy now, because half of the time, it’s down or absurdly slow. This does not happen with collectives.  Smart collectives find a way to pay for hosting by selling either ad space or group merchandise, or have a group-wide donation run every once in a while.

No [or at least less] ads: All free hosts require some sort of compenstation for the space and bandwidth you have.  ComicGenesis requires a 728×90px banner above the fold, and you have no control over what ads are shown. DrunkDuck keeps adding and adding those ads…everywhere. SmackJeeves has a leaderboard and banner size on default templates (or for people not logged in). WebcomicsNation also has leaderboard ads on default templates. Small collectives most often do not have ads except in the forum of cross-advertising other comics in the collective. For example, SpiderForest requires only the top rotating header, and every comic at SF gets a banner spot, as well as a listing in the dropdown.  We, as members, are also allowed to run our own ads, and may keep all revenue (though donating is encouraged!)  On Keenspot, members are required to run at least one ad banner size, but they ALSO (at least for the most part) have control over what ads are shown.

Better CMS options: A CMS is a “content management system.” It is an automatic method for archiving and information organization. For example, rather than, say, creating a new HTML page for each page of your comic, you simply upload your comic and click a button…and there it is! Dated and organized and put where it’s supposed to be! At free hosts, you have ONE choice for a CMS, which is whatever they use. At ComicGenesis, it’s “autokeen.” At DrunkDuck, it’s whatever horribly clunky CMS they use that half the time breaks half-way through uploading.  In collectives, where there are less members (and therefore, more attention for you!) you often have your choice of what CMS you wish to use!  Here at SpiderForest, we have our own system “ProPanda,” but also can use other systems we may like more, like wordpress/comicpress. There are obviously different levels of CMS, and I use this term losely here. Also keep in mind that in collectives, you have far more freedom to personally tailor or build your page, and have direct FTP access.  For example, the design of pages at webcomicsnation irks me to no end, AND YOU CAN’T CHANGE IT! You may be able to change images, but not the order. Even DrunkDuck has default pages better suited to webcomic reading.

Notoriety: This is something that comes to your comic, automatically, when you are part of a collective. Granted, the level of notoriety will depend on the reputation of the collective itself. For example, “Comic Z” will gain far more notoriety joining Keenspot than joining SpiderForest. Keenspot is far more distinguished and well-known. Being “Spotted” is a dream of many webcomickers. BUT, the important thing to consider is that while no one may have heard of Comic Z before joining Keenspot, an entire community will have heard of it the next day. INSTANT notoriety due to increased selectiveness.  It may be less in a smaller collective, but it’s still there.

——

Before joining any community, it is a smart move to, as I stated earlier, join the community first. Get to know the webcomic creators. Make sure they’re people you’d want to work with. Make sure everyone isn’t a slacker, because as my friend Bengo wrote about in the Floating Lightbulb blog, everyone needs to work, not just one or two people (many more pieces of good advice in that article, so read it!).  Make sure that people heading the collective are dedicated, and willing to lead while still willing to listen to you. Make sure there are no gimmicks or tricks, and if there are contracts involved, read them very carefully. Look for a TOS, and make sure you retain all rights to your work (this often goes without saying in most places, but the concern has come up before. SF has since edited their apply page to reflect this.) TALK to people hosted there, past and present, and ask them what they think. That final bit is the most important.

You may notice me ripping on a few hosts in this article. I have no gripe with the community of any host listed, only the lack of control members may have in certain aspects. Remember! A WEBcomic is half web, half comic. When you can’t control the “web” portion, it’s holding you back. I will be reviewing different webcomic hosts shortly.

For those webcomickers out there interested in learning more about networking their comic on this holiday, I advise you to check out Bengo’s resource page on his Psychedelic Treehouse (webcomic resource) site:

http://psychedelictreehouse.com/networking-contents.php

Direct links to good articles, tools, and how-to’s! A treasure trove of information HOW to get word about your comic out there.

To all Americans: eat your hearts out, and give thanks while doing so. Somewhere else in the world, children are starving to death. Doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t enjoy what you have, however.

I give you now proof that it works:

This graph shows search engine referrals from May of this year until now, and is graphed by month, courtesy of Google Analytics (a free service you all should be taking advantage of). Yes, it is trailing down at the end, but a best-fit line will still show a positive slope, and the month isn’t over anyways. Yes, the percentages there are negative (in red), but that is contrasting the behavior of search engine referrals to the rest of the referrals I get–so of course people who stumble across my site via search engine won’t be as keen as the group of people who come to my site directly, knowing what they’re getting into.

The success that this graph shows is:

• 1) a distinct increase in the number of referrals per month since taking steps to optimize my site, and therefore…
• 2) a distinct increase in gaining NEW readers through search referral rather than direct webcomic-webcomic referral.

My goal was to gain new readers, real NEW readers, and I think I succeeded. This isn’t a “hey, I’m so great!” article. It is my intention that this article simply proves that if I can do this kind of thing, anybody can!  My degree is in biology, not um, computer science.  Everything I’ve learned has been the result of paying attention, and learning from people with experience. My goal with this blog is to pass all that experience on to you, so you don’t have to scrounge it up yourselves over the course of years.

For new readers of this blog who have their own sites, I will repeat myself about what SEO is, how it works, and why it’s something you should be doing for your own site:

[From this article] “…Why is it important to get more search referrals to your site? Because outside of webcomicdom, that is where sites get most of their visitors. Here, it’s the opposite. Most people visit our sites from direct links on OTHER sites. It means we get a small, in-bred audience, with few opportunities to catch a truly new reader. This is why it’s critical to improve your site’s Search Engine Optimization.”

SEO works by reading the text on your webpages. Search engines don’t see images, and webcomic sites are primarily composed of images, which is why traditionally, they don’t get many search referrals.  You can fix this problem by adding more text, cleaning up your code, inserting titles and alts for links and images, and relying less on images (well, text flattened onto images, especially if you’re not all to HTML/CSS savvy).

When you optimize your site for search engines, you also optimize your site for context-based advertisers, a service I champion as a way for webcomickers to make money.  As soon as I exhaust the articles on what you need to do to change your site, I will change focus to how to make money with your comic (AND your site.)

Interested readers can find more about that in a 2-part interview I gave at The Floating Lightbulb.

Next Up: Links and Gallery Pages: two great pages to have for “webcomic relations.”

ADDENDUM: I would like to apologize to those who have sent me emails within the past 72 hours. I have been phenomenally busy with website commissions, and have not responded to anyone.  I greatly appreciate your comments and your emails, and I will reply as soon as I have free moment. No, I am not ignoring you, I promise! I would also like to say that I flattered at the attention this blog is getting. I really had no idea so many people would find it helpful, and I will earnestly try to continue posting articles of substance. Thank you for visiting, everyone!

Read more about it there!

Also, Bengo and Pug’s comic, L’il Nyet, can be found here.