A huge, huge part of gathering an audience to your work is having an update schedule. How would you like it if your favorite television series just went on air “whenever?” No schedule for a new episode, no day for you to check back, just whenever the heck the network had the time to air it? You’d be pissed off and forget to check back! Then you’d be pissed off more when you realized you missed a new episode or 3!

Yes, yes, I know. You want to tell me, “But Kez, when a webcomic updates, the page stays up, so people can come and check back whenever they want! TV shows air, but then you can’t watch them again until the network feels like replaying them! These are 2 really different things!” Well I’m going to tell you that updating randomly is the lazy-man’s way to do it, and though you may keep SOME of your readers, you will NEVER have the audience that a webcomic that updates to a schedule has.

As usual, I’m going to look at the success stories here. Let’s  try Gunnerkrigg Court. GC is currently #14 on TWC, so we can all agree the comic is quite popular! It updates 3x a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And look! It SAYS so, right at the top of the comic there.  Let us view the Project Wonderful stats on GC.  No way! HUGE increases on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays! I WONDER IF THERE IS A CORRELATION (please note, that was not phrased as a question).

Let us consider a scenario where you come across hypothetical Comic X. You really like Comic X, so you bookmark it. Uh oh, problem! Not only does Comic X NOT have an RSS feed (the only semi-substitute for not having a schedule, which I’ll get to at the end of this article), but it does not have an update schedule listed either! So, you bookmark Comic X, and tell yourself that you’ll check back.  For the first couple days, you DO check back. No update! Then, one day a week or so later, you check back and there’s a new page! You are so happy, but wait a second! There are new characters and new places and you have no idea what’s going on! You click the “previous page” button, and discover that Comic X was updated with multiple pages totally out of the blue. I suppose this scenario wouldn’t be so bad if the creator of Comic X at least kept an updated news area to let people know what happened, but odds are that if someone hasn’t posted a schedule, they don’t know enough to have news posts either! Anyways, you catch up on Comic X, but never knowing when the blasted thing updates, you check back quite randomly, maybe 2 or 3 times a month.  You don’t tell many people about Comic X, because let’s face it: though it’s really good, you only ever remember to check it 2-3 times a month, so how are you going to remember to tell anyone about it? Because you don’t visit the site much, you don’t even vote on TWC much. You don’t join a forum or leave a comment or send a fan-mail.  Now multiply you a hundred or so times, and you have the audience of this comic!

Scenario TWO! You come across hypothetical Comic Q.  You really like Comic Q, so you bookmark it.  Uh oh, Comic Q does NOT have an RSS feed, but don’t worry! Comic Q has an update schedule! It updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday with a page per update. You are irked that it does not update more, but you know when to check back for another new page. So you do, three times a week. Each time you visit for that update, you vote for that comic on TWC. Comic Q keeps getting bigger!  Visiting 3x a week, you’re keeping up with the story quite well. You leave the creator of Comic Q a comment, telling him/her how much you like it.  You remember to tell friends about this comic, and you’re sure to let them know when it updates, so they can enjoy the same thing! You find yourself looking forward to each new update, MUCH THE SAME AS IF IT WERE A TELEVISION SERIES.  Is that a small amount of gratitude you feel? That the creator of Comic Q is updating his/her comic loyally to schedule?

Okay, now consider that Comic X and Comic Q are the same comic. Comic X decided to update in batches of 3 on random days, once a week. Comic Q decided to update 3 scheduled days a week with one page per udpate.  They both have the same thing going for them, but Comic Q decided to take the audience into consideration.  Always, always, ALWAYS make it as easy as possible for your readers to keep up with your comic. A schedule is for THEM as much as you, if not MORE for them.  Yes, yes, there are DEFINITE middle paths between Comic X and Comic Q. Phoenix Requiem updates on Mondays and Thursdays with batches of pages. FreakAngels updates on Fridays with 6 pages, and when they can’t, they bother to let people know they’re taking a week off (’cause hey, that’s polite!). There was once a comic I read that updated on Fridays, every OTHER week. This leads into a discussion on how often one should update, which I’m not going into, because the point of this article is merely that to maximize your audience, you NEED to have a schedule (and stick to it!). People will continue to check back on those days you’ve told them you will update.  The reader who comes back to your comic monthly to read batches of pages regardless of whether you have a posted update schedule is few and far in-between.  The great majority of people will come back when you tell them you’ll have something new.

Let us consider a 3rd scenario. You have a webcomic, but you have no idea when you’ll have time to work on it one day to the next. You try for an update schedule, and fail miserably. People start leaving nasty comments about how they’re not going to check back because “you’re a liar,” yadda yadda. Webcomic readers can be a spiteful bunch I tell you!  You really want to keep updating your comic, but there’s no way in hell you can definitely update on a specific day.  Finally, you list your schedule as “whenever I can do it, you sniveling mongrel sons of dogs” (only slightly less inflamatory), and point people to your RSS feed.  Once subscribed to it, people will be notified when you update!

Ah ha! The miracle cure, you say! No, not really. The minority of an audience uses an RSS feed. A sizeable minority to be sure, but most people bookmark your site and physically check back.  As for the intricacies of an RSS feed, what to display on it, I’ll leave that to another article as well. The bottom line is that if you want to continue to grow your audience, they need to know they can depend on you for updates. It’s a loyalty issue. People stop coming back if you don’t update like you said you would. They stop coming back if you update randomly and don’t keep them informed. They stop coming back because they lose interest because they don’t check back, and then forget about you.  Relying solely on RSS feeds is NOT recommended! Not even update listing sites like Piperka, TWCL or OnlineComics make up for not having a schedule, because all of these places require people to make accounts! Again, the minority of your readers will use these sites.

So, if you don’t have a schedule, you need to make one! Period.

Next up! “What is a CMS and WHY do I need it?”

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?