On the SpiderForest forums, one member asked if signing up on webcomic toplists and coming up with vote incentives was worth it. By worth it, I mean “does the effort bring enough readers to make up for the time spent?”  The short answer is most definitely YES.

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?