reMIND

Here are the last pages of Chapter 1.

So as you can see in spread 17, I am going to have a small intermission for a week to repost all the pages of chapter 1 with a few corrections and updated word balloons. So please don't skip out on next Mondays post, in turn missing these much needed improvements. Please call out any mistakes you've seen as soon as you can so I don't have to update them again in the future. 

When I started posting Chapter 1 in November of 2009, my main fear was getting through all my pages before getting an audience. It's really hard to release everything you've worked on for the last 3 years in a few short months only to find 3 people care enough to come back every week.

Here are a few stats since I started:

November 3rd I started posting spreads every Monday and had a steady flow of about 20 visitors a day.  (I'm starting to sweat)

December 2nd, Notcot.org featured reMIND driving massive traffic for a few days but back down to around 30 unique viewers a day for the rest of the month.

January, My new Wordpress/Comicpress site was launched with an average of 40 viewers a day. (gulp, is anybody out there?) Shortly after the launch, CartoonBrew featured my new site on the 21st driving 3000 unique viewers in the next 2 days. Suddenly I had over 100 viewers a day and my first handful of subscribers.

February I learned how to start advertising and immediately got over 200 viewers a day along with more subscribers.

March is here and chapter 1 is online with a whopping 117 subscribers and over 275 unique viewers a day at this point. Thanks to all your votes at TopWebComics I am in the top 100 for this month. Help me stay there by voting every day for reMIND. This weeks incentive is an illustration for Vampire the Masquerade that never got published.

I'm not telling you my stats to brag about anything. In fact these could be considered really low when compared to other webcomics. I just know there are people out there who are in the same boat as me trying to figure this all out, wondering what's normal.  I want reMIND to be a completely transparent site instead of pretending I'm something I'm not. 90% of the time I don't know what I'm doing and when I figure something out that works I want to share it. Hopefully reMINDblog is not just a webcomic or a graphic novel to you, but also a helpful resource and motivational tool.

Chapter 2 is nearly completed with just 2 more spreads to finish coloring and I'm very curious to hear your comments on it. It's been my most problematic chapter to date with lots of exposition which I hope doesn't get to complicated for the sake of clarity. There is a fine line between telling a story and explaining a story which I've been juggling since I started this thing. Either way, some questions will be answered and I hope many more will arise. So once again, Chapter 2 will begin on Monday the 22nd. 

Now onto a small list of things I've been wondering about.

What's the deal with Donation Buttons?

So I've noticed almost every webcomic site has a donation button. I think it a complete waste of time to assume someone will just send you money but since everyone is doing it I want to ask if it really works. Does anyone have a donation button on their site and more importantly, does anyone give you money? 

I guess my thoughts are mixed on the subject. For example, if I were to have a donation button with a goal of X amount of money to help pay for the printing costs of my graphic novel, that would make sense to me. Or in the case of the most awesome webcomic I've ever seen, Axe Cop! They have a donation button for a college fund. That's a worthy cause in my book. If any of you haven't witnessed Axe Cop yet then PLEASE go there now. It's written by a 5 year old and drawn by his 29 year old brother (who is an excellent artist). It's one of the funniest and creative, original webcomics I've seen. Check out the first episode on Youtube too. It's amazing!

On WapsiSquare.com (a very popular webcomic), the artist is asking people to donate so he can get his wife a new TV for about $1000. Last I checked he has totaled about $700 in the last week. That's crazy in my mind but it's cool that he's making it work. If he can get money for his wife's new plasma then why couldn't I get a fund going for the printing costs of reMIND. Let me know if I'm crazy to think this might work.

There is also the question of taxes. From what I've seen with Paypal, the person who donates has to pay a little extra percent of what they are giving as taxes. I might be wrong but I'll ask my tax guy soon.

Should I start a mailing list?

Okay, so I have an RSS subscribe button. But I've been wondering if I should have a separate button for those of you who might not think to check back every week to see my progress. You know, to just get a monthly update of things like release dates and convention info. I know people are forgetful of what they came across last week on the net and not everyone likes RSS feeds. 

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Thursday I have a new video about the CMYK vs RGB workspace in Photoshop I'm excited to share. But first I need to fix all the times I said CYMK instead of CMYK. I'm an idiot.

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A bad agency story:

(WARNING: VENTING SPREE)

(VENTING SPREE OVER)

A good agency story:

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Here is spread 16 of reMIND. Click to enlarge.

There's nothing quite like publishing a graphic novel online. In the three plus years I've been working on my GN its been extremely hard to keep motivated. There would be months where I wouldn't even touch it and months where I was just too busy with freelance work. I'd try deadlines to spur myself towards a short term goal but that never lasts long.

I've never really understood what made me inspired but whenever I found that moment of inspiration I'd jump on it. Now I wonder if the inspiration came directly from someone's encouragement. This would answer why I was so rarely inspired to keep working on reMIND in the past while never showing anyone, keeping it top secret.

The reason I say all this is because these last few months have been an overflow of encouragement from so many people that it's making me big headed a bit. At the same time I'm finding myself in a constant state of inspiration. I'm not sure if it's true inspiration or just a fear of letting someone down if I don't update my blog or comic in time. Whatever it is, it's working and I'm grateful to you all.

A few things of note this week:

• Robert Howard wrote an incredible review of reMIND on his website Tangents.us. Here's the article: reMIND review. Thanks Robert for the kind words!

• Thanks to everyone who voted at TopWebComics, reMIND has moved up the ranks quite well this month with around 200 votes for February. As a thank you for your votes, I plan on showing samples of the next page or never before seen sketches when you vote from now on. Just a little incentive, I hope.

• DeviantArt featured a page of reMIND on Saturday. Man, that was a rush. Thousands of people came to my pages and I had over 100 comments. How very grateful I was for that! My wife wasn't, however, because it took me hours to reply to all the comments. We made up and everyones happy now. Thank you DeviantArt friends and fans!

• And last but not least, Victuals and the rat are friends. I hope I didn't just loose my whole audience.

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Advertising on Top List Sites. Which ones work?

Since I started posting reMIND online I've been scouring the internet to find ways to promote my site. One of the ways I've seen are "Top List Sites" or "Webcomic Directories" where hundreds or thousands of webcomic creators come to list their online comics in hopes they can get more followers. These are websites designed to organize lists of webcomics by popularity. Each site decodes popularity based on a different algorithm of their own. For some it's a combination of your hits, page views, etc. Others are based solely on voting while others are a complete mystery to me. I joined a bunch of these when I first started but most of these top-list's seem to be gimcrack sites. It makes me question if it's even worth it to list my comic there.

Before I go into details I want to mention the "Pareto's Law" or more popularly called the "80/20 Principle". I've read about this rule in many motivation books and it goes something like this:

80% of outputs result from 20% of the inputs.

or..

80% of my time at work produces 20% of my finished work.

or in this case…

80% of all websites are 20% effective.

Some push it even further…

90% of all websites are 10% effective.

You can even flip it like this…

10% of all websites are 90% effective.

If you look into this rule more you will see that it can be applied to almost everything in life. If you can figure out what 10% of your life is 90% effective and just focus on that 10%, you can save lots of wasted time.  With all this said. I think it's a complete waste of time to add your webcomic to every list out there especially if it's in this 90% that is 10% effective or less. So lets move forward.

As I mentioned, most of these sites have the ability to advertise on their homepage in which I have tried 3 so far and have no reason to try any others yet. So here is…

The 80/20 Principle applied to Top List Sites.

I structured it this way because once you get past the top three on the list it's just a complete waste of time to try to figure out which one is better.

• Top Web Comics - (90% effective – with ads)

Top Web Comics seems pretty relevant to todays online communities for one. I joined and listed reMIND about 3 months ago and was ranked around #1500 on their list finding it hard to move up because the top comics were getting thousands of votes a week. I tried to remember to log on each day to vote for reMIND, I know I'm cheating, but it hardly moved me up the ranks anyway. I let it go for a while but one day noticed the ads on the top of the page were prime placement so I looked into it more. Turns out you can buy an ad there for as little as $10. (which is a discount for webcomics!) I bought an ad for $35 (300,000 impressions) and waited about a month for it to make it's way up the queue. So far this ad has brought in an average of 100+ unique viewers a day since it started displaying. It looks like my ad will run for about 3 weeks. From what I can tell I am averaging about 100,000 impressions a week on their site. This could mean over  2100 highly targeted unique viewers by the time my ad expires. Not to mention lots of new subscribers. 

But the biggest advantage to advertising at TopWebComics is people start voting for your comic (if they like it). Since my advertisement started, I've moved from around #1300 on the list to #320 (as I write this) in just about a week. Because I'm moving up the list, I'm now getting more people to recognize my site. When people goto the site to vote for other comics they might see my ad at the top and decide to vote for me too. So your not just paying for a little advertising, your also putting yourself on the map so people can find you to vote for you which will continue to drive traffic to your site long after the ad expires. 

• The Webcomic LIst - (80% effective – with ads)

This site is kinda clunky, but hey, they all are. The Webcomic List is sometimes very slow to load a page and I find it frustrating to navigate. The stats don't really work on my comic too because it's a blog but I don't really need stats. I use Google Analytics. Overall, since I've listed my comic here I get about 4 unique viewers a day who somehow find me in the infinite list of burnt out comics. I think they add your page views to their algorithm and since 80% of the comics don't get updated anymore, you automatically move up the list. As of writing this I'm ranked at 1,839 out of 15,310. That's allot of comics to dig through!

One thing I'd suggest is to buy a spot in the featured list for $15 a month. This was my first advertising attempt being cheap enough for me to risk. They have other banner advertising but it seems really expensive at about $100 for 150,000 impressions. I'll let you know when I tap into my Home Equity Line of Credit for this.

When I bought the $15 featured spot, I was sent about 5 to 16 unique visitors a day from the ad. Not bad for about 50 cents a day. Of corse it's important to make a catchy button to attract people or your precious 15 duckets will float down the toilet. So in other words, this site is pretty good and seems up to date. I'm not sure if I will keep advertising there though. All together it has brought in a little over 300 unique viewers in about 3 months, mostly when I was featured.

• WebcomicZ.com - (10% effective – with ads)

I bought a featured ad on this site too for 3 months because it was only $5 a month. I've had a total of 37 unique visitors since I joined. Advertising the WHOLE time. What? Is that possible? But I'm ranked # 210 on their list (as of this writing). It seems like this list is pretty rarely traveled. It seems like a well managed site though but it definitely falls into the 80 to 90% ineffective catagory. Unless this changes in the future, I wont be spending my time there anymore. 

From here on its safe to say we are in the 90% ineffective zone.

• ComicRank.com
  

This one is strange to me. It's a beautiful looking site though. I tried to list reMIND and had some trouble getting it approved because it was also a blog. I was going to try to link just to my comic but lost interest. My conclusion? It's nice looking and counts how many readers you have but doesn't drive you much traffic. In looking at their stats through Project Wonderful, I noticed they only had a few hundred hits a day to the home page. This really makes me question it's legitimacy. At the moment I'm getting more traffic then they are according to Project Wonderful. I could pay a few cents a day to advertise there but I think I would, once again, be spending more time then it's worth. 

• The New Belfry WebComic Index
  

I know it's called the NEW Belfry but still, I wander what to old one looked like. I can't be to hard on this site yet because I haven't really looked into it much. It seems like they have several thousands unique viewers a day so it must be good for something. I'll do some testing and update this when I feel like I have a better understanding of it. 

• WebComics Super 100 List

I don't know but, MAN, this one just looks bad. What I'm suppose to say here. Based on the popularity of the top comics, I assume you know to write this one off too.

• 100.taversia.net
  

Okay now. This is getting comical. If a top list site only has 40 comics listed because there are only 40 members then it's a good sign to not join. Unless you like the sweet rose and dagger logo. 

• Comixpedia.org -

This seems to be another child site of the creator of ComicSpace.com and OnlineComics.net. If you want to hear my opinion of ComicSpace then click here. I'll talk about OnlineComics.net below. In other words, these are just more sites that have been created and then abandoned. I have more fun talking to walls then going on any of these.

• OnlineComics.net
  

OnlineComics.net is a super slow, clunky, outdated site. I tried to list reMIND here months ago but had no response. It looks like another abandoned site, the same as comicspace with no one caring enough to update it anymore. Run. Run away and don't look back.

• Piperka.net

I just stumbled onto this one this morning so I figured I should add it to the list. According to Project Wonderful, it has about 1000 to 2000 unique viewers a day. I guess it has better traffic then some of the top-list sites out there but I'm not convinced it will send me much traffic. Plus I don't know how your suppose to browse through comics here. It's just an html list.

My Conclusion

So with all this said, there is only one reason I can find to list your comic on more then the top 2 here. If you are a brand new webcomic with no links back to you, this is a way to get a few. You see, the more links you have to your site the better search ranking you will get with google and other search engines.  I still don't suggest it though. You might as well join forums, write good content or even buy a few ads with Project Wonderful before wasting your time with the bottom 7.

That's my opinion. Does anyone have another site to recommend or NOT recommend?

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Here is spread 15. Click to enlarge.

I have been sick this week and took 3 days off work. Because so, I was able to do a bit more work on reMIND then normal.  One of my missions was to go over all the pages and update the word balloon shapes and colors and fix up the sound effects. I learned some new tricks that I'm excited to share in the coming weeks. I was also able to color a few more spreads. Another slight difference you might have noticed is the rectangular narration boxes being hand drawn looking. Jim Campbell gave me this idea when he did some sample lettering for my pages. 

This spread is a turning point for Sonja and another motivational kick into the next gear as far as the story goes. I hope your not to comfortable because it's really gonna change soon. If you come back in a month, you'll think your reading the wrong comic.

Speaking of switching gears, since we have been on the subject of advertising the last few posts I wanted to share another site that's been fairly rewarding.

TopWebComics.com

This is a "top list site", they call it, where thousands of webcomic creators come to list their online comics in hopes they can get votes and in turn followers. I joined a bunch of these when I first started but most of the top-list-sites seem to be so crusty and old that it makes me question if it's worth it.  

Top Web Comics, however seems to generate some good traffic and seems pretty relevant to todays online communities. You can buy ads there for fairly cheap and they bring really good traffic. Here's the page where you can buy prime ad space for as little a $10.

Also, on the right of my site, I just placed some new VOTE buttons pointing to TopWebComics. If you have been enjoying anything about reMIND then please click on one of the vote buttons to help me out. You can vote every day so please do every time to stop by reMIND. You don't need to sign in at TopWebComics either so it only takes a second. Please, I'm sick. If I could find a rejected looking picture of myself I'd put it here.

Okay, enough self pity. I've been working on a good post for Thursday so come back then and check it out. Thanks for reading!

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