How to Grow Your Audience: Part 2
on September 1, 2011 at 5:00 am11 More Ways to Build Your Fan Base for Free
If you missed the first two parts of this series you might want to check them out first:
Prologue – Growing Your Audience is like Growing a Tree
Part 1 – How to Grow Your Audience
Okay let’s jump in where we left off. In this section we are focusing on what you can do if your site has less than 500 visitors a day and/or less than 6 months of content. Oh yeah, and we are assuming that your content is STELLAR! Serious, none of this will work if it’s not something that people will want to share with their friends.
This post will focus on the parts in red.
(I’ll add to this chart as I post more in this series)
Praise other artists:
Everyone loves it when their art is praised and talked about. When I was just starting my blog and webcomic I would write long winded posts about how amazing an artist was without thinking about it. For instance, I talked several times about Nate Simpson, who at the time was just starting his NonPlayer comic on his blog called ProjectWaldo. Nate’s work is AMAZING! (see how I did that?) And see how I linked to his blog, website and website again in bold? Little did I know that Nate was a keen Internet observer and he saw a few hits coming from my little blog and must have come to see what I was saying and… presto! He left a comment on my blog. At the time I never imagined that anyone would track me down for talking about them but it happens. I was even tracked down for quoting a big book editor and publisher once because I quoted them wrong. I fixed the quote and freaked out over the power I had to attract people to my blog just by mentioning their name.
By the way I LOVE Chris Bachalo’s AMAZING WORK! work! He’s been one of my favorite artists ever since he drew Shade the Changing Man. (Let’s see if that one works… come on Chris… Chris?)
This also goes both ways. I’ve found many blogs and comics because people were talking about me. Some of them I even subscribed to and left a comment.
You can’t praise someone enough so feel free to write a 1000 word essay why everyone should go see your favorite artist. If it’s really good then that artist will definitely know you exist so make sure you have something cool on your site for them to see when they come looking.
Offer to help other comic creators out:
It’s just that simple. If you notice that someone needs help with their webcomic or a guest page to fill in for a week then hit them up and ask if you can lend a hand. If you know how to make t-shirts and you read someone is having problems making theirs then offer to help. If someone needs to make a kickstarter video and you know exactly how to do it then offer to help. This takes time and patience so keep your eyes and ears open for your opportunity to shine. You know that link exchange thing we were talking about earlier? You wont need to ask if you start helping others out.
One time Ethan from Axe Cop said he needed some guest comics to fill in for a week and I jumped on it. I also offered to color a poster for him but he already found someone. Ethan has been a great link buddy ever since.
DeviantArt.com:
I have mixed feelings about DeviantArt but one thing is for sure, it’s MASSIVE! If you are new to the art word or comics and want to build a following then start a DeviantArt account and post your pages there too. Post sketches and anything else. Post things one at a time so it has a chance at being on the home page for a few seconds. Post links back to your blog/comic and respond to every comment. It’s a social network for artists and millions of wannabe artists.
If you can manage to get a DailyDeviant or a DD as they call it then your art will be on the home page for 24 hours and you will get up to 10,000 visits to your profile that day and an additional 100 to 300 followers from what I’ve experienced. I’ve gotten 2 DD’s there since I’ve started and it’s crazy. About 10% of that traffic will click through and goto your website or blog.
Now even though it’s good for building fans like other networks it has major drawbacks in my opinion. When you make people go to your DA page you are inviting them to get lost in the community instead of focusing on your art. That’s why it makes a terrible portfolio. Unless you are comfortable there you will immediately be lost and confused. I’ve never known a professional artist who uses it as their only portfolio in which they make a living from. That’s another story though.
The other drawback is the community you build there will rarely leave it’s walls and venture to your site. They want you to bring your site to them so they don’t have to ever leave DeviantArt. So you basically don’t get much traffic from there even if you have a good sized community there. I want people to come to my site not the other way around.
With all that said, it’s still a great place to get exposure and new eyes so repost your pages and article and tutorials there if you have the time. But it does take a lot of time.
StumbleUpon and Reddit:
StumbleUpon is an interesting one and it might not work for you. It barely works for me but I think I know why. It’s basically really good for pages that are a one-off web page. For instance, my Making Graphic Novels resource page is probably my best page for StumbleUpon. Why is it the best? Because StumbleUpon just throws sites at people when they are bored and want to find something random. In my case, I have a giant resource and if someone stumbles across it they can instantly see that it has a bunch of good information so they might give it a thumbs up and bookmark it and then hit the Stumble button again.
In the same way, one-off webcomics work pretty good with Stumble Upon if it’s a quick image to read and get a quick laugh out of. A series of images or Meme with a bunch of funny stuff on one page is usually really good for this same reason. If you submit one of your pages to StumbleUpon, make sure that it’s a page or article that is SUPER QUICK to get. A random page from a graphic novel is NOT a quick thing to get. Stumblers aren’t looking for something to do for the next 2 hours, they are looking for something to do NOW before their next meeting.
So if you have a ridiculously funny picture (of a cat maybe) that will instantly make someone laugh or an excellent resource or a long page of images that is a complete comic from start to finish then try submitting it to StumbleUpon. It’s hit or miss. You might get 10 views and you might get 100k views in one day.
You can try the whole community thing with StumbleUpon if you want but I just didn’t have the time for it. Plus, my audience is a bit more focused than an average stumbler so I choose to focus more on the networks that work better for Graphic Novels.
Reddit.com has a similar audience I think. They want one page or one image RIGHT NOW. If something hits then it REALLY hits but you will only retain a small fraction of the traffic if any. Play at your own risk though because sometimes it feels like you are throwing scraps to vultures to rip apart. I’ve had a few people ridicule me and my links to no end on Reddit. I’ve also had very nice surprises with tons of new traffic.
In general, a gag a day webcomic could do really well with StumbleUpon and Reddit. If that’s your thing then definitely try them out.
Start a mailing list:
Although email may seem like it’s old school now days it’s still very important. Professional bloggers will tell you that an opt-in mailing list is one of the most powerful tools to make sales through. Opt-in means that your subscribers made the decision to join your list not the other way around. Because they joined your mailing list they are interested in what you have to offer and don’t want to miss out on anything. Make sure everyone can find your mailing list to Opt-into. If you can get 1000 people on that list who want to hear your important news then you are building a solid group of fans.
I use MailChimp for my mailing list because it’s professional and it’s free for the first 2000 subscribers. The other professional mailing list is Aweber.com but it will cost you money from the start. My only problems with mailing lists are the extra time it takes to do it all and trying to get past all the spam filters in personal email accounts. Even though you’re not sending spam, you still have to get through the spam filters and sometimes it’s hard when sending out mass emails. If you get too many people saying that your email is spam even though they opted in, your mail servers will start considering your email address a spammer address and ban you so definitely use a system like Mailchimp so you don’t put your own email at risk. And try to learn how to build an email that wont be mistaken for junk mail.
(If anyone is an expert at this then I’d love your comments and help. I still don’t have a good grasp on it all)
To get started with your mailing list, first set up a Mailchimp account and then test it out by sending a personal email to all your friends and family asking them to opt-in to your new mailing list. You’ll probably get a handful of friends who join your list and use this time to learn the system by sending a handfull of emails to your list asking them to respond and let you know if they got it and how it looks and reads.
Once you are feeling good about it, announce it on your site and make it painfully easy to find and join.
If you click on my Subscribe button or Contact button you are presented with a sign up form. I’m not sure if this is the best way but it’s been working pretty good for me. At this point I have about 700 people on my mailing list and it’s growing almost every day.
Once your system is up and running, use incentives to get new people to opt-in like free giveaways or access to a digital download for people who join. Here are a few popular blogs about building a mailing list:
http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/
http://www.bensettle.com/
Rampage Network:
I’ve never used the Rampage Network but I know several people who do. From what I’ve seen it looks great for new web-comics. Apparently you can get free hosting and then everyone links to the network which promotes one webcomic at a time across all the sites that are affiliated with it. I’ve heard that it gives you a big spike in traffic on the day that your site is featured which is cool but I chose to go solo because I didn’t want anyone telling me what ads and buttons to run on my site.
I think this would be a great tool for someone brand new starting up with little or no money to invest but once you get some momentum I’d rather see you buy your own host and completely handle it on your own. So join at your own risk. I don’t really know much more than that though.
I believe there are other groups like this as well but you will have to dig for that information on your own if it’s something your interested in finding.
Daily or Weekly Sketches on Your Blog and Twitter:
Skottie Young is great at doing this almost every day on his blog. It keeps his content fresh and gives him something to tweet about. Not to mention, he sells all the originals too! I’ve been toying with this idea but don’t have the time right now. Who knows, maybe I’ll try it for a while because I think he’s onto something really good.
Just make sure your image is on your website and not a picture service so that people have to come to your site to see it from Twitter or Facebook.
Learn Professional Blogging Techniques:
I think the main thing I had to figure out early on with the blog is that I need to approach it like a professional blog as much if not more than a webcomic. That means, really studying and reading what make a successful blog work and how bloggers get traffic. Why should you write a blog post if you are making a webcomic? Easy, because Google looks a words when they search your site. They don’t magically decode your comic images and decipher that you are a independent comic artist who loves vampires and long walks in the jungle.
This doesn’t mean you need to write crazy articles that sound like a linguistics professor wrote them. Just write about whatever you like. Write about your week or how you made you last page. Anything that Google can dig through to start getting an idea of who you are and what your site is about. In time you will start getting organic hits from Google searches.
Also, I really tired to narrow my niche target audience to other graphic novelists. Too many people try to target everyone and I don’t think it works that way. In the best book on marketing that I’ve ever read: 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, it explains that your target audience is not the same as your audience. Is everyone who wears Vans a young skater? Is everyone who drinks Pepsi really part of that one specific new generation? Is a Lexus really only for rich people? Are Mac’s only for artist hipsters? No, but that is who they are targeting publicly. In turn, everyone who WANTS to be young, hip or rich buys into it too. So with all this targeting in mind, I decided to focus on the type of person that I knew best… myself; a person who wants to make and sell graphic novels. I knew I could target other graphic novelist in the making with this kind of how-to information in hopes to attract anyone who has ever dreamed of doing art or writing for a living and it seems to me like almost everyone has had that fantasy at some point in their childhood. It also helps that I’ve had a blessed artistic career which gives me a unique perspective and lots of experience to pull from.
So by targeting the small group of people who can actually use this information, I am in fact appealing to anyone who ever dreamed about doing a comic (or creative arts) at any point in their life and I’m also appealing to people who know they can’t do it but wish they could. By targeting a few, I’m attracting a lot! That’s the idea anyway.
In other words, if you can, write articles, tutorials, how-to’s, reviews and more. Because of all the articles I’ve written over the years I get about 50 to 200 hits a day from search engines. Lots of people have discovered my comic because of this. I only suggest doing this if you have a specific experience that you can share and enjoy talking about because it’s a lot of work. I love breaking things down and trying to make it understandable for others. At times I get as much joy from writing articles as I do from working on my graphic novel. I’ve always had a strange desire to write a how-to book and this is my chance I guess.
You don’t have to just stick to articles though. You can make Youtube videos and tutorials, or a livestream of something interesting. Make a podcast if you like being in front of the camera or if you just want to record audio. Just find the things that you love doing and incorporate them into your blog which also happens to be your comic.
Find your niche and fill it. I decided to blog about making graphic novels because I felt like there was a empty hole on the Internet when it came to this kind of information. I wanted to make a giant resource for anyone starting out with a graphic novel and so far I’m pretty happy with what it has become. Here’s my resource page.
If you decide to take the blogging approach there is a lot of excellent information out there. Here are some popular blogs about blogging all of which I frequent:
http://www.problogger.net/
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/
http://www.copyblogger.com/
Learn basic SEO:
I’m not saying you need to become a grand master of Search Engine Optimization but it really really helps if you want to make a blog that gets ranked high on search engines. Here is a great website with some great articles to help you learn the basics: http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/
Also if you are using WordPress.org then I recommend the simple plugin All-in-One SEO pack.
Be nice to EVERYONE:
And finally, be really nice to everyone online. Be nice to everyone you talk to in forums and on Twitter. Be nice on Facebook. Don’t bash people on your blog. When you are responding to mean comments, be nice. Just because someone is a complete jerk to you doesn’t mean you need to be a jerk back to win. When you are being torn apart for something you said. Be nice. You can’t put out a fire with a flamethrower and you can never win by arguing like a grade schooler.
If you don’t like someones work you don’t have to tell them they suck. You don’t really have to say anything at all. It’s the Internet, just go to a website you enjoy and be nice instead.
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The next installment of this series will talk about things you can do if you have some money to spend each month towards growing your audience. Thanks for sharing this information! Please reTweet!
Great post, J.
I gotta add, in order to build a good community, you have to share with them. That includes your ‘secrets’ for obtaining success. There are no real secrets to success – just hard work. But if someone can learn from the path you’ve taken, and make it more efficient for their own pursuits, you’ve done a good thing – and I’m sure they’ll be eternally grateful for your words of wisdom.
Very true! You gotta share the knowledge. It helps others AND it helps you too.
So much good information! Thank you!
I’ve been wondering your opinion on including a “followers” section on a page and how it will affect traffic. Do you see any huge benefits or negatives? Sometimes I feel it looks unprofessional but, I think for a newer blog it might help…not sure what to do.
I think having a list of blogs or sites you follow is a great thing. It’s pretty common on artist blogs and the like. I had one at first but it cluttered up my home page a little more than I wanted so I just changed it to a links page. I admit that I need to update mine though. I have lots of new friends I want to add to it but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
All good stuff ,but I need to particularly say the “be nice to everyone” is HUGE. Ranting and hating about whatever can give you a spike in traffic but it will quickly fade.
Plus the industry isn’t as big as a lot of people realize. Pretty much everyone knows everyone else. That means every time you are mean or nasty everyone else knows and it works against you in the long run. The general rule of “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all” is a horrible cliche but it’s one that is reallllyyyyyy useful in this business. Plus if you ever hope to do anything more than a webcomic you need to make sure you don’t burn any bridges.
So as Jason said “be nice to everyone” and be aware of the image you are creating for yourself.
Great article! This is seriously so helpful. A year ago, I would’ve been clueless about how to get my book and website out there for people to see. It was such a mystery. But you know your stuff, I’ve definitely learned a lot.
Y’know, I’ve had to try to sell or promote things a few times in my life, and I’ve always hated it. It’s just not my style. The thing I like about this approach to promoting your site, is that though there is strategy involved, it’s SINCERE. It comes from a place of communicating what’s most passionate to you, to other people who might share that passion. This is definitely my style of promotion. You’re attracting people based on what you love and are excited about, which I think is really cool.
Great point! I’m totally with you on being sincere.
ALSO EVERYONE, GO SEE BRIAN’s SITE! He’s about to blow us all away with his new comic he’s been working on for the last year.
Great Article. Twitter personality is also important – too often you see people bombarding big names like they are stalkers or being pally when they’ve never met them. Also excessive twittering can make sure people un-follow you quickly. It’s all about having a personality, something to say at the relevant time and realising you’re NOT dave gibbons (yet).
Good luck to all you art types out there.
Awesome articles (This and the last one). Sooooo much information to digest. I’m going through it all right now. The thing I like best about you, Jason, is that you’re completely transparent with everything you do. It makes one feel like you’re just a really genuine person, which goes along with the ‘being nice’ thing.
Thanks again for not squirreling away your tricks of the trade, but putting them out there for everyone to learn from.
I love how you’ve organized this information, and I can’t wait to see how you finish each piece of your chart! Going piece-by-piece like this really helps me digest the information.
My main push at this time is a bit of a combination of “Keep a Schedule” and “Praise Others.” Each month I have a Featured Link, where I do fan-art for a webcomic or site and write up everything I love about the work and creator. Since I have limited time, keeping it on a schedule prevents me from getting overwhelmed, but ensures that I always am working on something new. Since there’s so many wonderful sites out there, I can build up a queue and contact the creator in advance. I’ve found that the majority of traffic that comes to my site and STAYS at my site is from responses to these features!
Looking at this list, it makes me wonder if maybe there are other types of activities I could combine…lots to think about!! Thank you!
You are doing it EXACTLY right in my mind. Focusing on a few things that you can keep on a schedule and doing them as good as you can. I’m also switching up what I’m testing and trying and sometimes I completely drop things that I’m tired of doing.
It sounds like you have a great strategy with your features. Thanks for the comment too!
I really admire how adaptable you are. I tend to get very set in my ways and wrapped up in routine. While that can be great for some things (keeping a schedule) it can be terrible for finding things that are a GREAT fit instead of just a “sorta” fit. Reading your blog and listening to things like the PaperWings podcast really helps me keep my mind open to other possibilities, and I’m so grateful for the insights you remarkable creatives share. Thank you!!
Robin, the Featured Link is a really cool idea. I think I’m going to try that too. Thanks!
I hope it’s a good fit for you, Max! It’s not a flash-in-the-pan result activity, but more of a cumulative build-up of connecting with new readers and creators. For me, I’ve got a hare mentality but a tortoise core personality: If I’m being healthy and realistic, slow and steady really DOES win the race. :)
This is such useful information for us poor cartoonists! Thank you Jason!
You are very welcome!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! A friend sent me your link because of your coloring tutorial. And I kept coming back because I was interested in your self promotion and self publishing processes. I finally bought the book because I really like your drawing style. It’s clean and alive. Can’t wait for the book to arrive.
Thanks for picking up a copy! Much appreciated! And I’m happy to hear you like the articles and tutorials too.
Dude, awesome post Jason. I just tweeted you a link to an email marketing tips blog post that I used for guidelines for some marketing stuff I’ve done in (real) Cubicleland. I’m hoping there’s something in their you might find useful. I’m also going to check out that wordpress plugin you recommend.
Right now I’m all about finding other comics online that I genuinely like (such as yours) and posting legit comments of praise when I see awesome stuff.. Slowly but surely, traffic and attention is starting to build. Tumblr seems to be a place where you can find a lot of cartoonists following and reblogging each other, and man… on Google+ I can find almost anyone in comics and follow them (almost like collecting all-star cartoonist baseball cards).. I’ve been getting more and more follow backs from artists I respect and admire so it seems to be working.
I spend a lot of time with this type of networking, but because I’m practically unknown in the wide world of webs right now, I figure it’s up to me to keep at this until I cross some magical threshold where more people are coming to me than the other way around… and even then, as evidenced by yourself, you have to keep at it. The fun part is that.. it’s FUN!
Thanks for all the tips, you’re site has helped me more than I can express!
Tumblr can be really powerful if you approach it as an other marketing tool with a very enthusiastic built in audience. Its really important to get a handle on attaching the right tags to your work. Thats how you find things and get people to reblog.
I still don’t have a clue about Tumblr. Maybe you should write an article about it Chris! (hint hint) I’d love to understand it more.
Daniel- It’s great that you love doing this stuff. That’s SOOOOOO important to being able to stick to it for a long time.
its a very cool thing. Maybe i should write something up. could be helpful. Tumblr really is the new “it” thing in micro blogging
Thanks for sharing these.
You’re right about StumbleUpon. It can cause an upswing in traffic and my posts have gone viral thanks to it. Unfortunately, it can also raise your bounce rate (bad) and lower time spent on your blog (also bad). It’s best not to rely on that solely – SU should be but one tool in your arsenal of social media.
I only use DeviantArt for their prints service. It’s convenient for selling prints, magnets, etc.
Stumping for other comics creators is handy too. I’ve done it for Swampfox Media, Ringtail Cafe, and you too.
This is an interesting blog. I’ve heard a lot of general advice like this, but this is really thorough and specific.
Well, I read online comics on dA. I’ve also found online comics through dA. Maybe that makes me the minority, but if an artist I love watching has a web comic I will typically go take a look.
Don’t get me wrong, there are people that venture out of DA to come see my site but statistically speaking it’s very limited. Thanks for the comment!
Great article! I think out of all the comics that I read, this one has my favorite accompanying blog (don’t get me wrong, I love the comic, too!), so it was especially nice to hear a little bit about your blogging philosophy. I wonder what percentage of your traffic is a part of your target audience (is making or wants to make a graphic novel).
It’s hard to tell but I can say that I’m still getting about 3/4th of my traffic as when I was updating the comic every Monday. My subscriber number has stayed almost exactly the same if not gone up a little. So this tells me that MOST of my audience is here to see and read about the process.
It’s just another reason to do more than just update your comic because when you need to take a break in between books or something you are still able to give your existing subscribers something that they are used to getting.
I know there are lots of people that have left though while I’m working in Volume 2 but I’m not too worried about it. I got to this point from zero so getting followers back shouldn’t be as hard the second time. (Hopefully) :)
Great post, Jason!
I’ve slowly been making my way through your site these last few months and in all honesty it’s been these posts that have brought me here, not the comic. ;)
It’s working then. haha. Glad you like the articles.
This is a really great series of articles. I’m learning a ton from these. The part about offering your services to other creators is really important and speaks to how much comics are community and collaboration based. Everyone needs a bit of help from time to time.
Some of you may know, but i’m the graphic designer who worked with Jason on reMIND, and I helped him out with the production part of the book, as well as designing all the extra pages and some of his related marketing materials….i also wrote some articles about the process on this very blog.
I’d like to extend the offer to any indie creators who can read this…if you have questions about book production, design or feel that you might want to collaborate with a designer on your project feel free to contact me. I’d love to talk to you.
I love comics (working on one myself) and just find it to be a shame when talented indie creators overlook the production and design aspect of their graphic novels. The package is just as important as the content…
Do it guys! Chris is REALLY good at this stuff and you will be surprised how much he can add to your existing product.
Great post, Jason. Thanks for the MailChip recommendation, really liking what I see from their site. What WordPress plugin did you use for your mailing subscription? Like how it takes you to a second page you can customize a bit.
i like Mailchimp. I’ve used it professionally at my ad agency for large email campaigns. Its very user friendly and they have really good free publications on their site that can walk you through any aspect of email marketing that you could be interested in
It’s both mildly annoying and highly amusing to realise you’re not the only one watching the webcomics industry from the shadows and drawing conclusions, but, in this case, it’s good to see that most of the conclusions I was drawing are valid.
Again, I commend your initiative and the effort you put into this guide.
However, I do have a question for you – while you’re still in the “design phase”(story pretty much done, it’s time to get the visuals right) of your webcomic, what would you say is the right amount of secrecy you need?
Should you put every step of the way on your blog/Tumblr/DevArt account, as a way of getting some early audience reaction, or embrace copyright paranoia and place only finished designs and some selected drawings?
Also, you should add to your guide the importance of saving your work on DVDs as often as you can – I used to do monthly back-ups, but, ever since my laptop got stolen about two weeks ago, I’ve discovered just how much work one can do in a month and how long it takes to pick all the pieces and get back to work (took two weeks just to get my new machine up to scratch).
“what would you say is the right amount of secrecy you need?”
That’s a hard one and I’ve thought about it too much. On one hand I would LOVE to see the progress of someone like Nate Simpson still or Joshua Middleton as he works on a page but you just never see it much. When Nate was posting his pages as he was working on them even uncolored, it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen online and it single handedly motivated me to put my stuff online too. However, I’m into the creative and artistic side of it all and I’ve still never read his book even though I LOVE it! I’ll definitely read it before the movie comes out though. ;)
So while it might be the best thing ever for artists, it might annoy the reader who just wants to get the full impact of a finished page. I’m starting to think a membership sort of thing might be something fun to try. Something where people can see my progression as it happens for maybe a small fee (but I hear this hardly works) (but I’d pay this to see Nate’s behind the scenes). I’m sure you’d have to have a good sized following to make it worth the extra time though.
In the end I guess it’s all up to each creator how much they want to show while making it but I think it’s a huge potential for building a following.
“or embrace copyright paranoia and place only finished designs and some selected drawings?”
In a way, showing your progress online is still a copyright. You are publishing your sketches and whatnot and so it’s still protected in the same way if you published a finished page. I have an article mostly written about this subject but I’m still working out the kinks.
Also, great point about backing up your work!
“In a way, showing your progress online is still a copyright. You are publishing your sketches and whatnot and so it’s still protected in the same way if you published a finished page. I have an article mostly written about this subject but I’m still working out the kinks”
Yeah, in the light of my recent bad luck, I’m starting to think that way too, because on top of what you said it would act as an extra level of back-up for the design essentials (by sheer misfortune, one of my back-up DVDs was in the drive when my laptop got snatched, so I lost a few coloured drawings). I hope you won’t mind If from this point onward I will use your forum as an off-site lab in which to work on my stuff…
if you follow Jason’s 6 month stockpile plan, you will have a ton of drawings, turnarounds, designs, process work and scripts and outlines right? Put copies of it or video/photo it…make it really clear, print out, put on disc, put it all into a giant envelope and file it with the copyright office. DONE. You pay one registration fee since its all the same project and filed together. Full Federal copyright protection starts the second they receive the package (use delivery confirmation) as proof because processing could take months. You’ll have so much work in there.
Sure you get copyright protection by posting it online, but you get better protection if its filed. A rather successful commercial photographer i freelanced for years ago told me that he had an infringement case (used in a national advertising campaign without permission) and when he won, because of the registration, the settlement was the difference between a used car and brand new house….Its a no brainer for a judge.
Dont’ take my word for it, do your own research. I’m sure i’ve oversimplified it.
Of course, there is a teensy little problem with that plan – I happen to live in Romania rather than the US and copyright operates a little different here in the EU.
For example, there is no unified copyright law across the whole Union, rather a set of directives member states are “encouraged” to adhere to and which have a lot of loopholes and exceptions, thus the whole issue can be a bit murky, especially where the internet is concerned.
Anyway, I distinctly remember having this particular conversation vis-a-vis copyright laws and their limitations on the Making Graphic Novels forum. If I remember correctly, the bottom line there was “get a big internet fanbase, they’ll guard your stuff for you”.
ahh so that is a challenge. There is always the quick and dirty version. You put all your content into a big envelope and mail it to yourself. DON’T OPEN IT! If you ever have a dispute you have the postmark date, and the judge/arbitor can open it in an official setting.
The big thing in copyright disputes always comes down to 2 things. Is the work blatantly ripped off? and did the offending party have an opportunity to see the work? Sometimes its just cultural zeitgeist, sometimes they saw your stuff on a webcomic and stole it.
In the US we have notary public..they can basically officially date stamp things for you and its legal. That could be an option as well.
The internet fanbase is pretty good method. I mean if someone did rip you off every comic blog news site out there would read “PUBLISHER X RIPS OFF INDIE WEB COMIC!” PR nightmare.
GREAT advice!
90% of comics at this point is networking and building a loyal fanbase. Knowing how to do that in the digital age is key to sucess.
These articles have been so great!
Once upon a time, I bought a book by some webcomic guys called “How to make Webcomics” and I feel like they barely discussed any of this kind of thing, which after reading this, seems almost crucial to building a following.
You always seem to have new information that’s very vital and relevant to what we’re all trying to do. Thank you for sharing what you’ve learned!
Yeah, I decided to write this stuff because I couldn’t seem to find it in ANY books out there. I love all the guys who wrote How to Make Webcomics but I felt the same way after finishing it. Like the important stuff was missing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a MUST get if you are new to webcomics but I guess I’m just trying to add to what they started with what I think is important.
Heh. The userbase on deviantart is funny. 10% seems about right when it comes to users actually visiting the artists’ websites. That also seems to be the percentage of people who actually view an artist’s entire gallery after faving or commenting on something they came across, instead of moving along.
If I see something cool, I usually take the time to browse the rest of the artists’ gallery.
I’ve decided to not promote my newly launched webcomic until I have at least 20 up on the site. I don’t even know if it’s a good idea or not, not having a readership feels slightly discouraging, but linking people to a webcomic that has only recently launched would make me feel like I’m just deliberately disappointing people.
*20 pages up on the site
Jason,
Great articles. This has been such a huge help to me. While I’m not doing an online comic, I am promoting a toy line with some art and comic work so I think your advice works just as well for me. I now have links to Facebook, twitter and I just started an email list. Thanks for suggesting specific examples such as mailchimp. This is really helping me create a community and then keep that community informed in lots of different ways. Your blog has been an invaluable roadmap.
I love the book, it came out great. I look forward to more great stories from you and great articles. Thanks again.
-Ted
Hey Jason thanks so much for these tips man, theyve helped me out so much. My main thing is keeping to a schedule, which is an ongoing battle for me haha. its not that im lazy im just easily distracted to work on something that i cant finish in a day to post. your the man keep up the goods.