How to get Traffic Without Spending a Dime
Growing Your Audience – Part 4
Why do I break up things based on how much traffic you have or how long you’ve been doing your webcomic? Simple really. You don’t want to spin your wheels for nothing. If you launch a giant art contest to see who can draw the best version of your character and you only have family members checking out your 4 pages once a month then it doesn’t take a genius to point out that your contest might be a waste of time. Who knows, maybe your family is a bunch of artists excited to contribute but the reason for any of this is to get people that you DON’T ALREADY KNOW involved with your site.
So, this time, we’ll finally talk about some of the things that I know many of you are itching to discuss. But remember to wait to these after you’ve build a small but dedicated fan base of at least 500 visitor a day on average. It doesn’t have to be this number exactly but it really seems to me like things started changing when I crossed this invisible threshold. If you don’t have that many visitors a day but have years worth of content and 100 dedicated fans that visit your site every day then I’m sure these things will work as well. At least in my opinion.
This article will focus on the red parts. If you have over 500 visitors a day AND/OR more than 6 months of content.
Buy Advertising… for Free
Wait. Didn’t I just say these were things to do without spending any money? Yes. You aren’t going to be spending any money because your 500+ visitors a day are bringing in a little revenue to use if you’ve been treating your site like the pro-bloggers do. Remember the article I wrote about how much money my website was generating? Here it is if you need a reminder: How to Make Money with a Webcomic
When I wrote that article I was averaging about 1000 visitors a day and I had made about $1091 in a six month period (roughly). So if you have good compelling content and articles and good comic pages then I don’t see why a person can’t make money from their site. See why it’s important to build at least 6 months of content and have at least 500 visitors a day before moving to this part of the chart?
So lets be conservative and assume you are making $50 a month from your website. Invest that money into advertising like we talked about it the last article. The money isn’t coming out of your own pocket because it was generated from your website. So in essence, it’s free advertising. Kinda.
Submit Your Comic/Blog to Other Popular Sites:
When I started reMINDblog.com I expected other people to find my site and submit it to other sites and become viral in a matter of seconds. I was wrong. After a few months (and I admit that I did this a little too early) I decided to take matters into my own hands and just submit my site MYSELF! I sent an email to Jerry from CartoonBrew.com shortly after I launched my wordpress site, only after having a handful of pages online. Jerry replied within the day and premiered my site on his popular blog the next morning. It instantly sent me thousands of new viewers. At the time I was only getting about 40 hits a day too. This was HUGE for me and I wrote an article all about how great it was. The traffic spike died down after a day and I was back to normal but I kept a few new fans.
About a year later when I was trying to drum up new exposure for my Kickstarter campaign I emailed Jerry again to see if he would talk about it AGAIN! I didn’t hear back. It’s not because Jerry doesn’t care anymore, it’s just that he already talked about it on his site and so it would be weird to write an article AGAIN about the same comic. If I would have waited until I had more content and something that mattered, like my Kickstarter campaign, then it would have been a much more successful move. But I already used up my turn with CartoonBrew when I had very little to show for myself. I’m still grateful for Jerry for being the first person to send me a spike in traffic though. But looking back, I should have waited.
At the time I didn’t learn my lesson and I was more concerned about the rush of getting traffic spikes and I submitted my site to Notcot.org a few weeks earlier. For some reason, they put it up on their site and I had huge spike in traffic. Needless to say, I tried submitting it again when it really mattered and I never heard back.
There are tons of other popular sites and blogs that you can submit your site to see if they will feature your work. But just make sure it’s the right time because you probably only get one shot at it. Here are a few I’m aware of:
Email Introduction to Other Popular Webcomics:
Out of excitement, most people do this WAY too soon. Myself included.
Remember that having a popular webcomic is a popular idea. Everyone wants to have one. So popular webcomic artists and writers get tons of email from people just starting up without much to show for themselves. Popular webcomic personalities usually don’t want to hear from you if you threw together 5 pages and started posting last week only to insist on link sharing. They will just ignore your email. So make sure you have something AMAZING and you can prove you are the real deal before you start blasting everyone to see if they will link to you. Even if you are amazing, I wouldn’t ASK for a link. Just introduce yourself and tell them you are a fan of their work. Say you would be honored if they check out your site as well. Maybe even attach one of your best pages to the email so they don’t even have to click on a link to see what your stuff looks like. Remember that popular webcomics usually only link to other comics that they like or people they are friends with, not to every random person who emails them asking to share links.
Also, I’d suggest emailing other webcomic artists or writers that are striving for the same things as you. I tried to contact other artists that are focusing heavily on the artwork. If I admire their art then I wanted to introduce myself and tell them that I admired their work.
If you can become friends with other popular and established webcomics out there then you will probably have the biggest growth in your audience. If someone popular tweets about your site or comic or adds you to their links page (BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO DO IT ON THEIR OWN) then you will constantly see a nice flow of new traffic to your site and it wont take long to build a good following. Aside from advertising, this has been my biggest source of new traffic.
(And just so you know, even though I’m saying to avoid emailing right away, please don’t hesitate to email me even if you are brand spanking new. I might be the only exception to my rule. I love getting emails even from a brand new webcomic because, as you can see, I have a soft spot for helping someone who has a passion for comics but no idea where to start because I was in that spot when I started and it was frustrating. In fact, here’s my email jason(at)remindblog(dot)com. )
Email Journalists and Reviewers
This is a great way to build a professional presence online. Once again, make sure you have something worthy of their attention before you blast away. Reporters need things to report on so they will be happy to interview you or write a review for your book/webcomic/graphic novel if it is worthy of being shared. They will flat out ignore you if it’s not something they think their audience will want to see so be prepared to send out a bunch of emails and only get a percentage who respond. If you can contact the right people looking for your type of webcomic then you will obviously have better success.
Here are some great places to go find Journalist and Reviewers to email:
If you have more to add to this list then please help us build a massive PR list at MakingGraphicNovels.com. This kinda info is hard to come across because PR companies want to keep this stuff to themselves.
Anyway, some of these sites have a page that shows a list of their reporters with their email addresses. Some of them you just need to submit your story and see if they assign anyone to contact you if they are interested in writing something up about you or your comic.
Send out Press Release
This is pretty much the same as above. But this is a little less personal. It seems like you get a smaller percent who respond but it could be just me. I suck at writing a press release anyway so maybe that’s my problem. If you choose to do this then try contacting the people listed above. You can even hire someone to write a press release for you but that costs money so we can hold off on that one until you become a bajillionaire. To be honest though, I prefer to just email people and introduce myself and try to make friends. I still have several Journalists that I keep in contact with and have given me an open invitation for a future interview or review when I have something new to publicise.
Launch a Contest
I never thought this would do much for my comic but every time I launch a contest on reMINDblog.com I am overwhelmed with the positive response. I really believe this is a powerful way to get new subscribers now. But it’s important that you have a small following of committed fans to make it worth it. I also think an important part of making a successful contest is to make an irresistible prise.
My first contest was a pin-up contest to see if anyone would draw a sweet image of my characters. The prize was getting published in the printed version of reMIND. I wasn’t sure if I’d get anyone to take it serious but, boy, was I wrong. I ended up with so many good submissions that it was hard to decide so I launched a vote to help me decide the winner. Better yet, lots of people were blogging and talking about the contest on their sites and posting their submissions on their blogs which only lead more traffic back to me. Then when I asked people to vote for their favorite 3 pin-ups, the artists were asking their friends to come and vote for their submission, bringing in even more eyes for the first time. This whole process of posting the submissions and having fans vote spiked my traffic and subscribers.
The second time I launched a contest, was not too long ago. The publicist for Amulet 4 contacted me to give five Amulet 4 books to my readers. I could decide how to give the books away so I launched a twitter contest. All you had to do was tweet a link to my blog with the hash tag #reMINDamulet. I had over 100 tweets after 2 days and a nice little flow of new visitors checking out my book. It also helped that I said I’d also give away a copy of reMIND too.
It would have been completely free for me as well if I hadn’t offered to give away a copy of reMIND. Obviously there are more ways to approach this if you have a little money to spend to purchase a prize. We can talk about that in the next post though.
As far as other ideas for contests, I’ve thought about launching a contest for someone to design a cool new reMIND shirt. I’ll definitely be having more contests in the future, probably when I start posting new pages to make sure I give my new visitors something to come back for.
Ask for Guest Comics
This was more out of desperation that I decided to ask for guest comics after I finished Volume 1 of reMIND. I knew I would be facing a long period of time until I had new pages ready to post and a friend suggested I try it. I thought I might be able to get a hand full of guest comics to tide me over for a month or two but surprisingly, I had about 4 months worth of content by the end of it. I was also worried that my subscribers and page views would drop off if I wasn’t posting any of my own work during this time but it didn’t. In fact, even thought some of the long term fans of reMIND stopped checking in because they know I was in between books, many new people kept arriving because every new artist was blogging about their guest page for reMIND.
Although I think I overstayed my welcome in this area, asking for guest comics really did sustain me when I needed to replenish my backlog of pages and I know it brought in a bunch of new subscribers. I think doing this for a week or two max, would really be the perfect amount to give you a break and bring in new visitors before pissing off your existing fan base. Just make sure you explain what you are doing and why.
Make a Guest Comic for a Popular Webcomic
One time Ethan from AxeCop put the word out that he needed guest comics for a few weeks and I jumped on it and sent him one that night. Here it is. It has been bringing in new traffic every week since.
I’ve been looking for the right opportunity to do guest comics for other popular comics but it really is hard for me because I take FOREVER to finish a page and I’m already backed up on my own book. If you can do this then do it! It really does pay off and exposes the fans of another webcomic to your work as well and a portion of those people will always come and see what else you have to offer. This is why it’s good to have a big archive before you do this too much. You want to give new fans something to chew on for a few weeks or months.
This reminds me. I was asked to do a few guest pages for other popular webcomics while I was at the Comic-Con and I still need to email these guys to remind them that I’m serious. Being late to respond to a great opportunity is an awesome example of what NOT to do. :(
Fan Art, Guest Art or Guest Posts
If you are a fan of someone’s webcomic then do a fan art and send it to them. Serious. They might just post it on their blog and link back to you. Most of the time people will… I think. I know I do. I love it when I get fan art from anyone and I do my best to post it on my blog whenever I can, links and all. If you want me to link back to you then do this and your chances will be high. I’m pretty sure it will work for others too.
Ask other comics if you can send them some guest art. They might feature it on their site if it’s good enough.
Do you know of another blog or site writing the same kind of articles that you are writing about? Ask if you can write a guest article for them. Common courtesy is to get credited and linked to at the end of the article. Professional bloggers do this ALL the time because it can bring is massive traffic if you become a regular guest author on a popular site.
Make Voting Incentives
I talked about this before on my blog quite a bit at one point. I realised that if I could use a site like TopWebComics.com to get enough people to vote for my comic so that I could get into the top 30 or so then I would constantly be getting a new stream of traffic to my site because I was high on the list. The problem is that it takes additional time every time you post something to save out an image and upload it to your site and then goto TopWebComics and add an incentive that takes effect on a specific date and links to your new secret image. Confused yet? Yeah, it’s just too many steps to take especially when you are working a fulltime job and need to use your free time wisely.
But honestly, if I could, I would do this religiously because it really does increase your traffic if you can get onto the top 30 of TopWebComics.com. (at least when I tried it) If you can get into the top 10 then I’m positive you will have hundreds if not thousands of new visitors a week. Maybe a day!
The problem I discovered is that it takes a pretty good size fan base to get you enough votes to get into the top 10. I estimated that I needed 10,000 unique visitors a day before I could get enough votes to get into the top 10. It’s easy for the popular webcomics, but for everyone else with 100 fans it’s impossible.
So, in the end, I decided to quit spending the time to make incentives until I built up a bigger fan base. But if you have the free time to do it then I suggest giving it a shot. Even if you can get into the top 50 you will see a stream on new visitors each day.
Introduce Yourself at Cons
This one might be better on the other side of the chart because it costs money to go to conventions but I’ll leave it here because it might be a free convention or something. The thing is, I started seeing more webcomics link to me after I meet the artists at convention than ever before. I assume being a nice guy has something to do with it too. In other words, don’t go up to someone and punch them in the face. But seriously, when I started this blog I went to some cons just to walk the floor. I had printed up (on my home printer) a small stack of my cover image and blog info to hand to anyone who asked. All webcomic and small press exhibitors are excited to talk with anyone so I’d just start conversations and eventually I’d tell them that I’m also making a graphic novel and hand them my cheap printed flier. A few people recognised it and it was a great feeling.
I approached a few webcomic artists that I’ve been talking to or commenting on their sites and surprisingly, they remembered who I was after showing them my flier. Within a few weeks of meeting people face to face at conventions, I noticed a jump in links to my webcomic from some of the people I meet even though we had known each other online for a while. It seems like meeting people in person is the key to really winning a link back in a lot of cases. So go out there and be a nice guy!
Make Your Own Forum?
I’m still not convinced that this will bring you new traffic but I’m just adding it to this list because they said to do this in the book Making Webcomics. I just don’t get how making a forum about your webcomic is going to attract new visitors to your comic when the only people who care to join your forum are the fans of your comic already.
I tried approaching it a bit differently by making a forum about a specific subject INSTEAD of my comic. My forum is MakingGraphicNovels.com. Obviously, it’s about making comics. It’s a great little community there and even though it doesn’t bring in new traffic to my site, I have hopes for it in the future if it keeps growing. I love my forum memebers! I just wish I could spend more time there trolling it. (in a good way)
Launch a Kickstarter
This one is crazy. I only had a small audience coming to my site each day when I launched my Kickstarter campaign and by the end of the campaign, I was double the unique visitors a day and it kept growing afterwards. Believe it or not, about half of my backers from Kickstarter had never heard of my comic before seeing it on Kickstarter. The fact that I raised over $12,000 got a lot of people talking and coming to see why. I’m not sure if it was a fluke or just perfect timing but I’m convinced that Kickstarter gave me a big boost in fans.
If you have a bunch of content almost ready to go to print and no money then apply for a kickstarter campaign. This is an amazing new way to raise money and build an audience at the same time.
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We are almost finished filling in our chart now. One more post and I think this series will be wrapped up. If you like any of this then PLEASE post links to this series or Re-Tweet it!
If you missed the first articles in this series then here they are:
Prologue - Growing Your Audience is like Growing a Tree
Part 1 - How to Grow Your Audience if You Have no Money
Part 2 - How to Grow Your Audience if You Have no Money
Part 3 – How to Grow Your Audience if You Have some Money
Please Re-Tweet!
This will be my first year ever at the WonderCon. I’ve never ever been there even as an innocent bystander. But, I took the plunge this time and bought a full booth! Now I just need to figure out how to decorate an entire booth space. This year, it will be held in Anaheim, CA on March 16th – 18th. From what I hear, it’s going to be completely bananas this year with the move to Anaheim. Apparently they sold out of booth space at record speed. I plan on having some new shirts, plushies and I’m even going to try to make some prints this year for conventions. Oh yeah, I’ll have a 94 page trade of an old comic I did back in the day!
Just like WonderCon, I have never ever been to this convention but hear only good things about it. So, again I bought a full booth. A corner booth actually but I’ll be sharing it with some friends. I’m already listed on their Exhibitors page under Coffee Table Comics and my booth number is 1008. I’ll be sure to give you a map to my location before the convention starts so don’t bother memorizing all this… because I know people like memorizing random information just for the joy of it.
