To those of you who are still reading reMIND every week, I thank you. I know it's sometimes hard to adjust to changing styles and strange story arcs that seem completely unrelated to the adventure you thought you were having. But I guarantee this story all ties together and I also guarantee that every chapter will lead you in a new direction and hopefully keep you on your toes more then the average American sitcom. 

I'm not sure what new to write this week. I have been chugging away at the coloring of Chapter 3. There are still a few pages of Chapter 2 that I need to tie up but can't get myself to do yet. I've been working on a T-shirt design as well. I'm clueless at shirt designs so it's proving to be quite a challenge. I can't show anything yet because it would be a major spoiler.  Sorry.  

Thanks to everyone who joined the mailing list. It's been off to a slow start though. I found out that I need to put my address on every email I send out to comply with anti spam regulations. This makes my wife and I a bit nervous so I need to get a P.O. Box before I start sending mass emails. This might push back my first official newsletter but it will happen soon.

I also want to throw out an idea to see if anyone would be interested. What if I made prints of specific spreads as incentives for donations? I noticed this webcomic does it every month. For instance, I could have a print of spread 10 for $20 donations for the month of April. May would be a different spread. Would anyone be interested if I start offering something like this? It could help me pay for printing costs of the hardcover book and give you some limited and signed prints at the same time.

Please let me know your thoughts and if I have any takers! Going once, going twice…

Oh yeah…Please vote for reMIND here!

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So as you might remember from last weeks post, I will start Chapter 2 next Monday to make time for a good updating of all the pages in Chapter 1. I've replaced all the pages with their new improved ones. The main thing you will notice is the new word balloons and word balloon colors being consistent now. I also replaced most of the sound effects. Click through the pages if you don't mind and tell me what you think. You might have to refresh them to get them to update.

More text below.

Tons of things to share this week:

I also started a mailing list right under the subscribe button. This may look like a mailing list but it is really just a Feedburner email service. Now you can easily get reMIND updates delivered right to your inbox. This is the way I like to subscribe to my favorite websites.(as long as they don't update 40 times a day) I seem to forget what I found 2 days ago online even if I really liked it. If I find a new artist I love, I always look for a method of getting their new posts into my mail box instead of trying to remember to look for it again online. Plus I'm trying to keep reMINDblog filled with useful information so I hope this option is appreciated. If anyone is interested in how I set up a mailing list in feedburner then give me a shout.

I have officially put my foot in my mouth. A while back I wrote about Top-List-Sites for Webcomics and bagged on many of them. One of the sites I bagged on was BelfryComics.net saying it just looked to outdated to look into further. In retrospect, I noticed it was the only site I really didn't study much. I just assumed it couldn't be useful for whatever reason at the time. Well, starting last Sunday I noticed a few hits were coming from that site so I looked into it more. Turns out someone wrote a description for reMIND (and a good one at that) and listed it on their site. By the end of the day I had 81 unique visits from the Belfry alone being my number 1 top refferral site that day. Monday I got another 77. Tuesday I got 41. Wednesday 112. Thursday another 81. Okay, okay, so this is turning out to be the best Webcomic directory I've been apart of without doing any advertising at all. I admit, I tried a little advertising on Wednesday for a few hours which helped but over all I am really blown away with the traffic from that place. I'm going to create a few half banners and run them for a week or so just to see how well that works. I'll let you know the results.

So in return for the awesome traffic, I will update my Top-List-Sites article to reflect my new opinion and findings (in a few days). TheBelfry.net has officially moved to number 2 on my list right uner TopWebComics.com (when I update it).

In addition to sending traffic my way I also found a beautifully drawn and colored comic there that is turning out to be my new favorite visually. I haven't read it yet because I usually never read webcomics but if I keep going back to look at the art then I might just give it a shot. It's called Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name. Check it out if you love good art, page design and coloring with textures. Here's an image from her site:

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(Ultimate geek-out warning!)

So I want to end this all by being a total geek. I usually don't get the chance to geek out now that I'm in my mid 30's (I really don't know what that means) but every now and then something happens that brings me back to my geek out roots. (I don't know what that means either)

So there I am at work just minding my own business about to go to lunch when I decide to check my email. I had a nice fresh new unread email in my inbox and as I was about to click on it I noticed something strange. It said it was sent from Sam Kieth. You know, THE Sam Kieth who drew the Maxx and helped start Image comics and only has one of the coolest styles in the comic book world. He's one of my biggest inspirations to this day. In fact the ONLY pamphlet style comic books I bought in the last 10 years are his Scratch books by DC. I usually wait for everything to become a trade before buying it but his stuff is just so awesome that I couldn't resist.

Anyway, he said he came across my stuff and like it. I couldn't work or think straight for the rest of the day. Having one of your heros contact you and say they appreciate what you are doing is the best feeling ever. Thank you again Sam! I hope you don't mind me mentioning this.

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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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