"What Do I Have To Lose?"

In talking about a proposed micropayment system, a member made the following remark:

If I've got nothing to lose and a few bucks to gain, why not?

It's an excellent question. In fact, it's representative a thought-process that leads many of us to make a significant number of decisions about our online businesses. Let's face it: Most of our daily decisions are "nothing To Lose" decisions.

It deserves a thoughtful reply. So I'm pulling the conversation out front with a Site Post because I think there's a side-issue here that could stand some deeper exploration.

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Banner Ad Hot Seat: Frumps and Zombie Roomie

This is the last of a series of Hot Seat critiques of banner ads. These will take the same format of all of the Hot Seat critiques. I will kick off the discussion with some of my thoughts and then open the conversation up to the members.

Please check out this post about banner advertising to get an idea of my personal philosophy on banner advertising.

As always, links are in the headers.

Frumps

Zombie Roomie

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Digital Downloads as Convention Merchandise: A Quest?

We've had an excellent discussion about selling digital downloads at conventions. And member Tim Gibson shared an excellent technique for doing so in the Private Forum.

I wanted to share my experience -- and especially my conversation with a musician during the convention -- in hopes of furthering the discussion on the issue.

In a nutshell: I offered a download card featuring the latest digital comic for 99¢. Using Tim's method, I created a 100% discount code for that issue and printed it out on a sticker label that I pasted on the back of the card.

It was featured prominently at my table -- directly in front of me.

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Comic-convention exhibitor alert

There's something going on in comic conventions that I want you to be aware of.

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Friday Archive Dive: Typography and word balloons

Today's Archive Dive is a favorite guest post of mine. It's from May 30, when Josh Shaffer shared some of hisexpertise on typography.

Today's topic has been generously submitted by Josh Shaffer. who also shared his technique for creating word balloons using Photoshop with us a while back.

A lot of people make webcomics because they have a background and a love of drawing, but very few have any actual design background or experience. Normally this really wouldn’t matter, but it tends to make the most pronounced and noticeable impact when it comes to computer lettering.

Some cartoonist do letter by hand, and it’s a wonderful look that I wish I had the patience and capability to pull off.

But I don’t.

And by the looks of things, neither do most online cartoonists. When I look around I see that a vast vast majority of cartoonists choose to letter their comics digitally. And why not? It’s faster, cleaner and infinitely easier to edit.

Read the entire post and comment there.