• Home
  • Contact
  • FAQs
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • Member Benefits
    • How To Post an Article or News Item
    • How to Post a Webcomic on the List
    • How to Post a Comic
    • Terms of Service
  • Forums
  • WebComics List
  • Benefits
    • Print Vendors: Get multiple quotes
    • Banner stand: Discount
    • Consultation discount
    • “How To Make Webcomics” book: discount
    • “Webcomics Handbook”: discount
    • ALL benefits
  • My Account
    • Welcome
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • My Subscription
    • Join us!
  • Account
  • Membership List
Twitter Email RSS

Webcomics.com

How To Make WebComics

Webcomics Handbook

‹ Facebook announces subscription-only news Facebook — To Link or Not to Link ›

How to do a reader survey

Reader surveys are an excellent way to get a better feel for your audience. Does your comic skew towards female reader? Do they tend to be younger or older? What are their other interests? would they support a Kickstarter for a new book? What rewards would make them Patreon backers?

In fact, we’ve posted a helpful DIY tutorial so you can ask all of the questions you need to ask — without paying for a potentially-expensive service like SurveyMonkey.

But what if you’re not getting a very healthy response from your readers? Should you seek out additional respondents? Advertise for more input? Solicit other cartoonists?

Be very careful, your quest for more information could result in your getting very, very bad information. And that’s downright dangerous. Here’s why…

First off, no news is bad news

If you feel the need to solicit feedback — beyond the readers of your comic — because you’re simply not getting a high volume of responses from your readers, then you’re already getting all the information you need about your comic.

And it spells out some pretty grim news.

You have a very small readership and/or those readers aren’t very emotionally invested in your comic.

Your work is cut out for you. You need to figure out why your comic isn’t generating more traffic and/or more-invested fans. Here’s a good place to start.

Reader outreach is GOOD

To make sure there’s no confusion, you should definitely be promoting your survey in all of the places your readers are likely to find it. These places include your website and your social-media feeds. Promote in these places early and often.

Non-reader outreach is BAD

Recently, I saw a webcartoonist post a reader-survey solicitation on a social-media group for webcartoonists. After general demographics, the reader survey boiled down to one important question: “Would you support a Kickstarter campaign for a book?”

Why would you solicit feedback from a bunch of people who (likely) have not read your comic — or, at best, took a cursory glance at your site? It seems to me like this would be a great way to get incredibly misleading information.

Their response was that getting additional sources of information would yield a wider range of views — and that  the views of fellow creators would be particularly useful. Wrong answer. I tried to explain why:

That is, of course, your choice. But you’re generating useless information.

Take gender, for example. It would be very useful to know if your comic skews towards one gender over the other. But, in asking us [fellow webcartoonists] to participate, you’re not going to get an accurate sample. [Because WE are not your readers.] Worse yet, if you were to actually use the data to base important decisions on, you could be leading yourself astray.

The Kickstarter question is even more problematic. When a reader says they would back a Kickstarter, it’s a potential pledge. When a colleague says they would back a Kickstarter, it’s purely theoretical — “I would back it if I were a reader… which I’m not.”

And that could lead you towards a Kickstarter campaign doomed from Step One.

Bottom Line: You’re not doing yourself any favors.

The cartoonist insisted that since this was just one part of a larger information-gathering endeavor (yeah, right), that there was no problem introducing non-reader input into a reader survey.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it think.

Bottom Line

I left the matter there because — honestly, I’m not invested in whether that comic succeeds or fails. I feel responsible for offering some information when I see someone doing something that’s liable to screw them up, but I’m not responsible for saving them from themselves.

However, I am responsible to share information here with you — and to make certain that you’re able to use that information to the best of your abilities.

To that end, let’s make it perfectly clear:

  • Reader surveys are for readers, and only for readers
  • Soliciting non-reader input skews your data — dangerously so
  • There’s only one reason I can think of for soliciting non-reader data, and that’s if your reader-response has been weak.
  • If that’s the case, you already have all the data you need.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
by Brad Guigar on July 21, 2017
Posted In: Business, Community
Comments available to logged in users only.



Recent comments

  • hpkomic on Managing commissions
  • Brad Guigar on Tweet and sour
  • Kulanah on Tweet and sour
  • Kulanah on Tweet and sour
  • Andrew Fraser on Tweet and sour

Search



Webcomics.com Poll

I design my comic specifically for smartphones and digital tablets.

  • Disagree (52%, 178 Votes)
  • Agree (48%, 165 Votes)

Total Voters: 343

Loading ... Loading ...
  • Polls Archive

Categories

  • Archive Dive
  • Articles
    • Advertising
    • Art
    • Business
    • Community
    • Conventions
    • Creativity
    • Crowdfunding
    • Digital publishing
    • Image prep
    • Lettering
    • Marketing / Social Media
    • Merchandise
    • Print publishing
    • Tech
    • Web site
      • Web Site Design
    • Writing
  • ComicLab
  • Edited and Ready
  • Events
  • Guest
  • Hot Seat critiques
  • Information
  • Interviews
  • Livestream Chat
  • Mail Bag
  • Member Benefits
  • Promos
  • Site News
  • Surviving Creativity
  • To-Do List
  • Uncategorized
  • Video
  • Webcomics Confidential
  • Webcomics Weekly
  • Webcomics.com Poll

Tags

ad revenue AdSense advertising Comic Easel comments composition contract copyright creativity exercise credit cards Crowdfunding digital lettering digital publishing Facebook holiday Humor IP KDP Kickstarter Kindle legal lettering line weight Longform comics Manga Studio merchandise NCS panels Patreon Promotion PulsePoint readers revenue SEO shipping social media Square taxes trademark Twitter typography Web design word balloons WordPress writing

Special Features

Just now, in the forum…

  • Navigation advice
  • Mixing First and Third Person Captions
  • Help with Toocheke
  • Label Printer for shipping
  • Patreon Merch

Recent Posts

  • Pitfalls of paid advertising
  • ComicLab Ep 274 — Nobody does thumbnails
  • “Where should I post my comic?”
  • Using “house ads” to improve your revenue
  • Multi-channel publishing

Recent Replies

  • Brad Guigar on Navigation advice
  • Brad Guigar on Mixing First and Third Person Captions
  • Brad Guigar on Help with Toocheke
  • Brad Guigar on Label Printer for shipping
  • Andrew Fraser on Label Printer for shipping

Recent Topics

  • Navigation advice by KevinWayneW
  • Mixing First and Third Person Captions by jpactor
  • Help with Toocheke by Andrew Fraser
  • Label Printer for shipping by Andrew Fraser
  • Patreon Merch by Jaycee Knight

Recent Comments

  • hpkomic on Managing commissions
  • Brad Guigar on Tweet and sour
  • Kulanah on Tweet and sour
  • Kulanah on Tweet and sour
  • Andrew Fraser on Tweet and sour
  • My Subscription
  • Store
  • Terms of Service
  • Account
  • Membership List

©2007-2023 Webcomics.com | Powered by WordPress with ComicPress | Subscribe: RSS | Back to Top ↑