Get out your calendar and start circling dates. It’s time to do a little webcomics planning.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
So you’ve decided to start a webcomic. Or maybe you’re launching a new chapter in your ongoing webcomic. The question eventually arises: What’s the best way to launch? There’s a few things you should keep in mind to maximize this exciting time…
Remember “The Child Who Cried Wolf.” Your followers are only going to put up with a finite amount of “coming soon” messages. I would suggest that one or two weeks is plenty of time for pre-promotion. Longer than that is going to try your readers’ patience.
This is an incredibly fine line to walk. Your objective during this time is to express your excitement about an upcoming event — but not tease the event itself.
What’s the difference? Expressing your excitement doesn’t involve an implicit “go-and-look” share statement. This is a good time to post sketches or teaser images. But you’re not talking about the actual launch yet. Talking about the launch itself does involve an implicit go-and-look statement, and you want to save that for the final posts before the Grand Opening.
This is this biggest rookie mistake that webcomic creators make. They make a Big Noise about a launch — building an impressive amount of buzz around the event — and then, on the Big Day, they open to a single page.
Unless that single page has an extremely powerful emotional hook, you’ve effectively lost all of the momentum you’ve spent so much time building. This is especially true of your single page is ambiguous — like a longshot of a castle or a pair of feet running through mud puddles. There’s no emotional hook in a page like that — and therefore, no reason for a potential reader to come back for the rest of the story.
Instead, consider launching your webcomic with a well-developed hook. If you’re smart, you will have written the story so that hook happens quickly — perhaps even in the first eight pages. But whether it takes eight pages — or eighteen — you should have enough pages available on your site on Launch Day to captivate readers so they want to stick around for the entire story.
In the same way that feature film use trailers to entice moviegoers, you could prepare a trailer for your story. It doesn’t have to be animated — it doesn’t even have to be a video — but it should be created with the goal of whetting your potential readers’ appetites for the ongoing marrative.
Remember: Social media is all about sharing. Give your followers a reason to share your posts. And, let’s face it, unless you have a very large existing following of engaged readers, posting: “My comic just went live!” has extremely limited sharing potential.
Why? Because right now, you’re the only one who cares. You need to give your backers a reason to care. What’s that reason? It’s probably closely related to your Elevator Pitch. In other words, what’s your comic about? What makes it special? Why are people going to fall in love with it? Your messaging should be targeted at those concepts — not something mundane like “I just posted the first page.” Tell your followers why they should care.
Twitter seems to be the latest social-media platform to try to emulate Patreon’s success. Today it unveiled “Super Follows,” a feature that allows Twitter users to charge for content.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Are you worried about “spamming” your Patreon backers? I’ll tell you why it isn’t possible — and we’ll discuss addressing the Impostor Syndrome that leads to such misconceptions.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Lettering is crucially important — especially if you’re trying to write a humor comic. Comedy is about timing, and bad lettering kills timing. So let’s look at a seldom discussed aspect of lettering — line breaks.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Due to Brexit, the United Kingdom has separated from the European Union’s procedure for collection Value Added Taxes (VAT) for items shipped into the country. It was a move that sent a ripple of confusion throughout independent artists who regularly shipped merchandise to the UK.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
It’s an inevitable part of getting better at comics. You look back on your earlier work and cringe. (And the better you’ve gotten, the more intense your regret!) Then, perhaps as you’re considering your first printed collection, the thought crosses your mind: “Maybe I should re-do these…”
You shouldn’t. I’ll tell you why.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.It’s one of the most frustrating parts of promoting a Kickstarter — communicating that long URL. Sure, you’re provided a truncated version. But have you ever tried to point podcast listeners to http://kck.st/2HQTXbr? Luckily, there’s a better way.
When I launched my Kickstarter, I bought the domain newevilbook.com. It’s short, it’s descriptive, and it’s easy to remember. Most domain registrars offer free redirects, so it was quite simple to redirect the domain to my Kickstarter page.
Then, whenever I promoted my Kickstarter campaign on social media, I used that URL. I used it on my website. And I used it on podcast appearances.
As an added benefit, when this campaign closes and the next one launches, I’ll update the redirect, and any old promotion that someone stumbles across will lead them to the new project.
Patreon is a great way to monetize your work on the Web, but it’s inescapable — if you want paying backers, you’ve got to be prepared to make it worth their while. And that means posting often — including exclusive content. But sometimes it’s hard to know what to post when you’re putting everything you’ve got into simply doing your comic. So, what can you post when you’re out of ideas (and time)? Buckle up. I’ve got 15 types of posts that are proven winners — and most of them take very little extra time.
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Loading ...