Patreon Hot Seat — Bardsworth
This is the first of a series of Hot Seat critiques in which we’ll be discussing members’ Patreon outreach. First up…
Bardsworth
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This is the first of a series of Hot Seat critiques in which we’ll be discussing members’ Patreon outreach. First up…
The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
Patreon’s header image gets sliced and diced more than Wolverine’s keyboard. It gets re-sized depending on the monitor-resolution of the person visiting your Patreon page, and it gets cropped ruthlessly when you post a link to your page from Facebook or Twitter.
When Patreon updated its site layout, it introduced some dead zones into the header. And, to be honest, Twitter has been showing the header preview more similar to Facebook’s presentation. So, an update has been long overdue.
So here’s an updated Photoshop template to help you make the most of your header.
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It sounds like a weird webcomics riddle, doesn’t it? “When is a complaint actually a compliment?” After all, as webcartoonists, we’ve always prided ourselves one the granular level of interaction that we maintain with our readers. Both the original “How To Make Webcomics” book and the updated version, “The Webcomics Handbook” devoted an entire chapter to it. One could argue that it’s a definitive feature of webcomics.
So, it stands to reason that when readers complain, we webcartoonists become very concerned.
And we do — we should.
Except when we shouldn’t.
Here’s what you need to understand…
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I see this advice getting passed around on Facebook quite frequently: “If you include a link to your website, the Facebook algorithm will kill your post.” Let’s talk about how accurate this advice is — and some Best Practices for promoting on Facebook.
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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…
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.
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.
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.
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:
Facebook is announcing a new initiative — The Street — which will offer news on a subscription-only basis. Via Reuters:
(Reuters) – Facebook Inc plans to launch a subscription-based news product, and will begin initial tests in October, TheStreet reported on Tuesday, citing the social media company’s news partnerships head Campbell Brown at a conference.
The feature is likely to allow publishers to create a paywall on Facebook’s Instant Articles and guide readers to a publisher’s home page to opt for a digital subscription, according to TheStreet report.
This follows a trend that I’ve been talking about here on Webcomics.com for years. As ad-blockers continue to constrict passive revenue, Web publishers will have to turn to more active-revenue means. That means more subscriptions and more crowdfunding.
So, the question is… have you prepared for this — and if not, what do you need to do to be prepared?
I have some thoughts.
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I’d like to do another critique series that focuses on Patreon campaigns. If you were a participant in the previous Patreon Hot Seat, you are disqualified from being part of this one. If you’d like to have your Patreon campaign critiqued, please enter the following information in the Comments…
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Merry Christmas — and Happy New Year!
Set down the sunblock, and step away from the pool. It’s time to start planning for December and January.
I know it’s hard to get into the spirit, but this is the time to start working on merchandise for the holiday shopping season. In recent years, webcartoonists have offered an increasing compliment of holiday goodies that have ranged from specialty T-shirts and mugs to holiday-themed greeting cards. And let’s not forget to add calendars to that list. Those will start appearing in stores by November — at the latest!
So, let’s take a closer look at some of those specialty products, and how we can start working now to be ready to compete when the snow falls.
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Recently, I saw a webcartoonist asking for advice on convention banners. It’s a deceptively tricky topic — and it’s something I see done poorly at con after con.
Before you shell out your hard-earned dough on another convention banner that doesn’t work, take a little friendly advice:
The primary purpose of a convention banner is to attract attention to your table. Therefore, you need to get everything as high as possible. Putting important information at the bottom of your banner is a mistake — especially if the banner is going to be placed on the floor behind your table. Think about it. No one sees anything below the middle of a vertical banner from the aisle.
For the same reason, any type that’s not readable from about 20 ft away is too small. Make that type big!
And here’s one that has become even more important as webcomics have grown — do you promote the comic or promote the creator? There are pros and cons either way. But make your choice consistent. If the banner promotes the creator at the very top, be sure that the listing in the program matches. After 16 years of conventions, I can’t tell you how many problems I’ve caused for myself by bringing my “Evil Inc” banner to a con that I’m listed in the program as “Brad Guigar.”
You’d think I’d learn…
Q.: The time it takes me to draw, ink, and color a single comic is usually between 3-6 hours, am I going too slow? I’d like to be able to do more comics per week, but I work full time and I want my comics to stand out from the stick figure, copy and paste comics I come across.
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