Cartoons updated every Monday - blog updated occasionally. Latest Cartoon.
This is an ongoing series where I’ll track my progress starting a webcomic, partly because I think it’ll be interesting to anyone thinking of starting one and partly because it’ll give me a kick in the pants if one of the monthly updates seems slim on the progress front.
Webcomic Analytics
If you haven’t already, go get a Google Analytics account. It’s indispensable if you want to know how many visitors are coming to your site, where they’re coming from and etc.
Beginning Traffic
Lately traffic is probably averaging about 50 visitors a day which is pretty good considering I can’t really try to spread the word yet. It’s mainly being driven by StumbleUpon traffic which is pretty good for cartoon websites. But when you have less than 20 cartoons it’s hard to get any kind of traction. I’m even been avoiding telling people I know about the strip.
Damn I just want to get links in web comic directories and spam my friends but I… must… be… patient.
I also managed to get a t-shirt store up and running about half way through the month so at least there is a chance for breaking even at some point, hopefully sometime this year. I sold a t-shirt this month which, considering my traffic levels, is one more than I thought I would. Whoever you are, I dedicate this beer to you. Cheers!
Webcomic T-shirt Store
I decided to use Spreadshirt as my t-shirt printer since they have an option for an non-iron t-shirt printing process. They use flex printing which is a very durable and high quality process. I figured if I’m going to sell t-shirts to people, I might as well make sure they don’t look terrible after a few washes.
I will at some point have to increase the number of designs available in the store and maybe make it a little more friendly with more model pics, etc but for now I’ll wait until I get some traffic. Right now it’s important to concentrate on the cartoons.
Drawing and Writing
After quite a long hiatus from doing any drawing at all, my hand is starting to warm up and the style is starting to become a little more consistent. And I really like the writing for the gags in the upcoming February cartoons.
I might have to move to twice a week at some point to get a consistent audience going but for now I’m going to stay at once a week maintaining an inventory of 8 or more unproduced cartoons in my arsenal.
Comedy Bits on twitter
I’m having fun dumping off little bits of comedy on twitter. It’s much more fun than I thought. I have 2 followers which is kinda neat considering I have no idea how to promote the thing at all. And I breached the all important “MORE” barrier so I am now an official twitterer. Go check out my comedy on twitter if you haven’t already.
Alexa Webcomic Ranking
I’ve made it to about 2 million from infinity in the Alexa website ranking which, if you consider the distance from infinity, is a lot of progress.
What does it mean? Not much really, I could just as easily be ranked 5 million next month. The Alexa rankings are notorious skewered because stats are just derived from people who have the Alexa toolbar but I find them good as a general barometer of how you’re doing versus some of the more popular strips.
The way I’m looking at is, if you make it so your site is ranked somewhere between 200,000 and 300,00 then you’re definitely on the right track. You have a respectable audience and you probably make enough money to pay for hosting and maybe a few beers.
The next goal after that is to break the 100,000 barrier. Once you get listed below 100,000 then you have a pretty good size audience. That’s my goal… the 100,000 barrier. I’m hoping to do it within a year which might be a little unrealistic but it’s definitely where I would like to be.
For now let’s see how fast we can get sub 300,000. I’m hoping to get in that range within 6 months.
That’s about it, so far it’s been a blast.
General Semichaotic Info | January 31st, 2010
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