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Here’s my second installment in my progress in running a new webcomic.
Traffic
Traffic is more or less the same as last month, perhaps a little build-up but not much. Somewhere around 50 visitors a day, more during new cartoon updates but nothing to get excited about as of yet.
It’s interesting to see what sites send you traffic and how much. I’m taking it slow but I will have to move up to twice a week at one point in time if I want to snag more regular visitors. But not now, for now it’s going to stay slow and steady.
Out of the social media gang Stumbleupon, and Reddit are delivering the best traffic boosts. Facebook has started to show up on the traffic stats but not in any appreciable way.
Twitter is doing well, mainly because I have an active twitter account and so as I get more people following my twitter account I get more twitter peeps checking out the cartoons when I announce them. I would recommend twitter for webcomics, it’s a very good way to get readers.
Sometime soon I’ll write a Twitter Primer for Webcomics. Yes it’s true, twitter is not necessarily about what you had for lunch, you can use it in other ways so stop making that face.
Webcomic T-shirt Sales
Last month I sold one t-shirt and this month I sold two – which is actually a downturn in sales since I know both purchasers. But I’m going to call it a draw.
I should revamp the store so it’s more consumer friendly with more products but it’s really a tertiary goal. I’m trying to concentrate on making cartoons and figuring out how to get people to know they even exist. Without achieving these, especially the second goal, t-shirts are a moot point.
Drawing and Writing
After a long hiatus from drawing, I feel like my hand is starting to warm up but still not as loose as I would like. No complaints though, I’ve liked some of the recent panels.
The writing is either quite torturous or extremely easy. Some weeks a great joke instantly flashes in my head, some weeks I’m just dry like a martini in the desert. I know I could draw panels every day but the writing doesn’t always come so easy. But all in all the more I write, the easier it becomes to write without having to wait for my muse to show-up.
Writing short bits of comedy on twitter is definitely helping the writing process. I’m quite happy with the last few cartoons.
Alexa Ranking
I’m under the two million mark but that’s neither here nor there. I think the bulk of my ascent into this Alexa rank was because of some good stumbleupon traffic. I don’t have any empirical data to back it up but I think there’s enough of an overlap between SU users and Alexa users to affect your rank.
Once you get under 200,000 or so you’re probably on your way to making some kind of impact. I only have about 13 cartoons so far… so that goal is still a little ways away for me.
Amazon S3
I can’t recall my exact bill for the last 2 months but it was below twenty five cents. As opposed to a cartoon like the Oatmeal, where his bill runs about two grand a month (Read it on Reddit). That there is one darn scary bill to pay. Go pay him a visit if you haven’t already, pretty damn funny stuff.
This one of the few times in life where I would be ecstatic if a bill went up to twenty or thirty dollar a month.
Project Wonderful
I started doing some advertising using Project Wonderful. It’s pretty good in that you can get your banners on other cartoonists sites so generally the people who click them are interested in webcomics. Traffic is usually inexpensive; around the 10 cent range. I’m not using it too heavily – just a few visitors a day but it seems to have helped a bit. Once I have more than 20 or so cartoons I’ll probably run a little campaign through Project Wonderful.
For now, it’s just a nice little inexpensive boost to traffic.
Conclusion
The TLDR conclusion is traffic went up a bit, I have more cartoons but progress is slow.
Not particularly worried, just impatient as usual since I’m figuring it probably takes a year or so to get some kind of regular audience. Unless of course, you have a real dynamite angle that helps you get the word out and talent that keeps them there once they arrive.
Yep, I’m talking about AxeCop. Drawn by a 29 year old but written by his 5 year old brother. Yes, it’s as fun as it sounds.
Alright, later people. Be good.
General Semichaotic Info | March 7th, 2010
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