Last Res0rt at the Webcomics Collage!

Let's try something interesting.

Last Res0rt has just attached itself to the WebComics Collage; if you've got a comic, give the man a 40x40 PNG, JPG, or GIF (non-animated), and you get included on the page for a year, free. He DOES want money after that point... but for a year you can sign up free for now, see how a year on the collage impacts whatever site analytics you use, and decide later if it's worth it. ($3/year should be plenty cheap if it's successful!) EDIT: It's free for all time now! No pressure!

So go ahead; sign up soon and you'll get in on one of the first few rows, which I suspect will be valuable space if this takes off.

The One Lesson Every Webcomic Creator Must Learn

First off, a confession: Webcomics make me sick.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I like having a webcomic, drawing a webcomic, starting a fandom for it, bringing my characters to life . . . so in actuality, my webcomic keeps me healthy. It's the way other people treat their webcomics that makes me sick, makes me want to stop reading, makes me furious for ever liking their comic to begin with... and believe it or not, it makes me even MORE upset than the average reader of such a comic, because it makes my job that much more difficult.

So, please, if you have a comic . . . for my sake and everyone else's, learn this:

Respect.
Your.
Readers.

This is not optional. If you want to stand ANY chance of going anywhere in webcomics -- and I don't care if anywhere is becoming DC/Marvel's lapdog, or printing your book, or even just making a little money on the side -- you need to learn this.

Ask any fan of webcomics, and they all have a story about how they were "burned" by less scrupulous artists: either their idols were a little too rude to a fan or three at a convention, online drama erupted that somehow managed to become part of the folklore of the site, they slowed down to the point nobody knew when the story was going to pick up again, or even (God Forbid!) they stopped working on the comic just before the story was about to end.

Yes, creating content about your stories, crafting beautiful panels and imagery, organizing your website for appropriate content . . . this is all important, perhaps even necessary. In spite of this, so many people seem to forget that starting a comic (especially one that contains a story) is supposed to be a general contract between an artist that they will do what they can to tell the story, and in turn readers will reward the artist for this with patronage and profits. Stop the story before it's done (or before you can at least bring it to a satisfying conclusion), you break the contract. Give people what they wanted all along, and you'll be a hero for it.

Difficult? Sure . . . but at the same time, for every person who makes a great-looking comic they can't continue, there's an artist struggling against this stereotype that webcomics are not "serious" ventures -- that they're made to be abandoned as soon as the artist lands a real job / turns sixteen / loses their virginity. I can't tell you how many times people have told me they're so shocked that a once-a-week comic could actually captivate and keep them panting for the next page just like a daily comic . . .

. . . and this is without including the fact my father told me over lunch at MomoCon how impressed he was with what I was doing, since most comics that fail tend to crap out around the hundred-strip point.

Yes, I know I'm only up to 80 pages right now, but it only underscores how ridiculously low the bar is set for webcomics.

(EDIT: As of July 8, 2008, I'm about to reach the hundred-strip point, and I'm starting to see WHY folks crap out. Yeesh.)

It's not my fault that people have these expectations about webcomics and are shocked to find a comic where, somehow, it manages to do simple things like help the reader find all the information they want, updates when it says it does, and god forbid, doesn't insult the reader's intelligence. And as much as I would be justified naming a few especially bad examples of this, even among popular, "successful" webcomics . . . if there's one thing I actually find relevant from reading about people like Judith Butler in class, it's that expectations like this come from only one thing: sedimentation.

(And yes, I'm as shocked as you are that I somehow managed to relate a feminist philosopher to a rant about webcomics. My apologies. I'll try harder in the future not to drag my schoolwork into the blog.)

One thing stacks on top of everything else and continues ad infinitum until it becomes accepted. Every Dead Piro Day, every Guest Comic, every Filler update, every "I swear I'll update in a few weeks!" post . . . it all adds up to this expectation that webcomics are unreliable, and damn it, sooner or later everyone decides this is just how webcomics work.

The only way to fix it is to start becoming reliable, and realizing that if you expect to survive off the generosity of others, you damn well better give them something for it. Maybe not necessarily what they want (though it helps), but at least what you say you'll give 'em. Of course, there's more than reliability involved, but it's far and away the most obvious show of respect. The next trick, of course, is how to make it clear to new readers that you have their best interests at heart too.

If you're willing to do what you can to help, I don't have all the answers up yet (though here are some steps in the right direction), but that's easily fixed with a little bit of time... and a subscription to the RSS feed, if you're not already on it.

You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your readers. You don't have to put them before your own health or anything crazy; but you do have to remember that they're here for you because you offer them something special.

Don't blow it.

The Secret to Making People Actually READ your Webcomic.

You asked for it -- or at least searched for it! Since so many folk are (at least according to Google) searching for how to get people to read webcomics, who am I to argue? (Especially since writing articles based around webcomics is far more enjoyable than just writing about bloggers, no matter how similar they seem.)

There's a lot of different things people like in webcomics, if only because there are so many different types of webcomics. Make sure you at least have the basics down, though:

• Consistent Updates.
  New readers may be hooked, but if your comic's not updated regularly (or worse, defunct), they won't know when to return to get more. Quantity is one thing, but a properly addicted reader will want their regular fix.
  
• Some way to explain 'gaps' and inconsistencies.
  Confused readers don't read further. This can be countered with an especially large archive, as people start to see that the quality of the story and the art improves, but when you're starting out, the best way to counter this is with Archive Enhancements like cast pages, artist's commentary (especially on early pages), and even frequently asked questions.
  
• Enough archive to get them hooked.
  The minimum archive you need depends on the story you're trying to tell -- and admittedly in my case, is something that needs to be worked on pronto. 20-30 pages is sort of a bare minimum, and it's only when you start getting into the hundreds of pages that you have enough pages to be immersible. (and yes, I know Last Resort isn't there yet. It should be pretty close by the end of the year though.)
  
• Forums (or at least some clue they're not shouting into the void)
  Again, don't do this until you have something resembling a following already, but even a pair of die-hard fans can be enough to start a following. People attract more people, simply put.
• A halfway decent comic to begin with.
  Don't think good writing makes up for bad art, or vice versa. If you're not putting whatever effort you've got into this, it's not going to make up for itself, no matter how many strips, cast pages, or whatever else you've got. Yes, good writing can counter minimalist art. Not bad, minimalist. If you don't know the difference, your writing's not going to be good enough to make a difference.

And most importantly: Your webcomic (and its website!) is its own best advertisement. Take a good hard look at what your comic says about itself and about what you're willing to do for it. Get a friend to help redesign it if you need to. Switch hosting, lose the crappy ads, get better ads, do what you need to, but make it look like you actually take pride in what you do. You need to make sure you have the foundations laid down before you can expect a fandom to build off of it, after all.

Of course, these are only the basics... you'll want to subscribe to the rss feed to make sure you don't miss all the good tips that have to follow after this. Or maybe you want to go ahead and tell me if I missed one I need to include for later?

Positioning Statements - Target or Die!

Comics need readers. Readers are brought in by, among other things, good advertising. This tends to require that the makers of those comics make their own advertising, and just like there are bad webcomics, there can be worse advertising for these comics. Fortunately, good advertising doesn't require big focus groups and research (at least not all the time) -- sometimes you can get away with using a tiny guideline called a positioning statement.

Positioning Statements are little blurbs of text that sound fairly useless at first -- perhaps even amazingly obvious -- but they allow you to understand who your audience is, what makes your stuff stand out, and if you're really struggling to come up with a good ad to use, this can help give you a bellwether to gauge its effectiveness by. (At this point it should go without saying that if you're paying for space on Project Wonderful without having something like this, you're probably wasting money on an ineffective ad!) For something that your average reader will probably never see, it's still incredibly important to have.

It may take a little bit of time to write the statement itself, but they all tend to follow the same sort of structure. This site has a straightforward plug-and-play version that you can go and tweak for your own purposes:

For [whoever's cash/attention we're after] that wants [some quality people demand], [Our Product/Service/Brand] is a [product category] that has [a benefit tied to the quality people demand].

Unlike [whoever we're trying to grind underfoot], [Our Product/Service/Brand] has [this trait that makes us better than them].

Now, you can rewrite that statement to sound a little less aggressive, but the idea is there. What you fill in the blanks with says a LOT about what you need to do. Heck, just to show that I have half a clue what writing such a statement will do, let's try it out with our favorite guinea pig, Last Resort:

For science fantasy enthusiasts who love engrossing stories of crime and redemption, Last Resort is a webcomic that has a rich galaxy of characters, excellent writing, and action-packed excitement. Unlike most other webcomics, Last Resort makes sure to update on time every week, so you never show up to find disappointing 'filler'.

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Well guess what we just did:

• We now know who to aim our sights on: Sci-fi/Fantasy folk (i.e. Dragon*Con Fodder)
  
• We also know what to hype in the comic:
  
  • High-Quality Writing / Storytelling
    
  • Reliability in Updates
    
• We can put those two together to make better targeted ads!
  

See? Mad Libs can be educational after all! The other things we mentioned (like our competition) are useful to know, but really, that's just so we know who to compare our egos against. Simply naming competition isn't good enough unless you know what makes you different from them; and if you can't come up with a good reason why what you're doing is different from everyone else's, there's no reason for anyone else to stop using their product to invest time, energy, and money into yours.

And yes, even when that product is a 'free' webcomic, people's attention spans are still valuable enough to them that if they're already reading 20+ webcomics a day, there's a good chance they might not have time for yours. If it has a 100+ strip archive that people need to read before they can understand what's going on, they might be even more hesitant because reading that archive is an investment of time.

Targeting solves a lot of problems; most people (artists, especially) get caught up in the product, wondering why nobody's noticing them on a giant website like DeviantArt or DrunkDuck, when in fact that's exactly why they're not getting noticed; the potential number of people to reach is just too big to be effective. With targeting, however, you can take a website like Project Wonderful and start running campaigns on very specific websites that have certain keywords, so you waste less money on ineffective advertising.

Still curious about how to make better advertising? Subscribing to the RSS feed will make sure you don't miss the next useful article. If you're having trouble coming up with a good statement, how about leaving a comment with your own ideas and attempts?

Buffer Building - it's not just for Webcomics Anymore

Buffers are important for comics -- they keep the artist (i.e. me) from going insane with work, while making sure readers get their fix exactly when they want it. It takes a lot of effort sometimes to make sure I have a big enough buffer, though; I worked overtime during the winter to make sure that I had enough comics available for the next semester of college so I could focus on college without stressing out over the comics.

While I've not written an article about just building buffers (I'll probably get to it soon, I'm sure) they're just as important for blogs as well. Why?

• Sometimes you'll have an incomplete post -- something that isn't fully fleshed out yet, but is too good to put down.
• Your muse just went into overdrive and you're just bursting with ideas, but you know you can't just post them all at once or else you'll pass up on the benefits of posting all those things, because posting too often in a single day just makes you look desperate.
  
• It's the wrong time of the week to trot out a gigantic post about effectively monetizing your audience... when you're about to post the next page of the comic and thus expose your OTHER audience to something they may not want to read.

Whatever the reason, there's one thing they have in common: you've got a post (or seven) that needs to be kept in mothballs for the next available time, maybe because it needs a good title or it just doesn't feel complete yet. And that's where having a buffer comes in! Suddenly you have a lot of great ideas in storage, just waiting for the right moment to come out and knock your audience for a loop!

As great as it all sounds, though, before you can enjoy the benefits of a buffer, you need to have a buffer, first. Here's some quick tips for how to build a Blog Buffer:

1. Abuse your Drafts. Having a few random articles or two sitting around in various stages from development is always good. These ought to be heavy-hitting articles, so having a few of these around allows you to save some for rainy days of the blog.
   
2. Write what comes to your mind first. Yes, you're supposed to write the headline first. Brainstorms don't work like that. You don't sit down and think "Wow, I should come up with 21 great tips for X, because 21 is a sweet number!", you think "I want to write about some tips for X, because X is AWESOME!" So write some tips for X.
   
3. Plant Some Headline Seeds! First, you need some great headline templates. And some more. Maybe a few more than that. Don't worry, you're not doing anything illegal -- it's just Mad Libs for your Blog. Take a text file, and start filling in the blanks with stuff that sounds relevant to your own work. Giving you ideas? It ought to! Now that you've made great headlines which sound awesome to read, you'll be more motivated to write good material!
   
4. Find some Padding if you can't post daily. For those of you who keep up with the RSS feed (which you should really subscribe to if you don't, by the way) you'll notice that even when the blog doesn't update, the feed does; that's because I got crafty and decided to let the feed update with my del.icio.us bookmarks. Admit it, some of you find those links useful, and it takes the pressure off me to come up with great content daily. (okay, so I need to find links more often to compensate, but since I seem to do that anyway...)
5. If all else fails, find a new way to say what you said before! Not everyone reads your entire backlog, so why assume people will always be able to find what they're looking for? If you're like me, there may be topics you THINK you talk about all the time but have never written about, like buffers...
   

Almost without fail, the best articles I write and get feedback on are my buffer articles. It may just be because I force myself to write lots about them, but they still work. And even if you're not ready to give it a try, there's always a way to get more great articles... like leaving a comment below, for instance, or suggesting a new topic on the Skribit widget in the sidebar.

Gaming Project Wonderful: Fewer Ads, Bidding Nothing Makes You More Money

When Project Wonderful first came out and approached the webcomic communities, people thought the new "Infinite Auction" model would revolutionize advertising as we know it. Finally, everyone thought, people would get paid what they were worth! Of course, nobody realized what "they were worth" actually meant.

Make no mistake, Project Wonderful is a clever system, and it's certainly more entertaining (and easier) to become an advertiser on there than ever before. The problem is that (like most advertising media), Project Wonderful is working in the Advertiser's favor, so it's up to the publishers to do everything they can to make sure their properties make as much as they can. Fortunately, it's easy to be both, and there's only a few things that need to be done to get the best results possible, to beat Project Wonderful:

1. Comb the Freebies. Sometimes bids go for $0.00 (as in absolutely free), and believe it or not, these things will allow you to use completely free advertising. By bidding on these, you force paying customers to pony up (which does at least a little good for the people offering the space, as even 1 cent of profit is better than making absolutely nothing), and/or you get some free airtime, which drives new traffic to the site and improves your own statistics (see below). Remember, you can only make a zero bid for two days at a time, and even if someone else already had a $0 bid on the slot, that just means that you can either force them to pay, or you'll get the spot once their two days runs out.
   
   The best way to do this is to use Firefox to access PW, search for a specific size ad, and target the ads with a $0.00 current bid and no minimum; then open up a huge number of tabs to bid on those zero-spaces once you've pulled out a good number to bid on. At least 25% of those will likely result in immediate high bids. Even if they're on lousy sites, it's exposure nontheless, and it's also an easy way to test out similar ads against each other (which allows you to E.A.T. on your ads prior to actually laying out some cash!)
   
   
2. Don't Be Picky. Waiting for a publisher to accept your ad is a drag, and likewise, you're missing out on money from each and every ad you do accept, because you get credited every 30 minutes! Even if you like one ad over another, keep in mind that everyone else's bids drive up the price of the one getting the top slot right now, so being picky is in nobody's best interest.
   
   Why? Because EVERY BID BUILDS ON THE OTHERS. Here's a quick demonstration of a typical bidding scenario on a single ad space:
   
   
   • Bidder A is willing to pay $1 on the space, but nobody else wants it. Even though A could pay, it is an unconstested bid, so A gets the slot for free, and the publisher gets no money even though A is willing to pay $1.
     
   • Bidder B comes along with a $0.00 bid, since he's looking for free advertising. Suddenly there are more bidders than spaces available, so bidding begins to come into play. Even though B is freeloading, it's still an active bid, and so A is finally forced to pay (it's only a cent, sure, but that's better than nothing!).
     
   • Bidder C comes along and bids $0.05. Now A has to pay $0.06 in order to keep C from claiming the space.
     
     
   In other words, the only way you get A to actually pay $1 is if someone bids up to $0.90 on the same slot at the same time. This is great for advertisers because it ensures they never pay more than they want to, but the only way publishers (i.e. you) get to see these huge returns is if a bidding war actually starts. Also, it means you shouldn't discourage smaller bidders, because their presence forces bidding wars and gets higher-paying advertisers to shell out more money. Bidders will often pull out when they realize they're being outbid, which is a pain in the ass in and of itself when you're counting on certain bidders to keep your prices high, so don't help the process along unless there's something REALLY wrong with a higher-rated ad than you're comfortable with.
   
   The best way to encourage bidding wars is to keep the number of ads available at any given time down to begin with, and that means showing the largest ads you can for a given space. Larger ads pay better (Note how the Skyscraper ad on the blog tends to outperform the banner ads on Last Resort's front page, even though the blog receives only a fraction of the traffic), and the more spaces you have, the more people you need to even be interested in advertising there to make a single cent (once again, the ads only start paying off when you have more bidders than available slots!).
   
   
3. Expect Logarithmic Returns on Traffic. Put bluntly, there are a lot of sites with very little traffic, and very few sites that get a lot of traffic. As you accrue more traffic, you should receive exponentially higher bids for that traffic because you are now competing with fewer and fewer sites that have the same level of traffic.
   
   This gets back to the initial problem again of furthering your exposure, but it also means that when you start to see an improvement in ads, it also means you're getting more/better traffic as well.

Keep in mind that Project Wonderful should not be your only source of income; while more consistent than donations, it can be incredibly hard to see worthwhile returns when starting out. The good news is that Project Wonderful can run alongside Google Adsense (Google's restrictions apply only to content-based ads; Project Wonderful doesn't care about content!) , and it can provide a new set of statistics for you to keep track of, giving you a better sense of where to put your ads (and also how to further improve your advertising gain!)

And when you realize how easy that can be, it's just wonderful.

How to get 75.49% More Readers without Changing (much of) Anything

Finally, Google Analytics shows off its usefulness. Having so much raw data at your fingertips can only be so beneficial if you know how to use it, and whether you average 6 hits a day (like this blog's index page), or 600, it's still fairly obvious when you have a nice 'spike' in your stats.

And of course, if there was a simple, quick fix to getting stats, readers, money, etc., people would have figured it out well before now. There is, however, a pretty simple process to finding quick fixes, because the more things you try to do for a stat boost, the sooner you have to stumble across SOMETHING that works. And yes, it couldn't be much simpler:

1. Experiment. Do something new; it doesn't have to necessarily be something new to the comic. Add some commentary to older pages. Get some new advertising. Go post in a few places you haven't been before.
   
2. Analyze. Using Google Analytics (or whatever other metrics you have), by the next day you can already tell if your brilliant plan is working or not.
   
3. Tinker! If it's working, do it more! If it's not, stop and/or find a new way of doing it.
   

Yes, even your comic has to E.A.T. sometime. Google Analytics couldn't make it easier; because you can tell where your referral links are coming from, it's trivial to trace down which links are being the most effective, or if a source is just sending you a lot of hits that immediately bounce, so you can weed out the ones that just give you a lot of noise from the ones that give you new, genuinely interested fans.

You now have an awesome way to measure the performance of whatever experiments you do, and as long as you're learning something (anything, really) each time you try something new, the better the results get.

And for those wondering: the 75.49% spike is from a well-timed post made to the Furrtive Livejournal Community. You guys are awesome. :)

Last Resort Bonus Updates: The Gift that keeps on giving!

Thanks to a certain generous individual, we have another 2 bonus updates coming your way, just in time for Christmas!

...what? It's not "Holidays" now 'cause Hanukkah was a few weeks ago...

Either way, remember to check back this upcoming Wednesday and the Wednesday after that. :)

BarCamp Recap (and some Comic Pluggage!)

Just came back from BarCamp Atlanta, which is an overnight convention where you put a bunch of hackers, geeks, and otherwise smart people together, get 'em all to host panels on the fly talking about whatever it is they're interested in talking about, and hopefully you get enough folk that want to hear 'em talk too. No pressure, lots of fun, always something to do or see or nibble on . . .

. . . and apparently a good number of folk who had no idea about how big webcomics are. I ended up hosting a webcomics panel last night that went over really well; I'd say 8-10 people in the room, and a lot of 'em grabbed pins after I was done and were just really impressed in general at how much effort people go to in telling their stories and convincing people to just give 'em money. Even managed to get one of 'em to walk me though signing up for a proper domain name, so if you haven't already, check out lastres0rt.com (yes, the 'o' in resort is a zero).

Most of the panel actually ended up being about a bunch of the comics I frequent and what I happen to think are examples of good stuff in the field. What actually ended up happening through was that I gave a brief overview of the Morning Coffee Firefox Extension and as a result, I showed off the comics that I had listed for Friday's lineup. My apologies if your comic isn't in this list, as it's just a review of the ones I showed off (and a brief overview of what I said about 'em, if anything special) since a couple of the guys asked me to post a list of the ones I talked about. There's other goodies, but hey, I ran out of time as it was.

• Exterminatus Now - A good class act, loved the big battle scene at the top. One of the better-rendered works.
• Ugly Hill - Can only say so much about a comic when it's currently in guest strip mode.
• Schlock Mercenary - Nothin' but good stuff about this one. Good writing, good color, even told 'em about the buffer and how having a few comics in reserve is useful. I'm sure the barely-dressed Elf helped, considering I was one of the few women at this thing.
• MegaTokyo - Eh... I basically admitted that if I hadn't gotten hooked on it previously, I probably wouldn't be reading it now. Because of the erratic schedule Fred keeps, it's almost better to wait for the books than to try and keep up online. To say the least, not a glowing review.
• PvP - Same Chapter, different verse. At least Megatokyo's late because Fred knocks himself out on quality; I'm relatively certain that if Kurtz wasn't an early adopter, he wouldn't have near the same following.
  
• xkcd - Gloriousness. Come on, it was practically a geek con, what WASN'T I going to say about this one?
• DMFA - I ended up showing off more about how Amber collects donations than the comic itself, since at least part of the panel was showing how people made money off their webcomics. Specifically the Wallpaper Wars — or as one guy put it, "Choose your Own Adventure, but with money!" In hindsight, I wish I'd shown off the Abel vs. Regina war instead. Much more dynamic and a little easier to read when you've got to work with a projector.
• StarSlip Crisis - Much love. Mostly talked about how distinct the characters in this strip are, even for a highly stylized form like Straub's.
  
• Evil Inc. - Another generally great comic. They loved the general storyline too. ^_^
• The Devil's Panties - Made for a nice segue into places like ComicGenesis and Smackjeeves. And hey, who doesn't love a local artist?
• ps238 - Showed off where Aaron has his books for sale on the site elsewhere as well.
  

All in all, a pretty decent collection of comics, with a lot of examples of how comics differ based on their quality, style, and update schedule, along with a smattering of 'A-Listers'. (and yes, I showed off my own stuff as well, but only after the others — after all, this was meant as an introduction to comics, talking about donations and other ways to make money off a brand, some comparisons with blogging, and so on).

Which just goes to show that even when you're at a place where people are doing nothing BUT talking about how to shape the internet, they're still not always getting the whole picture. ;)

Have your Say in the new Facebook group!

Yup: If you use Facebook, I'm asking in the Last Resort group about which characters people want to see more of in the convention swag. Since I'll be out, I won't be able to act on the results for a while until I return.

Worst case, I ignore everybody's opinion. But at least give me one to ignore if I must.

Always Have Giveaway Material

I don't care if it's buttons, pamphlets, business cards, whatever. Have a sample of your work and make sure you have it on hand when you're out in public.

This goes right in hand with having your sketchbook nearby. Public events (you know what we mean, right? We're talking cookouts, parades, general occasions where you're expected to at least say 'hello') are great times to try and expand your stuff and reach out to people you might never have picked up otherwise.

I just came back from watching some fireworks, and fortunately had brought some of the Four-by-Four pamphlets from MomoCon: even managed to give a few out. They're as ideal as a sample gets, though I was a little embarrassed they only had my DeviantArt URL on 'em instead of the new site's URL.

Still, in a situation where you get to talk to the artist, this isn't a big problem. Consider it incentive to strike up more conversation.

Stop Starving Yourself, Stop Starving Yourself...

Starving yourself is bad, mmkay? And the cutting. And the booze. I realize that whatever a man, a woman, two dwarves and a parakeet get up into the privacy of their own home is their business, but for God's sake, man, making yourself feel like crap makes your work feel like crap too.

Whether you really want to admit it or not, your work is an extension of your well-being on top of everything else. Happy artists get work done. Not-so happy artists get work done too, but it probably won't be their best stuff. There's being able to convey certain emotions in your work, and then there's dragging yourself into these deep dark pits where you can't seem to do anything but sit in front of the TV watching The Price is Right and sucking down cheese. Or maybe that's the point in the creative process where you decide to get your character captured and raped by some psychopath. Either way it's not the place to be.

Sure, there's times where pain is acceptable, necessary, and even beneficial. Self-destructive behavior is none of the above. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this is limited to physical actions either: DeviantArt pissing you off because you're not getting enough hits/comments? Stop visiting. E-mail making you mad? Check it less. Troll getting on your case? Block his ass.

The simple matter is that drama, whining, bitching, and moaning in general are turn-offs. Sure, you can still be successful AND be completely emo, but don't expect it to get you further than the ones who look unflappable and know where to cut their losses. It's a reputation thing, and it's not that people won't sympathize with you... it's that if you bitch over everything they'll wonder when you'll start bitching about them instead.

If you don't want to look back on your posts and cringe, stop writing the posts in the first place and spend more time doing something about it.

7. Beware the Family Friendly Label (unless you're really REALLY good at it).

Howard Tayler is one of the heavyweights in webcomics, and he's pretty damn successful at it. He's managed to make a daily strip run for seven years (and the majority of the past four without fail), he's sold books, done cons, gets his stuff to go for hundreds to the right fans, and manages to do it well enough to support a sizable family on the profits. He clearly knows what he's doing when we works on this stuff.

He also, apparently, gets flustered at fake ads referencing Orgasms-Per-Hour and random mothers of young children giving him crap because of said ads. As much as I hate to inject myself into the obvious drama this has brought to his fanbase, I can't say that 'orgasm' is a dirty word most kids would even understand (as opposed to something they already recognize is a bad word, like 'cunt'), and quite frankly I'd rather have a young child looking at an ad and realizing it's aimed at older people (thus ignoring it), than the previous ad which was talking about creepy old men who can erase your memories and also happen to be driving schoolbuses. Apparently it's okay to scare the crap out of young children and make them afraid of schoolbus drivers, but not okay to let them see the word 'orgasm'.

But, as I said, Mr. Tayler knows what he's doing, and I know why it's got him in such a righteous snit: he insists on total control over which ads appear on his site, while BlogAds refused to give him that total control, and this makes sense that he would be upset with them over such a distinction along with their bait-and-switch tactics. He also insists on a family-safe label as well, however, which makes sense for him and his audience, but not necessarily with the same universal approval. Then again, he's also someone who's been running for the past seven years on a daily comic; that kind of longevity gives you the power to dictate your own terms pretty damned well, and he is more than entitled to maintain whatever standards he likes.

I bring up Mr. Tayler and his recent drama as a pair of examples; On the one hand, we have a man who is clearly both good at his job and successful by webcomic standards. On the other hand, he's also bound by a stricter set of guidelines than the average artist, and as a result he has less flexibility to do what he wants and has to maintain that extra sense of vigilance over ads he deems inappropriate. The message is in the method: If you try to make things safe, you're causing yourself extra work later on in order to maintain that illusion of safety.

Family-Friendliness isn't the 'natural state of the internet', so to speak, and without a certain sense of what's good and what isn't (or your own personal canary in the coal mine to let you know what's what), you run the risk of making things 'too safe' and the resulting material has no effect whatsoever. If you need a certain amount of color to your humor, there's not much point in trying to 'dilute' it to make it 'family friendly' when such a distinction kills the joke.

This statement ties back to a basic Comic Commandment: Know Thy Audience. It doesn't shock me that a father with several small children insists on having a comic meet these Family-Friendly standards. It shocks me significantly that a college graduate in his mid-20s aims for one too, especially as it's meant for a nostalgic audience. When you aim for a niche audience (which, let's face it, being kid-safe is a definite niche), you give up some of the affordances having a webcomic often gives you, and require the rest of your work to pick up the slack since you can't just "go to the well".

As for my own work? I freely admit Last Resort isn't meant for a children's audience. There's no real way a story about a bunch of condemned criminals walking into their deaths (and that's without adding in the vampire elements...) is going to BE family-friendly, either. I can swap out a few of the invectives I use in the comic and censor it down to a PG level, but quite frankly I'd rather leave them in as fair warning about the level of violence and plot therein.

Family-friendliness means people don't die on-screen. Family-friendliness means you keep a minimum amount of clothing on. Family-friendliness means you can't let your characters say whatever they feel like. Family-friendliness means you don't have references to 'satanic' creatures like vampires, apparently, but that's a whole other complaint about people confusing Family Values with Christian don't-rock-the-boat Values. Eventually you realize that the Family label is just like the Adult label: once you accept it, you start locking yourself in and squelching your creative energies.

Given the choice, I'd much rather define the label than let the label define me.

A Painful Lesson in Hesitation

Yesterday I signed onto the Anime Weekend Atlanta Website to discover that tables in Artist's Alley had all filled up. I'd only found out about them opening on the 10th, so at some point between the three days it took me to decide to go for it, they'd sold out; a rather gut-wrenching reality check about how dangerous doubt actually is.

'Doubt' is fear. Fear causes good ideas to get tempered down into mediocre, presumably more palatable ones, and in the process changes the idea and turns it into garbage. Fear is what people go for in trying to hit a 'good' market, in second guessing themselves, in trying to listen to everyone when they tell you "Nobody likes [your genre], get a new one".

In short, I'm sick of fear.