Hey there! What ways of advertising works best for a webcomic in your opinion?
Well, two people asked me that question this weekend, but the other guy was on anon whereas you did it from the official tumblr of your webcomic so that people can click your name and see your stuff. So that’s a good first step.
My opinion is that advertising is generally cost-ineffective for webcomics, though that’s based on me trying it a few times on Project Wonderful (RIP, PW was great) and Facebook and Twitter and Google Adwords for some reason but not Instagram which I’ve heard would be better. I found that I got a big boost in traffic that lasted until I stopped paying for it. My experiences are not universal, though.
Most of my comic traffic comes from this very blog (protip: Get a blog and shill your comic on it), and the best advertising I’ve gotten is that little bar on the top of all SpiderForest sites. It only gets me 3 or 4 clicks a day, but it’s free and those clicks can add up. I’d recommend everyone join SF if you can :P
But here’s a sad little stat. ReTale launched last week, and it got a big push from everyone involved, which is a lot of word of mouth on a five-person team when the five people also have some presence in their own right.
Nate, the writer, has no real social media presence to speak of, with about 100 twitter followers. This is his first big project. I, the site design guy, have about 211 twitter followers, and 3000 tumblr followers. Naomi Franquiz, the letterer and concept artist, has 7000 twitter followers. Colorist Katy Ho has 16,000. Artist Sofia Davila has 17000. All of us announced the comic when it launched, which means an “ad” for Retale was put on the timeline of 40,000 twitter users and 3000 tumblr users and anywhere else it was posted. A twitter ad for 40k impressions would be like $200, though obviously not everyone who follows Naomi Franq on twitter saw her post.
On it’s first day, ReTale had 250 visitors in Google Analytics. That’s good for a launch day of a webcomic. It’s real good! But man, if you paid $200 and you got 250 pageviews for that day and then you’d have to pay another $200 for the next day....ugh, you’d feel pretty bad, right?.
Sadly, there’s no realistic way to buy your webcomic a readership. If there was, I’d have done it. You just gotta get out there and shill shill shill and try to pick up one new reader every day that likes your work and who you can keep.
So take advantage of the get rich slow method. Post your comic on reddit. Apply to SpiderForest or other such places, try to make friends with other webcomic artists and shill each other’s work sometimes. Go to a con and whenever you buy something give the artist your business card. Be irritating about it. Read my webcomic, Saffron and Sage. Give me money on Patreon, which I think I need to relaunch as per-page actually. You can also buy me a Kofi, though.