As I’m currently covering the whole application process, today I’ll talk about
Good FAQ Pages
They are basically the backbone of your zine’s internet performance if you don’t have a full info page about it, and generally just good to have.
FAQ, for everyone who isn’t familiar with the term, is an abbreviation of Frequently Asked Questions, it’s most common use is for troubleshooting sections etc. because the admins of the website are tired of answering the same question over and over again.
And believe me, there will be a lot of people who will ask the same questions over and over again, despite the fact that there are ten asks with the exact same question right on the first page of your blog.
It happens and there isn’t much you can do about it except either ignoring the repetitive asks at some point, comment with a snarky remark that you already answered that question for the nth time and yes please read our FAQ first PLEASE and thank you, or copy-pasting the answer from a previous ask.
If you haven’t gotten a bunch of asks before the application process when you just introduced the zine, at the very least when you start to take applications you will get bombarded with questions. It easily is probably the busiest time of the zine because everyone wants to know as much as possible about your zine, how the chances are that they’ll get taken, what your requirements are ... yadda yadda. With your FAQ you’ll try to cover as many (plausible and actually valid) questions before anyone actually asked these - despite the name of “frequently asked questions.” However, that doesn’t mean once you have your FAQ page, you don’t need to reply to asks at all as there are actually some very important questions that you probably didn’t think of yourself.
So with this very long intro, we finally get to the actual topic of this post.
First and foremost, you should think about these two questions throughout the entire time:
What do applicants want to know about this zine? and
What do potential cutomers/supporters want to know about this zine?
Things I believe you should cover:
Who are the mods/admins of this zine? Introduce yourselves, perhaps add your roles/responsibilities and motivation as to why you want to have the zine in first place so people know who they need to deal with. (It is a common red flag for zines when the mods don’t put the info out there as nobody knows who the mod actually is, and that’s just plain shady.)
Where is the zine based? Kind of optional but important if you plan to sell physical copies so people can estimate shipping costs and prepare saving up for the zine.
What is the topic of the zine, is there an additional theme?
Physical or e-Zine?
What else will your zine entail (merch)?
Charity, for profit, or free? If not free, how will contributors be compensated? If Charity, where does the money go?
Any specific requirements your applicants should meet? Do they need to have one portfolio piece meet specific standarts? Do you want only POC contributors, or queer, disabled, ... because of the zine’s theme? Do they need to be at least 18?
Where can you find the zine’s schedule? Everyone wants to know if they’ve got time for your zine.
What is and what is not allowed in your zine? Explain how explicit you allow the content to be, what your zine’s main focus is supposed to be, what forms of art (e.g. comics, photography, etc.) /writing (e.g. fiction, poetry, etc.) are allowed, and what is not.
How many contributors do you plan to accept? This is so applicants can estimate how good their chances are and for possible supporters to know what they can expect from your zine.
Who will get an e-mail and when? Applicants want to know how long they need to wait for their acceptance/rejection e-mails, or if there even will be any rejection letters.
Any already known zine specs? Especially for writers it’s important to know what their wordcount limits are, and artists also like to know how big their canvas is supposed to be.
Where can you apply? Link to your application posts or directly to the forms!
If you have anything you think is important to your zine and not covered by these questions, just put it on your FAQ page!
Now to the more stylistic side of the FAQs:
Keep your tone professional. Be polite and try to keep relatively neutral and positive/friendly. You want to convince people to work with you, or to buy/support your product.
Be honest. If you are unsure about a specific point or simply haven’t heard back from others who supply you with that information, be honest about that, or don’t include it in your FAQ at all (though I wouldn’t really recommend that either.)
Be cohesive. This was one of our biggest mistakes as the application rules on our form were much more lax than on our blog. Don’t do that. Triple-check all of your facts and statements before you announce anything. It’ll save you a lot of trouble.
Think about a good structure. It doesn’t matter whether your FAQ is more of an info sheet or actually [Question] - [Answer] styled, the more important thing is that it’s well-structured. If you have all your questions/info you want to put on there, seperate it into sections so that people can find their needed info more easily (e.g. info for applying artists and applying writers would be easiest to seperate).
Make it easy to find. Some websites have the talent that you’re looking for information X and get linked to page Y which links you to page Z which links you to page A which links you to page Y, without ever actually giving you information X. Don’t do that. You can navigate a good website with as few clicks as possible. Also remember that mobile tumblr doesn’t show tumblr pages! To evade masses on questions you already answered in your FAQ, make your FAQ a tumblr post instead of a page. It’s annoying but definitely effective.
If you know enough HTML, put your FAQ prior to your ask box so people are forced to read it before they ask stupid questions.
Remember to keep your FAQ up-to-date with ANYTHING you’ve got going on. Fix broken links. If requirements change, put it on there IMMEDIATELY.
Also remember that while there will be repetitive asks, there also will be questions you actually never asked yourself but might be quite important nevertheless. If you have such a question sitting in your inbox, don’t hesitate to add that answer to the FAQ.
I think that’s to it about FAQ! I’m sorry this took so long to post, I had written almost everything quite fast after the last installment but after that I never really got the time to finish it off. But here we are!
Also if there are any topics you really want to be covered in this series, don’t hesitate to tell me so! My ask box is also open for anons.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
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Griddery by @glenthemes for the muses section! Thank you sm again, Raccoon, for allowing me to use the script. <3
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