Let's learn from each other!

[nidawa]

hi! just stumbled across your webcomic (which is one of the awesomest ones i've read so far, by the way) and found out you're actually in germany and there's gonna be a german version - yay!
so anyway, some time ago, jan from http://www.dib-comics.com emailed around the german webcomic community (which is pretty much nonexistent right now) to see if we maybe could get some kind of network going. like crosslink-banners, a german webcomic listing, stuff like that. if you'd like i could keep you up to date on that. if you're still planning to do a german version, that is...

you should see the danish

[zcotty]

First off you have to create a top notch comic. That you've done. One thing that was also smart (and I did this myself too) is market thecomic BEFORE it starts. I remember seeing Dead Heaven ads waaay before it started.

The ads you use MUST look and WORK as well as the comic.

There are many FREE sites that list webcomics. TopWebcomics was already mentioned. Some work better than others.

One thing that has me baffled is how to keep the reader amount growing. I've continued to market the comic, kept up both the writing quality and art quality, but it's stuck at a certain amount of readers. No matter what it just won't GROW.

[Steininger]

Regarding the readers, I have been struggling with that as well. I feel like the readership has flat-lined. I hate to think that there is a limited pool of people who actually read webcomics, and then from that pool you have to consider how many will be into yours... because, you know... it's the internet, right? And then there's the constant risk of losing people. At the moment, my comic is fairly slow paced. It's slow to start. It will be ramping up soon, but due to the delay between updates, etc I am going to constantly be losing possibly as many as I gain. And this stinks.

I was thinking the other day about the ideal way to launch a series and really, it comes down to doing the entire run, completing the full project and uploading it all at once and just leaving it sit. With the entire story up start to finish, there is less risk people will drop off and you can immediately move into selling books, etc. If it's page views and returning visitors that are the concern, you will still get the same number. If you have a 300 page story, but you pace that out over 3 years, you are giving readers 300 reasons to stop coming by. If you have 5 slow pages, that's much different when consumed over 5 minutes rather than 5 weeks. If it's all up at once, you will still get the same numbers, but not lose nearly as many people. And again, you can have the whole thing up with a call to action right there to hopefully sell print versions.

Then again, it's tough to plug away on something for 3 years and not feel the itch to put it up. I guess part of the fun is plugging away and fighting the uphill battle which is maintaining and growing readership. Woo... fun... haha