Somewhere on the Internet a shop is selling a T-shirt that reads, “No one cares about your blog.” I find it really funny because it is very true. Sooner or later, there might be a T-shirt that reads, “No one cares about your webcomics.” Webcomics is a subset of blogs, in my opinion, and there are tens of thousands webcomics that no one cares about, or waiting to be discovered then ignored. Some get to the top and be cherished or worshiped. There are just so many webcomics out there, and people have so little time, it is simply exhausting to go through a webcomics directory to find one that to explore, and I would imagine people have problem discovering my site.

Since the beginning of my own webcomics, I have discovered quite a few things:

• Keeping it alive is not easy. It’s really a test of my diligence, because it takes time and effort to come up with something decent to present to the public. There are times that I simply don’t want to draw even a straight line but I don’t want to let my readers down (I think currently I have about 50 or so?), despite how few, I have to draw one every week. One of the most valuable advice that I got from the many webcomics forums is “Set up a schedule for posting and stick with it.” I despise websites that have really good comics but have unpredictable update schedules.
• Coming up with an interesting story is also difficult. I don’t know how comic artists that can come up with a new strip everyday get their ideas. I now carry a notebook with me and whenever I have a funny idea I will jot it down. If I don’t do it, I will forget about it and even when those ideas come back, it will be one year later.
• English is a problem for me. My mother tongue is Chinese, and many times when I think my strip is ready to go, it’s not. I send my strip to my editor Jey, and he proofreads it. Often for each dialogue bubble I have at least one edit. He would also send me recommendations to make the dialogues wittier. I also show the revised strip to my coworkers and ask what they think. They will also sometimes give me funnier versions. I couldn’t imagine making more than two strips a week as everyone has a full time job.
• Promoting a webcomics site (or any other websites) requires a lot of effort. But before I go on, I think that the best way to become popular is to have frequent updates, especially when you have daily updates for you can develop story arcs without losing momentum, and people are more likely to bookmark your site. Reading a comic strip is fast and addicting, but drawing one is a slow process. To promote my weekly strip, I submitted my site to a few webcomics directories. That’s only the first step that any webcomics artist must do. I also participate webcomics forum to let people know that I have updates posted.

Looking back, I already have 12 comics posted and a few months have already flew by! Let’s see how this site goes and I will write another post on my thoughts of this new venture.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Author's Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.