6 Degrees Can Be a Cold Idea

Star Wars made ludicrous amounts of money. Want to know who made out on that one? George Lucas, the creator and writer. Why? He was unwilling to sell the idea to the highest bidder. Now, how many times have you heard of that happening, the creator makes most if not all of the money? How about the number of times the creator gets screwed? Or, how about the number of times do you hear about someone suing because the idea was stolen? That should put into perspective how important it is to protect your idea.

A year ago I was asked to create some creatures for a coworker. She approached me with a great idea for a children's product, The Fossibles. She had a relative that got the small marketing company she worked for interested in what she was doing. At the time it was just a pipe-dream idea. Even so, before I got see anything I had to sign a release agreement. Shortly after I finished creating the character turn-arounds for the Fossible characters... she and the small marketing company had talks lined up with people like Seth Macfarlane and Steven Spielberg. Yes, literally. Now, the The Fossibles is currently in production ( even though they decided to go in a different direction ). Six degrees of separation is not as far as it would seem.

The point I am trying to make ( and a lesson I learned ) is that you NEVER know where an idea can go, or where connections can go. Imagine what would happen if someone in that line of connections stole the idea? If you don't have some sort of record that you created the work or that they stole it, someone else would be rich. Always! Always! Always! Protect your stuff. You may know someone, who knows someone, who knows George Lucas. But you may also know someone, who knows someone who would love to present your idea as his to his friend George Lucas.

DO your research people, here's a start for you...

http://www.copyright.gov
Patents.com
WhatIsCopyright.org
Copyright.com
CopyrightProtection.com

Want to keep up with copyright info? Check out ChillingEffect.org

Lastly, here is a link I think will soon revolutionize the online industry...
Creative Commons ( Edit: Found a related article over at Comixpedia.com )

Webcomics - A Business Plan

"If you want to do something, do it all out."

"If you're going to do something, do it right."

" If you want something done right then do it yourself."

They may seem cliche but that's only because people make the same mistake over and over and over! My first couple of goes at creating a business kind of fizzled because I didn't follow this motto. Specifically speaking, research.

Here comes another cliche... "Knowledge is power". The thing is, its all too true. If you don't know how to do something, what are your chances for success the first time? The second time? The third time? On the other hand, what are your chances if you not only know how to do it but you have practiced it?

Intertwined with the last of the Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies articles, I will be posting articles about my research on creating a business plan and how I plan to adopt it to my webcomic.

A WIN / WIN Situation

Making business does not mean there have to be winners and losers. A long time ago I used to work for a small company. It was run by a very ambitious man. He was professional, never missed a deadline and worked until the wee hours of the morning and he always seemed to be able to land the big account. It would seem his strength was making business and he was a rich man.

When I was working for him, I was quite impressed with this ability make business. However, it was not as it would seem. I found later that many people left the professional relationship feeling like they got the raw end of the deal.... almost like they lost a competition. Many people in the corporate world feel that in all business relationships there is a winner and a loser.. that business is a competition. The problem with this? Many of the people he worked with didn't want to business with him again.

How does this apply to webcomics? Well, think of it this way, how many times would a patron come back to your webcomic if they felt like they had been cheated by you? Or by the quality of the products you sell? How about the quality of your work?

A principal I try to live by, is to work to make any relationship a WIN/WIN situation. I think this will every one of my patrons a reader and not just a 'hit/pageview'. Make every patron feel like working with you means they win as well as you.

With that being said, I want to announce that this blog's schedule will be reduced to Mondays ( This will be the final schedule change ). Why? Well, as I have written these blogs I am finding that it is far more important to take the time create quality posts ( more research, more links to resources etc ) with the best research/writing I can do. This way the blog will be more useful to me AND you.

Webcomic Marketing Strategies: Press Releases

Press Releases
Part of a 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

Press releases seem to be a real great way to add legitimacy to your website's intentions plus it is great 'free' marketing. That as we know is magic to a webcomic creators ears. Now, I am by no means a Public Relations guru, so for this installment I have decided to refer to the experts I found as a result of my research...

- Where to start when writing a press release ( Anatomy of a Press Release )

- Being Newsworthy

- 2 Press release examples

- 10 Essential Tips for Writing Press Release

- 5 Killer Tips for writing a press release

- Digitalwebbing's PR guy's tips posted in Digitalwebbing' s Forums ( a press release spelled out, very good resource )

Webcomics Marketing Strategies : Forums

Discussion Forums
Part of a 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

Webcomics are successful because they have an army of patrons who want to see it become successful. Community is a successful webcomics life blood. Fostering that community should be priority one for the creator. One of the best ways to foster that sense of community is to have a forum on your website...

• They allow the patrons to share their common experience with your webcomic
• It also allows you to interact with them
• It gives them a sense of belonging and contributing in a positive way
• Adds credibility to your website
• You get to know the people who enjoy your site
• Adds usable, sellable advertising space

Here are some great articles on the benefits of forums:

Pros and Cons of Forums
Forum "Sticky" Factor

Hosting and free forums are all over the place. The most common one is phpBB, a forum built on open source php technology that you can download to your server. They also offer hosting.

If you don't have a server but you have an online comic you can also get a free forum service over at TalkAboutComics.com. Here are the instructions for getting one.

So off with you, create your online army marching to battle for you ;)

Webcomics Marketing Strategies : Affiliates

Affiliates
Part of a 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

One of the main principles I have tried to maintain during this process of Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies is to be 'creatively spinful' with my approach towards marketing my webcomic. I do not want to just do what experts in the process of marketing tell me what to do and leave it at that. It limits me. This includes the old favorite, website affiliates.

Affiliates, almost all website creators have been one. It seems like an easy way to make money. It's as easy as putting a link/image on our website. Its a win/win situation and we've seen many sites' popularity explode because of these.

Now, I am sure most webcomic creators have thought of creating an affiliate program on their websites and then immediately dismissed it. Even if you could create a affiliate program through a third party application, it could cost money ... lots. This is not what a webcomic creator wants to hear. We're on a generous budget of pocket lint and mothballs.

On the other hand, this could be where we try a creative spin. Low-budget does not mean no affiliate program. Could we create an affiliate program without paying money? The reality is, all you have to do is create a win/win situation for you and the patrons you already have. Try the spin, you may surprise yourself with some really great ideas ;)

I have found that doing a little research helps me to think of creative ways to spin an old way. Here are a few articles that may help you put the spin on the old 'Affiliate Program'...

The cost of an Affiliate Program
Internet Basics: Affiliate Programs
Taming the Beast: Affiliate Strategies
Taming the Beast: Affiliate Programs

Do I need a business manager for a webcomic?

As I trudge through all of the work needed to be done to create my webcomic, I have run into the issue of time. Apparently there are only 24 hours in a day to make the comic AND create/run the business. This is a dilemma every start up business has but in the case of a webcomic and intellectual properties can be quite a patch of quick sand.

There are so many things I need to do for the actual webcomic, I barely have enough time to get any of the business end together. Or, is it the other way around? It depends on the week. The dangerous part is that a lot can be lost if any of this is ignored. Check out Penny-Arcade's debacle. So, what can I do? Some would say get a business manager. However, this may not be as easy as one would assume.

A few webcomic sites have successfully found solutions to business management. Penny-Arcade got lucky and ran into a guy in happenstance. CTRL-ALT-DEL, VGCats and NuklearPower have their guy Pierre that happened to run ZeStuff and PVP has his wife as a business manager. Other solutions like collectives such as BlankLabel comics splits this work between them. However, they all got lucky or had it sitting right in front of them. Regrettably I do not have any of these options available to me. So, where do you find a business manager A) Likes and works with webcomics, B) Start working for no money, C) I can trust?

I am afraid so far my research has found that luck is 90% of that webcomics game. The other 10% is recognizing it when it comes along. What surprises me is that no one has tried making a business out of being a business manager for webcomics. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I know I would bite on that.

A Delicious Webcomics Subplot

Since I made the serious commitment to make my webcomic, I have been spending a lot of time writing the story. It hurts because I want to spend that time drawing the ACTUAL webcomic. But I know, in my previous attempts, I would just start the drawing the story and immediately write/draw myself into a corner, get frustrated, and start over wasting all that energy. After many many attempts, my fiancee and I came to the conclusion that I was very good at starting a project and very bad at finishing it. I realize now, as a hard lesson learned, that it is a very important part of successfully creating a story especially one that communicates to the reader more than "what you see is what you get".

Sure, I took all sorts of English classes, and creative writing classes in high school and college imparting on me an ostensible awareness of writings tools; plots, subplots, subtext and metaphors, both conceptual and physical. The problem with this was that I could articulate but not truly speak. My stories became stories only enjoyable to me. But, recently the more time I commit to this writing stage the more I find that I understand this mistake. My grasp of this, is letting me impart little parts of the story's world like little hidden flavors. I love the idea of applying this concept to my webcomic.

The reality is that the webcomics which update a page at a time, especially dramatic/scifi/action get so little space to give to the reader something they can take away from that single page satisfied ( Webcomics such as Penny-Arcade and PVP have the luxury because they just need a good joke and a well executed punchline ). I think that adding this type of texture to a long form/graphic novel type webcomic can really make it more valuable longer lasting experience for the reader.

"Generally I was reading the most poppy, soapy, long-running superhero stuff you could get," he says. "Clairmont's X-Men, especially, because he was shameless in terms of throwing in any tiny little subplot he could wedge into the main storyline. And, honestly, the people in pop culture who are most like those that read the X-Men are those who watch Days of Our Lives, because the two have so much in common in the sense that everybody's connected to somebody else. It would reward you for being a constant reader with little asides and very complicated overarching storylines and then your reward for paying attention to the whole, extended soap opera was a giddy sort of excitement on the part of the reader when they made one of those connections."

-Jason Henderson
quote from The Austin Chronicle online article 'Overnight Sensation' by Marc Savlov

This insight, in turn, may create more readers than pageviews for the webcomic. That in my opinion is the food of webcomic creators, for profit or fun ;)

Webcomic Marketing Strategies : Blogging

Starting a Blog...
Part of a 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

One of the many reasons I have started a blog detailing the creation of my webcomic business plan is to market the webcomic in an 'accessible' way. A lot of my research backs this idea. One article I found testifies to this concept: 'Why are blogs so great anyway?'. To summarize what the article says...

• Blogs are usually written in plain english making them easily accessible
• Anyone can post the information, even the internet non-savvy
• The information is easily used by other systems making them easy to disseminate
  

This 'plain' language idea allows for 'plain language' searches. Which for people, I imagine, is how they intuitively do searches and would expect to get results. If this is true, this can make blogs a great tool for marketing your webcomic blog and/or webcomic to more people. Especially for people who are not exposed to webcomics. With this is mind here are ...

8 tips I found on the web for increasing hits on your blog:

1. Blog with keywords

2. Post on Current News

3. Post Your Own thoughts

4. Link Out
Link outs to other sites are tracked on blogging sites like Blogger.com

5. Link In
Pingoat.com: I ran into this researching blogs, this links to all the blog listers I have heard of. Go there to get 'Add Blog' links to the respective sites.

6. Track Backs

7. Guest Blog

8. Make Comments

Now these are great points however, I don't get the impression that simply creating a blog will not necessarily drive traffic to your webcomic. But it can if it is relevant AND good. It's got to be a site people will be able to get good information or has "illuminating" opinions. If you want to see more of what I found on creating/maintaining a good blog go to UseIt's Weblog Usability article: Top Ten [ blog ] Design Mistakes

Webcomics Marketing Strategies : Feeds

RSS Feeds
Part of a 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

Many predict that emails validity as a marketing tool quickly fading because of spam and I would say there is a good case for it. The good news is there is a replacement that could make a webcomics a little easier to market to a targeted audience. It's called RSS.

RSS stands for 'Real Simple Syndication', a XML standard for publishing content . Now for those of you who don't know 'diddly' about XML, think of it as 'customizable standard' for formatting information into a plain text making it readable by any system. This 'readability' makes information easily disseminated in any way that can be imagined. Why is this good? If the information is good it can spread as fast.

• Many applications are already on the market designed for reading rss
  
• Right now 1%* of internet users use an RSS reader or aggregator ( they read RSS ). It is expected to explode in the near future as users discover the benefits of RSS
• FireFox already has 'Live Booking' ( RSS reader ) built into the browser and the other browser are already building it into their next releases
  
• RSS readers can't be spammed since the reader/aggregator is retrieving the information rather than having it sent to them.
• RSS is like sending an email to the people and only the people who are interested in what you are marketing because they choose what is retrieved by the reader/aggregator/browser
  

How does this apply to webcomics?

• Search Engines spider RSS more often than html
• No more 'memory leaks': Imagine you have a site that updates sporadically. What if they were instantly notified every time you made a post? No more 'remembering' what day your webcomic updates or patrons forgetting about your website completely when you have long periods between posts.
  

Good sites about RSS feeds:
Corporate Website Marketing
NewsGator
Web Marketing Today: Using RSS Feeds
Web Marketing Today: A Case for Publishing via RSS Feed and E-Mail
Web Marketing Today: How to Set Up an RSS Feed to Syndicate Your Headlines
Web Marketing Today: RSS Feeds ( links to more info )

Webcomics Marketing Strategies : Philosophy

A commentary on my 13 part series: Exploring Webcomics Marketing Strategies

Creating a webcomic business is a very difficult thing to do. The market is small, flooded and has its unique challenges. This makes marketing to make a webcomic business successful 'uniquely challenging'. Developing a philosophy might be a good idea...

Comics in general have a stigma attached to them. "They're only for children" and "Comics are for people too lazy to read" are two very common perceptions of comics. I know we have all heard them. Even my family members say these things and hold onto those perceptions tightly for fear of becoming "geeky" and then say, "But we love your stuff" ( I make comics ;) . I love them but they "know not what they say".

Webcomics have the potential to bridge some of this gap. A webcomic circumvents some of the fears attached to reading comics for 'noobs'. There's no more fear of the comicbook domain of the specialty store. People can secretly indulge in their like for a comic in the privacy of their own home. Getting a comic is now as easy as getting the news on the internet. These alleviates in turn open up new avenues to the people that have never read or never allowed themselves to read a comic to give it a chance.

ON the other hand, this also makes marketing challenging because targeted efficient marketing is difficult. Advertising on CNN isn't going to get you readers. I know, I know, you could always advertise on other webcomics or webcomic related websites. However, isn't that a little inc3stuous? You can't reach new members, you are just stealing time from other webcomics.

I think that when attempting to develop a marketing plan the philosophy I try to stick to is, "think outside the box". Most of the marketing information I have found only relates to people trying to just sell products. So when I find marketing information, no matter how irrelevant it is to webcomics, I try to give it a spin. Try it, no matter what business you are in, you might be surprised how many good ideas you will get out of spinning the irrelevant information into new relevant ideas.

A couple of marketing sites that may spark your creativity...

About.Marketing.com
TamingTheBeast