Dammit! And I was looking forward to that free blow job...

[Poe]

Sigh... actully they stopped the free oral sex service like the month before I joined keenspot...

A shame, truly...

[Ghastly]

But you still get the handjobs right?

Even the keenspacers get the free handjobs, ours are just given to us by people with webcomics on geocities.

[Rapscallion]

We get hand jobs?! Why doesn

[Dell1981]

Seriously, KeenSpace Forum is pretty lousy. Sometimes it's so slow, a message I try to submit "times out" and the page doesn't even load. So there are times when it's ok, but when it's awful slow I don't want to wait like 5 minutes just to post one message.

Really, those KeenSpace folks sould be doing good work fixing stuff, making their service better and not doing crap. Oh well, I guess in the vastness of the Internet, a web comic about tentacle monsters may not be a high priority to some. (But it's everyting to those who love it, and are loved back by it.)

[Metal-Angel]

We don't pay Keenspace, we can only complain so much before they say 'it's free, if you don't like it, LEAVE!'

[Rann]

Yeah, except that they're not exactly providing it free out of the goodness of their hearts, y'know. They get a little bit of ad revenue just by the fact that your comic exists and has the required advertising tag. They don't upgrade the servers unless they absolutely have to, and even when they absolutely have to, they drag ass on it. They don't want to spend anymore than they absolutely have to on Keenspace comics.
Keenspot, however, they can bill as higher-traffic, and charge the advertisers a lot more than they do for Keenspace comics. That's the real reason they made a split between the two.

[Ghastly]

However, it is a symbiotic relationship. Keenspace depends on banner ads to make money. For that they need webcontent. Without popular webcomics bringing in a steady stream of eyeballs for their banner ads Keen makes no money. We provide them with "free" (1) content and an audience for their banner ads, they provide us with "free" (2) webspace and bandwidth for our comics.

I've certainly been keeping up my end of the bargain. Each week I provide Keen with content to run banner ads on and about 6000-7000 unique pair of eyes (when keenspace is running) to see the ads.

So I don't think they'll get very far with the "It's free so suck our cock" line with me.

(1) "Free" in this case means we pay for the art supplies and make the investment of time to create and promote the content.

(2) "Free" in this case means they cover the expense of bandwidth and server space which is in turn covered by selling advertising space on the websites.

[Krenn]

I wonder, though, is keenspace actually profitable? Last I saw, most banner ad deals didn't pay for the bandwidth... but if Keen Industries scored some killer deal, I suppose it could work. Do they post fiscal figures anywhere? (hah)

[Rann]

They must be profitable. I think it's some kind of rule that if you're actually out to provide a free service and wanting to help people, you go out of your way to do so, are massively apologetic whenever there's any problem, and spend every available bit of time and money possible to provide this service.
From what I've seen, Keen is generally pretty short with their "customers", doesn't tell them much, drags ass about doing anything, and doesn't exactly go out of their way to help their comicers. This is the behavior of a money-making corporation... take it from someone with AT&T cable internet.

[Ghastly]

If keenspace is not making a profit they only have their shitty servers to blame. There are a number of keenspace comics that have more readers than comics on Keenspot. Hell, Sexy Losers gets over 10K readers a day when the damn server is working properly. Even when it isn't working all that well it still manages to get in a day what I get in a week.

Kung Fool was another of Keen's top producers but Keen has lost that comic because of their unreliability.

Just imagine how much traffic something like Strange Candy or Boy Meets Boy must be bringing in.

Even my comic, in terms of actual readers, has as many readers as some Keenspot comics. I only publish once a week, but if I was publishing 7 days a week my numbers would be way up there (of course I couldn't keep up that publishing schedule without seriously changing my art style).

There are over 5000 comics on keenspace. Even if 98% of them suck ass and don't draw in any significant number that still leaves over 100 comics that are quality and bring in decent numbers.

If Keen wants to make a profit I think they need another server for the high number Keenspace comics. Keep all the ones generating less than 1000 visits a week on this crappy assed server and move the ones with over 1000 visits a week onto a good, reliable server.

I can imagine that Keen is losing money on Space simply because they've got thosands of comics with probably less than 100 visits a week gumming up the same machine that comics than can produce are served from. How the hell do they expect to make money off a comic like Sexy Losers which has a very big audience if nobody can fricken access the comic because Keenspace is down all the time. They're throwing out the money that their top Space comics could produce because of the thousands of crap comics that share the same server with them.

Use this piece of shit server for all the new accounts and once those comics have proven themselves then move them onto the reliable server. Then they'll be making money.

I know there was talk about creating a "keenspot lite" for the top producing keenspace comics, but I don't think anything has ever come of that talk.

In anycase, if Keen is losing money on Keenspace it sure as hell isn't the fault of my comic and other popular Keenspace comics like Tang's and Hard's (and until they lost him Hyung's).

[T'Renn]

No offense, folks, but.... Bullshit. Ads don't pay for a thing.

Bill Holbrook remarked under "Kevin and Kell" a couple months ago that he had recieved his ad revenue for a MONTH of K&K. He made a grand total of thirty bucks.

Thirty bucks.

The only web comics making money right now are making thier money on merchandise. They are lucky if ads pay for bandwidth. And that's when they are very careful not to waste too much bandwidth per ad-view.

Think about it. How many cartoonists actually call thier webcomic thier day job? Pete Abrams, and Scott Kurtz. both of whom sell books, t-shirts, etc. And KeenSpot was encouraging the 'Spotters to conserve bandwidth before they started the comic books and other merchandise.

And, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but Keenspot hasn't exactly been the pinnacle of stability lately. And, no offense, if I were deciding which disaster to attend to first, the one that affects 90% of the viewers is the one I would attend to first.

No offense to you personally, Ghastly. I think your sick, perverted little comic is funny. But it's rather in poor taste to complain about the quality of a service you pay not a cent for. After all, when was the last time they cut off your account for being too popular? Despite promising you "unlimited bandwidth", as several webcomics I'm familiar with have experienced.

Off hand, I can think of.... Absurd Notions, The Jar (which is currently not providing archives because of bandwidth issues).... Oh, yeah, Tang's Comic. That's what drove Tang here, if I recall correctly.

T'Renn "whine, bitch, moan.... " Vraomrell

[Ghastly]

The real problem with ads not paying the way anymore is advertisers stopped actually paying for advertising. Now they only pay for clickthroughs unlike years ago when they paid for the banner space itself. I think this is absurd. It would be like McDonalds saying they will only pay for their TV ads if someone runs out right away while watching the ad to buy a Big Mac. That's not how advertising works. Internet advertisers are the ones who have been getting a free ride and what is needed is an organization of content providers to shut them down until they pony up what is fair. If every website on the net simply said no to advertisements until advertisers paid for each and every ad then running ads would be profitable again.

Of course the only ads that are profitable now are Porn ads and pop-unders. If I were keen I'd be rounding up all the "naughty" comics and grouping them together on a system they could run Porn ads on.

I've been told that appearently Keenspace makes only $20 a day from 2 million pageviews. If they can only turn 2 million pageviews into $20 then they need to re-evaluate their business plan.

[Slander]

One of the Keenspotters I know told me that Corey Kitley is the one who does the free blowjobs nowadays.

Re: further discussion, I run two ads per page, one at the top and the other at the bottom. When my comic first moved to Keenspace and I was experimenting with tags, I made this. I still give it a hit now and then, just to appease my conscience for all the bandwidth I use up for message board images.

Maybe if we generate a little more revenue, it will help improve server conditions for us. Loading a second ad doesn't really hurt page-load times, even for 56kers (I know this from experience) and it's really not a whole lot of trouble to type ***advertisement*** one more time when you're doing your pages.

And hey, it could be worse. They could be sticking us with popups.

[LeonMcNichol]

Actually, I don't mind pop ups. Especially if it will help with a newer faster server. They are relatively easy to kill. The ones that I hate are the ones on the porn sites that when you close, 50 more pop up in it's place and eventually crash your browser. (DAMN THOSE! Always mess me up when I'm downloading using the browser's downloader.)

I think the 20 our ot 2mill is an outrage. If you look at it, the ad people who pay for ads on newspapers and magazines have to pay for the page or part of a page. So yeah, the people who give you a banner to put on there, should have a set amount once a month for each page they are on.

It's not like you can just click a newspaper page and go and purchase the product. So we are doing them a service, making it easier for people to go and buy their product.

[Rann]

The problem with just closing popup ads is that the people that make them are coming up with new ways to keep you from doing it. They'll leave the title field blank (the ones with the purple monkey), just put a few periods (a lot of porn popups), or put random numbers in it (X10 spycam ads) to thwart popup-killer programs that work on window titles. Also, more and more are popunders instead of popups, and resist being brought to the front so that they can be closed.
... Which, when you think about it, is insanely stupid. They're working so hard at keeping them from being easily closable that they've completely eliminated the point, that being to advertise things. But now they keep them from coming up on top so you can't close them, they make them so they go back under when you click to them so you can't close them... you can't actually see the ad.
Plus, they make them so damned annoying, that I personally have decided to avoid several businesses and sites because of their infuriating ads.