Ideas for boosting traffic to KeenSpace

[ZOMBIE USER 197]

Long post: Be thou forewarned...<P>First, the thesis statement. We need to generate more traffic to ALL of our comics. As corollary statements, I say that we must not consider this a "zero-sum game."
<P>"Zero-sum" game? "What's that?" you ask rhetorically. Well, a zero-sum game is a game in which for one player to win $10, everyone else must lose $10. If there are ten other players, that means they must lose an average of $1 each.
<P>KeenSpace is <B>not</B> a zero-sum game. Web-cartooning in general is not either. This means that we do not have to "defend" our audiences from other people's strips. We need to find ways to draw the wider Internet population to KeenSpace, and from there suck them into the <B>trap</B> of becoming regular readers of <B>several</B> strips! Moo hoo hoo hoo ha ha hahaha!
<P>Sorry. Lost myself for a moment there.
<P>By sucking in readers, we eventually (very, very eventually) generate enough advertising revenue that the most popular web cartoonists will be able to support themselves exclusively by cartooning, and everyone else will be justly compensated for their time and effort.
<P>So how do we do this thing? I'll put <B>my</B> ideas in the following post...

[ZOMBIE USER 197]

So, some Ideas:<P>1) Have a hit-competition among the strips. Base the results on unique IP addresses, or something more meaningful than "page loads." Competition <B>may</B> foster that "zero-sum" attitude mentioned above, though, so don't plan to target other people's readers. Find ways to go get your own.<P>2) Advertise your strip OUTSIDE of the usual web-comic venues. Web-rings for cartoonists, Top 100 lists, etc are all fine for existing readers of cartoons, but we need to find ways to reach NEW people.<P>3) Let's go back to Item 2. Anybody got ideas here? Remember, if you can drag 1000 people to your strip, and they love it, and you have a KeenSpace link set up, we ALL win.<P>4) Conventional banner ads: these are costly, and of limited efficacy. There are really only two kinds of sites on the net: content sites, and commercial sites. We are a CONTENT site, and we make our money by directing people to COMMERCIAL sites through banner ads. Running our OWN set of banner ads is expensive, and may not work. But it's an idea. Good sites for banner ads would be ANY other entertainment or content site on the web. Let's face it. People who read content on the Internet already are MUCH more likely to read comics than people who just get email and go shopping at Amazon.<P>And now, I open the floor to my fellow Keenspacers, and anyone else who happens to be reading in here...<P>------------------
Howard Tayler: Author, Engineer, Entrepreneur,
Record Producer, Web-hound, Cartoonist, Swordsman,
Itinerant Speaker, Chief Cook, and Proud Father
<A HREF="mailto:htayler@myrealbox.com">htayler@myrealbox.com</A>
<A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>Schlock Mercenary</A>
( <A HREF="http://www.schlockmercenary.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.schlockmercenary.com</A> )

[Lazy]

If you want to bring in readership from outside the usual comic readers this is a good method:
1. Understand what you are doing with your comic.
2. Understand who the readership is you want to attract...
3. Go to the web sites and Usenet groups where this readership will be...<P>TO show you what I'm doing... My strips centre around Electrical Engineers. I post on the alt.engineering.electrical newsgroup and am finding every Message Board and Forum on Engineering and posting notices of my comics. I am slowly building my readership this way. I believe 3/4 of my readership has been generated by my newsgroup postings. Whether these readers check out the rest of Keenspace, I don't know. There are no other Geer comics here.<P>------------------
Lazy, creator of the daily Secrets of the Universe, <A HREF="http://lazy.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>lazy.keenspace.com</A>

[Screwball McGoo [gDC]]

Come to think of it, Keenspace as a whole is pretty durned powerful. Isn't there a way to get a big 'site (Yahoo, etc.) to recognize us as one? A big "News of the Day" or something. They can pretend they discovered us, maybe? Honestly, I don't know. That just seems most logical to me.<P>------------------
For just pennies a day, you too can save starving children in Africa. For free you can save a <A HREF="http://www.screwballmcgoo.net" TARGET=_blank> starving comic </A>in the good ol' US of A!

[ZOMBIE USER 68]

I don't know if you guys read the paper, but we get this insert on Sundays called Access Magazine, and it has a bunch of stuff on Internet sites. I'm thinking of writing them and telling them about Keenspace, or at least a few of the comics that KS hosts. That would be MAD exposure...<P>------------------
-Capheine<P>Visit -Arrogance in Simplicity- at <A HREF="http://www.shaftware.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.shaftware.com</A>

[Drollstreet]

Maybe we could link to Keenspot pages, It wouldn't be much, but I found Superosity one day and then I started reading others, maybe people will see a big-comic-ratings-puller-inner and decide of instead of just reading that one they'll read more comics, and eventuly those people will be visiting these comics daily, that's the key, repitation.

[Damien Siemer]

Well, I'm hoping that if we submit the Mortal Keenbat movies on others sites it could boost really help the hits keenspace gets.<P>------------------
<A HREF="http://methodical.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://methodical.keenspace.com</A>

[Screwball McGoo [gDC]]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by lee.herold:
<B>Perhaps everyone could try something similar in their areas.
</B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Can I take credit for Smithfield in my letters, too? ::laughs::
<P>------------------
Rotating content faster than a speeding third world government... It's my signature and plug for <A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> NERDZ!!!!! </A>

[Screwball McGoo [gDC]]

I still think we could push people around. Recently, I was channel surfing and my TV plopped onto the crap that is ZDTV. It seems that they could do a show on the Internet Cartooning Phenomena (caps rule) that just happened to feature 'Space.... Only problem is I'm not sure how to contact them. Is anyone part of their Netcam Network?<P>------------------
Rotating content faster than a speeding third world government... It's my signature and plug for <A HREF="http://nerdz.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank> NERDZ!!!!! </A>

[Lee.herold]

My brothers & sisters:<P>I have just completed firing off emails to all the editors and feature editors of my city's alternative papers, major newspapers, and television stations, hoping to generate some sort of local interest in us. Perhaps everyone could try something similar in their areas. Here's what I wrote to them:<P>------------------------------------------
Dear Editors:<P>Just dropping a line to suggest that an interesting subject for a story/article may be the rapidly expanding community of cartoonists who are publishing their work on the internet. There's some really great stuff out there---funny, creative, original stuff by talented people who won't get a second glance from the Newspaper Syndicates because they fall outside the mainstream box. Some of this stuff blows away that which passes for the daily comics page these days. It's like the stuff you find in alternative papers, but sometimes even more edgy, because the only restrictions are imposed by the creators themselves (which also means that there's a lot of unbearably awful crap out there).<P>Personally, I believe that one day web comics will replace newspaper comics altogether. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I read the articles online, and I get my daily dose of comics online as well. There are even a few web 'toonists who have built enough of a following that they can actually make some money off of their creations (see Tatsuya Ishida's "Sinfest" at <A HREF="http://www.sinfest.net" TARGET=_blank>http://www.sinfest.net</A> , which was recently mentioned on a computer-geek website called slashdot.org, which generated so many pagehits that it crashed the server that hosts Sinfest.) <P>There's even a Pittsburgh angle to the story, as there are two locally produced comics out there that I know of: my own "Chopping Block" at <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/chopblok" TARGET=_blank>http://www.geocities.com/chopblok</A> (I used to do a strip called "Smithfield" which ran in the Pgh CityPaper for a couple of years), and "Down to Earth" which is written by Pittsburgher Gavin Chafin (illustrated by Steve Wood, who lives in England), and is at <A HREF="http://www.downtoearthcomic.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.downtoearthcomic.com</A> (it appeared in InPgh for a while). I was also the original illustrator for Down to Earth, but that's another matter.<P>If you're interested in pursuing the idea, a good place to get some info would be the creators of <A HREF="http://www.KeenSpot.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.KeenSpot.com</A> and <A HREF="http://www.KeenSpace.com" TARGET=_blank>http://www.KeenSpace.com</A> , which serve as common hosting grounds for many of the more popular comics out there. Here are some email addresses:<P>Chris Crosby: crosbycomics@email.msn.com
Darren Bluel: gav@nuc.berkeley.edu
keenspace@keenspace.com<P>Thanks for your time, and I hope you see a story in here somewhere! We can use all the exposure we can get!
---Lee<P><P>------------------
---Lee
<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/chopblok" TARGET=_blank>Chopping Block</A>

[Michael Martin]

Speaking as a "wandering fan," I can offer up two "it would be nice if"s.<P>Strip synopses would be wondrous things to have. I've seen talk of a Keenspace newsbox, but it would be <I>really</I> nice to see something like Keenspot's "comic list," which just has the little capsule descriptions, plus links.<P>Secondly, it might be useful to vaguely group comics by theme/style/whatever. This has two advantages and one disadvantage:
+ It formalizes the "If you like this, check out..." relationship, attracting readers that are more likely to be positively disposed towards whatever the comic is.
+ Keenspace would then have "constellations."
- If formalizes the "If you like this, check out..." relationship, which pigeonholes comics that are <I>supposed</I> to be original.<P>--Michael

[Lee.herold]

If you'd ever seen "Smithfield", you wouldn't be asking. (read: IT'S WEAK!)<P>------------------
---Lee
<A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/chopblok" TARGET=_blank>Chopping Block</A>