I'm getting discouraged

[JoeGP]

I've been making my comic for a looooong time (at least four years) and I only have like 10 people visiting it daily. I have no idea how I can promote it. I can't just link to any old comic because if there is objectionable stuff on it then kids might click on it and plus I wouldn't want to advertise a comic like that on my site.

I recently listed with some "top webcomic" lists, so hopefully that will do SOMETHING. If anyone could please just read my comic and give me some suggestions on how I could actually get people to read it, I would be forever grateful. It's not very rewarding to spend a lot of time on a comic and get so little readership in return.

http://JoeGP.com <- that's where it is. Thanks for your help.

[BunELovecraft]

I know the feelin' there. You sweat bullets, work your fingers to the bone...and what do you get?

Jack and Shit, and Jack just left town.

I hate that! I'm in the same boat, been doin' comics for like three years now, I update every-other-day with full comicbook style pages, no little three panel jokes here. I pencil, detail ink, tint, and write the stuff and then I post it....and there's intense silence. Sure I'm getting maybe 500 different ISP visits month but I have no contact with anybody who reads OHA. As far as I know blind hamsters in Turkey are downloading my stuff o.0;; Oh well, I'll keep drawin' and keep posting, if I don't I'll turn into a sputtering ,pathetic, plot ,spouting glob of protoplasm drowning in my own dumb ideas. At least at the moment I can put the stuff to paper to free up more space in my cheaply made dinosaur vehicle of conciousness (ie; my brain) .....

Now a few comments on why you might have problems with visits.
1. I couldn't get the page to load so I can't say from looking but....
one thing you have to remember about humans is they love naughty stuff. Any comic that is conservative and not afraid to show some skin is gonna be low on the list of web surfers, sadly enough. It would work in the daily paper, look at Family Circus!, but on-line it's drugs, sex, rock and role, video games, and sex. Oh yeah, sex too...where was I?

2. Remember the three Ps: Pimp, Promote, and Pester
Where your site logo on a t-shirt, sign every e-mail with your address, get it ingraved on your class ring and pimp, promote and pester other comics. Look around. There somebody whose work you like? Tell 'em! Link 'em! They might link you (though in this me me me world it's not blood likely), never underestimate the power of links on your site. I get a good 150 links a month because of a link in my link list. People look for it on google and see that I have the same taste...and foolishly go to my page istead of the pr0n I'm linked to. If all else fails, never underestimate the power of posting long winded replies of studpidness in forums like this one.


If you have done all of these things and your traffic doesn't change, make sure that people can even get to the site. That usually hampers return visits.

Hope I helped, never give up, never surrender! Oh yeah, and run with the little guy!

Bunny

[Wiebe]

Get your site listed in Yahoo! That is, if you can find an appropriate category... This does wonders! You don't have to take my word for it, but all three of the sites I got listed there went on to receive more than 20,000 visits (that's my lowest. My highest was something like a quarter of a million). Try it.

[Sss]

For getting visits I would most certainly suggest getting listed on http://dmoz.org. I now have links for golf courses in Pennsylvania! Not that my comic is about golf mind you. Trust me on this one though it works!

As for feedback I wouldn't trust someone to email me, NO ONE DOES! I mean how many other webtoonists do you actually email? I know I don't...
I would set up one of those little polls on your page.

I.E. Like my site?
1) Yes, it kicks butt
or
2) No its sucks!

something nice and quick that no one minds doing. Yeah I guess thats it later peeps!

[Kisai]

For those that may want to know how proportionaly popular their comic is in relation to other comics hosted on keenspace:

http://cerror.keenspace.com/keendex/ind ... omics.html

How it works:

Pageloads are tracked by the webalizer, so a script that runs around 3AM Pacific gathers all the webalizer stats from all the keenspace sites, and then produces a percent by going (yourstats total page loads this month) /(total pageloads of all comics) x 100

As of today(June 15th) there are about 4.7million pageloads, so 1% = 47,000 pages served.

% is expressed out of a maximum of 100%, so a site that gets more than 0.1% of pages is doing rather well, 1% (of which there are only 11 comics out of about 5000 that reach this) is doing extremely well.

So this changes daily, and the most popular sites at the end of the month ultimately are the most popular.

If you look at the #1 and #2 lists (1%+ and 0.5%-1.%) you'll notice that about a third of these comics are adult natured, with the most popular one (sexy losers - 7%) being also of adult nature.

[ZOMBIE USER 3098]

Well, it can be quite depressing if you've worked hard on both site design and comics as I can tell by the appearence of it. Your comics are good and apparently you work hard to promote it. I think you've been able to keep the balance of both quite well, but I guess the lack of visitors is pretty depressing.

Well, you certainly won't want to link to mine, but I linked to yours because it's certainly a good comic (guinea pigs is a cool idea). But anyways, some help on finding some comics that are safe and you can share links would be the comics on the Kleenspace dropdown. If you want to increase visits, make fanart for more popular comics (there are some out there which are clean enough and popular). Sharing your link w/ others helps a lot. The forums here are also a decent source of advertisement.

Well, I guess as to clean sites, the problem is that most sites aren't. Kids don't come around often enough to use the net for the sake of goodness, most of the comics on keenspace are pretty "naughty" by standards and even the cleaner ones got swearing. I suppose your best bet is to link to the objectionable (but not too objectionable) ones and write a warning concerning them, but if it goes against what you need, can't help ya then.

-Albrecht (I am NOT from Manchester)
http://ntnation.keenspace.com

[McDuffies]

Well, I'm discouraged only by the fact that adult comics are taking almost all the cream, not just because I don't intend to do one ever (mind the ocasional swearing), but because that means majority is still not reading comics - for comics themself.
Srdjan

[Chascraw4d]

I'd say it's an overgeneralization that adult comics are taking almost all of the cream. If a third of the top comics are adult natured, that means that two-thirds aren't. Also, while the top comic is adult-natured (and extremely funny, and beautifully illustrated), the second third and fourth are appropriate for a more general audience. Furthermore, most of the really big non-keenspace comics aren't adult-natured.

That being said, it's pretty much a given that having cute and/or attractive characters can be a draw for your site. And a little titilation doesn't hurt anything. Even Disney uses 'fan-service' to drum up popularity for their characters. Sex-appeal is potent, but you don't need an adult natured comic to take advantage of it.

As far as linking to other comics goes, link to the comics that you read (at least sometimes) and find appropriate for the audience you're aiming your comic at. You might want to check the dropdowns list too, I'm pretty sure there's at least one oriented towards 'clean' comics.

[ZOMBIE USER 9264]

I suddenly feel as though my attempts have bene very futile.
So much for that stoked feeling I had.
*falls into pit of dispair*

I need some hardcore raving to cheer me up!