The Beginner's Guide to Big Pimping (In Four Easy Steps)

Van Douchebag · Post by **Van Douchebag** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:30 am

In many ways a webcomic is a lot like a baby. You cradle it. You nuture it. It's a part of you, and you're a part of it. You can't starve it, and you can't spoil it.

In even more ways a webcomic is a lot like a hooker. You're your own webcomic's pimp. A webcomic by itself, with all its sexyness, isn't always enough on its own to attract patrons. It needs someone like you to do some big pimpin' and work it up and down from dusk 'till dawn.

Step 1 - Signing on the polka-dotted line
The first step to big pimping is basic advertisement. What's the easiest and most effective way to do this? Run banners in your signatures showcasing the best of your comic to attract patrons. You can do this in a great many ways from using sex to sell (See the "Loserz" banner for an idea - thongmania.), from using simple comedy ("The Noob" banner), or using skewed pop culture (See my Colonel Sanders banner for an example).

Why is a signature better than posting a thread saying "Check out my comic"? The reasons are blatently obvious - no one likes a whore. Remember - you're an aspiring pimp; not the ho itself! By putting up a banner in your signature and posting normal posts like any other member you're flaunting to a potential clientele without the hard selling that comes out lame. You're saying "Here we are. Come and get us, player"

By using this really simple technique, you can easily obtain hundreds of hits per monthes from message boards. Remember - the more you visit the more hits you'll recieve in turn! Work, pimp!

Step 2 - Bury bones in the Big Dawg's yard
Pimping ain't easy and you're going to have to work for this one, but the payoff can be worth more than your effort. Some of the Big Dawgs out there with their pristine ho-comics keep fanart galleries. By appealing to the Big Dawgs (Or Medium Dawgs for that matter) with some fan art they might just repay the favor by sticking your picture in their galleries with the link. If the Big Dawgs look favorably on you, you might just strike up a relationship that'll come back to help you later on in Step 4.

Step 3 - Hos on billboards
Already up to Step 3, player? Alright, then! One piece of advice I have goes back to the whole Step 1 bit - visit message boards! The boards you want to look for are dedicated artist message boards where members regularly put up their art for critique and comments. This is the perfect place for you to do some pimping.

Two words, my brotha' - "pin up". What you want to do is either create a pin up picture of a sexy lady (Or guy, depending on your demographic) from your comic or a very awesome, dynamic and/or epic scene featuring your characters in some sort of situation that will grab the attention of a potential patron.

When you're done, throw it up on the board in a post along the lines of "Here is [whatever] from my webcomic [yadda yadda yadda]. What do y'all think?". If you did a good job on the pin up, you might just be able to drag whoever sees it back to your site, if only once.

Step 4 - Friends in High Places (And I don't mean in the back of the car doing coke)
Undoubtedly there are some BIG ass Dawgs running their shiz out there. They got a patronage so big it makes you and your dinky little ho look like kiddies. When they bark, everybody listens.

What's the advantage of this? If these Big Dawgs bark about you then their patrons will come flocking to check out your shiz too. I mean, the biggest most blatent example we have is when Penny Arcade barked on Elf Only Inn, giving Sortelli the influx he needed to do some Big Pimpin'.

Most of the time, unless you've got a really groundbreaking ho, you're going to hafta do something to get barked about. This shiz goes back to Step 2, but is ultimately effective. Take the SUPER ULTIMATE 5 BILLION FEATURED WEBCOMICS UBER FANART pic that Tauhid Bondia did. It featured a dozen webcomic characters, and about half of the people he featured barked for him afterwards. He effectively killed a flock of birds with the same stone.

Although doing something like this won't usually get you featured on Penny Arcade, or PvP, or Megatokyo, or whatever; it still can open doors for you.

______

Feel free to add to the guide if y'all want.

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 5:00 pm

All responces below here are for additional tips and tricks. Discussion is in another thread.

Toxic · Post by **Toxic** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 7:33 pm

I am confused?

Soap Soaperson · Post by **Soap Soaperson** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 8:05 pm

Was that truly necessary?

Van Douchebag · Post by **Van Douchebag** » Sun Dec 05, 2004 8:24 pm

I asked Ping to delete to topic entierly, but she couldn't and sought Kelly.
Kelly, rather than deleting it, chose to split it.

'nuff said.

Bekka · Post by **Bekka** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:25 am

Some extra tips, so I guess it's the right thread to answer. I believe that self-promotion is a good thing. If you don't want readers, why upload your work on the internet?

I view comics as entertainment (although some people are so good that they make it into an art, but that's not my case), and I don't mind at all if people self-promote themselves. I find it irritating when someone keeps pimping their comic all the time, even in unrelated discussions,

- AND NOW WE INTERRUPT THIS POST FOR A MOMENT TO ASK, HAVE YOU READ MY COMIC TODAY? SPREAD THE MESSAGE AND TELL 5 (FIVE) PEOPLE TO READ MY COMIC AND YOU WILL HAVE GOOD FORTUNE AND SEX WITHIN TWO DAYS, POSSIBLY EVEN WITH ANOTHER PERSON -

where was I? Oh yes, but that's just examples of people who don't know how to self-promote themselves and end up being annoying instead.

VD's advice on using your sig banner to promote is very good, however it doesn't mean that you should refrain completely from the occasional site-whoring, as long as you do it discreetly, non-spammily, and follow the etiquette rules of the forum you chose to self-promote yourself in.

General self-promotion rules that I follow are:

1. No forum likes a sitewhore. If you are a first-time visitor hang around a bit and participate in other discussions (trying not to use them as a way to pimp your work - "Oh, your uncle died? That's terrible. In today's installment of my comic, an alien dies. Check it out at (url).")

2. As VD said, use a catchy banner. It doesn't have to be awesome art, but it should encourage people to click on it. The static portraits of three or four of your characters and a title that doesn't describe much may mean the world to you, but nobody will be clicking on the banner in a hurry. Try to draw a banner that represents your comic in a nutshell, so that people know what to expect when they click and are not disappointed. Try to keep the art of the banner consistent with the art of the comic, rather than outdoing yourself. If I click on a really nice banner and I get to see a shitty looking comic, I feel a bit cheated and hostile enough to leave the site without giving it a second chance. If I see a shitty looking banner that has something catchy enough to make me click on it, I may well give the comic a chance and discover that behind those plain looks there's a new masterpiece of scripting.

3. When you think that the time is right, pimp your comic. Choose a board that has a lot of readers, but that doesn't scroll so fast that you are out of page 1 within an hour. Depending on the type of forum, you may want to add details such as what techniques and materials you use, or how long it takes to draw it, or what was your inspiration, basically make it a bit more interesting than "OMG read my comix it PWNZ, KTHX!!1111!!"

4. Never pimp it twice on the same forum. There's such a thing as overexposure. Also, if a forum has already appeared as a big entry in your webalizer hits, you may want to avoid pimping it there, because people already know about the comic.

5.Don't bump your pimping threads (unless it's to answer a question or clarify something), and if you really must, try to be more subtle than posting "BUMP".

6. Don't overpimp it. I think that I've made less than ten pimping posts since I've started the comic in June, and I'm pretty much done with them for the time being. If people like the comic, they'll do the work for you by telling their friends to read it. Be patient.

7. Once in a while, you'll draw a killer strip. People will love it, will link it all over the place, friends will tell you that it's awesome, but most of all you'll know as you upload it that it's above your average. I have just two killer strips in my comic - script-wise - (#6 and #25), which means that I haven't made a new killer strip in ages

It's not really something that can be planned or every strip would be a killer strip, but when you know that you have one on your hands, make sure to time your pimping with it. If first time visitors like the latest strip, they're much more likely to stay even if the rest of the comic doesn't convince them as much.

8. Don't be an asshole.

Well, these are my tips, I don't have any on VD's points #2, #3 and #4 (except to confirm that sending fanart to a gaming site made them post it, and it gave me mad hits, so fanart = good).

Good luck with promotion, everyone!

Alaina · Post by **Alaina** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:34 am

Bekka wrote:
3. When you think that the time is right, pimp your comic.

Yes, don't pimp when you only have 5 pages up (unless they're spectacular). You can turn people off by sending them to a comic that's either so far too small to have a distinguished personality or mainly filler.

Mr.Bob · Post by **Mr.Bob** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 12:59 pm

STEP 5 - PROFIT!

Godoftarot · Post by **Godoftarot** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:02 pm

Take a Japanese class ^^ That's actually really a good way to promote your comic, because more than half the class will like webcomics. I've already passed my URL out to four people. And if they hated it, I'll find out tomorrow. ^^

The Neko · Post by **The Neko** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:14 pm

godoftarot wrote:Take a Japanese class ^^ That's actually really a good way to promote your comic, because more than half the class will like webcomics. I've already passed my URL out to four people. And if they hated it, I'll find out tomorrow. ^^

They usually only read anime webcomics. Or at least in my classes they do.

And a little addition or concept added to choosing where to market:
- Remember to consider the tastes of the audience that you are marketing to.

Beyonder_alpha · Post by **Beyonder_alpha** » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:27 pm

Or, as an alternative, never ever pimp, never pass out links, don't do it at all.
Ofcourse everybody is thinking, what a moron is that guy, well, allow me to clarify.

If the person finds your comic the hard way, and if the comic is good enough, he will think better of him or herself for finding it and will be proud of his accomplishment. If you update regularly and so on you will keep that one fan.
Step 2:
after finding a small enough audience create a private forum for those people allowing you to mail you their username/password etc.
If you have 10 people doing this, it will be a lot.

Offer them costumised signatures in exchange for a link back to the comic.
Let them do the pimping.

Let the cult grow in size till the costum sig becomes to much work and create a serie of costum signatures for everyone to use, and never ever ever use the ones you allready gave out, it's important to preserve the first target audience.

Over time the amount of readers will grow lightly and if you have a forum, promote certain of the first readers to admins.

Now you have the admins pimping heavily, the trustees pimping moderatly and the hordes pimping lightly.

And then u get a snowball effect.

You don't just take over an audience from another webcomic, you create one, and since you created it, they won't go back on their heels to the first comic if yours becomes a little less in quality over time, they will be more loyal then the gained audience.

Ofcourse, this takes mental calmness and patience and time.
This entire thing is based upon the forbidden fruit theory,
if you tell people to go away, they will come.
if you tell nobody, they will want to know.

Don't forget, we're part of a business in illusion, we gotta play our parts well

Prettydragoon · Post by **Prettydragoon** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:10 pm

Rather than try to bully
Everyone into reading your comic
Another way to gain a
Devoted following is to show
Team spirit towards
Other webcomic artists
Visit their sites and give honest
Encouragement and support
Never refuse to trade links with each
Other. Having said my piece I now
Will end my screed with a bang
!

Luprand · Post by **Luprand** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:16 pm

Another tip: subliminal acrostics almost never work.

--Sij

MaxRadical · Post by **MaxRadical** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 7:42 pm

I've really got to re-emphasise what some people have said above - banners! Banners mean a whole lot for potential links from forum-goers.

The fact is a line of text and the characteristic different-colour of a bunch of url isn't going to grab anyones attention. Sure, if someone has written a particularly interesting or amusing post I'm going to want to find more of what they write, but that's in the minority.

Don't make it too big, 'cos that just annoys people. But a nice, standard size banner will at least catch peoples attention. Whether they visit the site or not - well, if you had that much control over people through exposing them to an 88 x 300 banner you'd be a little too busy taking over the world to worry about your webomic.

But once you had taken over the world - then *everyone* would have to read it.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 3:21 am

Luprand wrote:Another tip: subliminal acrostics almost never work.

--Sij

True, I haven't seen and virgins offering their body to me yet.

Warren · Post by **Warren** » Fri Dec 10, 2004 6:03 am

mcDuffies wrote:
Luprand wrote:Another tip: subliminal acrostics almost never work.

--Sij
True, I haven't seen and virgins offering their body to me yet.

Try doing it in multiple languages.