The Ten Commandments of Webcomic Production

[redneckgaijin]

I. Thou shalt have a regular update schedule. It mattereth not if it be daily, M-F, or once per week, so long as thine readers know when and where to look for the comic. Thou shalt remember this schedule and keep it holy, or inform thy readers why.

II. Thou shalt put the most recent page or strip of your comic on thy front page, above the scroll, so that people mayest know that thou have updated.

III. Thou shalt not have a "cover page" which people must click through to find thy comic, save if thou hast naughty bits in thine artwork, in which case thou hadst damned well better have a screener page to allow visitors to "opt out", lest ye find yeself hauled to ye olde gaol.

IV. Thou shalt have a means of navigating the older strips in thy comic aside from scrolling backwards one at a time.

V. If thou doest commissions, or special messages in place of a comic update, thou shalt not maintain these artworks in the same archive as thy comic, where they shall break up the story. Verily, this is what separate Gallery pages are for.

VI. If thy strip hast a regular cast and a regular story, thou shalt have a Cast page or other such resource on thy site so that thy readers mayest know what ye olde hell be goingest on.

VII. Thy website shalt not break thy readers' browsers. Learnest ye HTML and keep it simple.

VIII. Thou shalt not pretend that Yahoo Groups, LiveJournal, DeviantArt, etc. pages constitute a proper site for thine comics. Yea, I say unto you, web hosting is cheap, and free hosting options abound on proper sites; begrudge ye not the time and expense.

IX. Thou shalt treat thine readership with respect and politeness, lest the blessings of ye Donations Button be withheld.

X. If ye keepest not any or all of these commandments I through IX, then thou shalt produce artwork, stories, jokes, tragedies, or whatever thy comic may contain of such a quality that people will readest it anyway; verily, I say unto you, it had better kicketh it the ass.

Comments

[scarfman]

I was browsing the Blank Label message boards today. On the Schlock Mercenary board a reader recently posted a six-point argument why Tayler is a better webcartoonist than anyone else doing it for his livelihood. That list also started off, like yours - as these invariably do, in my observation - with that you must (as I like to phrase it) pick an update schedule you can stick to, and then stick to it.

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on your definitions of "success" and "better".

It took a long time of not updating Lunch Break (as in about three months) before I saw a noticable drop in sales or donations. At the same time, my traffic did go down signifigantly. Which is an interesting but unintended experiment — in my opinion it means I dropped a lot of casual readers that were only there for "Hey free comic!" but never gave anything back. The dedicated readers stuck around, were and are still willing to contribute to help me get back to work. Except for a slight loss of ad revenue, I can't say I really care about losing fickle people like the first group. They'll come and go as they please. If I haven't turned them into dedicated readers by 300+ comics, I'm not going to.

If you care signifigantly about sheer readership numbers, then it probably does make a difference. But what really matters to me is being able to meet bills and it's my dedicated readers that do that. They seem to be very forgiving of a sporadic and undefined update schedule. If I have 1000 readers or 10,000 but the same group of people are the only ones contributing, it's really not that big of a deal to me.

[scarfman]

As someone who isn't in it to make a living, readership numbers are the only element of the thing (or the only element of it that falls outside of my direct, personal control) that makes a difference to me. I haven't done any experiments, intended or otherwise; I only know that I haven't missed a daily update in the two and half years since I started, and my unique visitor numbers continue to trend steadily upwards. And no doubt my attitude is colored by that update stamina is the one element of webcomicking which it cannot be said that I lack.

By the way, good luck to you and hang in there.

[jinwicked.livejournal.com]

If you care signifigantly about sheer readership numbers, then it probably does make a difference.

Isn't that pretty much what I said?

None of the comics I read have anything to do with their update schedule. Most of the few I do read are primarily because I like the art. Different strokes.

And thanks. One of my little rats is wasting away and I don't think we're going to have her around another two weeks, maybe one... I've been having to help her eat lately and she doesn't seem to be in any pain, but she's just sorta wasting away. I was ready to deal with losing her before Xmas but it's come on a lot faster than I was expecting.

[scarfman]

Isn't that pretty much what I said?

Yes. I was agreeing with you, amplifying your point in my capacity as a personification of it.

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

A valid corollary to commandment 1 is that the creator(s) can announce a change to the update schedule without the readers whining. But once again, it has to be one they can keep, and they can not keep changing the schedule constantly.

[abb3w.livejournal.com]

Commandment One is (IMHO) missing one critical component. It should read "Thou shalt have a regular update schedule. It mattereth not if it be daily, M-F, or once per week, so long as thine readers know when and where to look for the comic. Thou shalt remember this schedule, post it prominently, and keep it holy, or inform thy readers why."

I'm also not sure if it should be spelled "holy" or "wholly" in this instance.

[greatdragon-ad.livejournal.com]

Those are commandments I will follow with faith if I plan to make my own webcomic. Thanks, Kris