Starting a web comic, advice welcome.

Agent Smashing

My gf and I are starting a web comic together, she is an amazing artist but has no idea how to use Photoshop or set up a site or anything like that. I have a bachelors in English and am a huge nerd so I understand how to navigate a site and photoshop to a fair degree, I've already got the website being professionally developed and expect it to be done in early Nov. My question is: please throw at me all the advice you can give to someone who has never undertaken a web comic. We both have stable incomes and this is definitely going to be a hobby to start but I would eventually like to make a good handful of money off of this. I plan to have ads and a store, but is there any advice you can give me as far as making money, getting a stable audience, and promoting the comic? My gf is definitely at the professional level as far as her artwork, so I'm honestly not worried about the product.

Any help appreciated, I'll be watching the thread and commenting if needed.

More Details:

Futuristic noir mood style comic, black and white, not a comedy strip but will have funny parts.

Large style pages, not 3 panel comics

Updated Twice a week

Site will have store and forums

amateurhour

Let me start off by saying that you can, at best, hope to make a living doing this after 5-10 years, and that's a big maybe.

There's over 30,000 webcomics on the internet right now in some degree or another and maybe 1% of that (roughly 300 people) make a full time living from comics.

Don't start a comic just because you want to eventually make a good handful of money off of it.

Having said that, for good photoshop and artwork advice you need to check out the Artist's Corner here on the PA forums. They will give you BRUTAL honesty and good advice and you should take it. A lot of them are professional paid artists and they know what they're talking about.

For some of the ins and outs of the business the How To Make Webcomics Book and the Webcomics Weekly podcast by Scott Kurtz, Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, and Kris Straub are fantastic resources. There's also webcomics.com (mainly run by Brad Guigar, but the others, and Robert Khoo pop in from time to time) as a resource. It costs $30 a year and it's worth every bit of that and more.

You're not going to make dick off your ads for the first few years, especially updating twice a week. You're going to need about 30 quality posts before Adsense or Project Wonderful will even take you, and starting out with them you can expect pennies a day, if that. You'll need at least 15-30 thousand unique visits a month before other targeted advertising programs will even speak with you.

There's no need to have a store until you've got a book or at least a dedicated readership of 1000 or more people. This was one of the first things talked about in How to Make Webcomics. Don't start selling t-shirts in your cafepress store when you've only got 30 comics up.

There's NOTHING wrong with wanting to start a comic online. It's a great opportunity we have this day and age that didn't exist in the syndicate model from even as little as 15 years ago, but do it because you want to make a good comic and it's a passion. Don't do it with the expectation that it'll pay the bills in two years.

My wife and I have been making and putting comics online in some form or another for over 4 years and we're just now at the point where we can successfully go to local conventions (3000 people and under) and break even on our table and expenses (and not have to get a hotel room, which would negate that) and we've got two books out.

Lastly, the same thing goes for the forum as it did for the store. Don't even bother with one unless you have 1000 or more dedicated readers. In fact, just don't have a forum. There's too many out there that do the same job that people are already a part of. Have a Facebook Fan page instead and let people comment there.

As far as promoting the comic, a good targeted project wonderful campaign, networking with other cartoonists (not spamming them, and don't just tweet the big names because they get that a thousand times a day), and being part of cartooning communities will help, but the biggest thing you can do is keep a solid update schedule for a year. That will do more for your comic than anything else.

Regarding getting a stable audience, see above.

None of this is meant to talk you out of it. If you follow the advice above and treat it as a passion project and a hobby that would be amazing if it one day took off, then you'll be a lot happier two years from now.

Ask any of the big names in comics proper or online comics and of the 1% making a living, 99% of those people didn't achieve any financial success until around year 5.

Good luck man! Post your comic in the AC when it's ready to go.

Agent Smashing

Thank you for the extremely thoughtful answer, I'll be taking this advice to heart and incorporating it into the comic for sure. And yeah to clarify I'm not making this comic to make money, I'm doing it because it's something I really have a passion for, definitely in it for the long haul.

zepherin

Also you may want to have 20-30 comics done before you even kick the site off. That way you have a comic buffer you can use and keep putting new comics on the pile. So if you and your wife get caught after work or catch a case of the "fuck it's" you can update. However you have to be consistent and competition is high. It is not an "easy field" to monitize.

amateurhour

I agree with the buffer. To be honest I haven't done that in the past with an ongoing series and it bit me in the ass because 50 comics in my art style had already changed enough that the characters looked different to the point where I wanted to redraw the original 20, and that's a common problem with most people that do a storyline based strip.

If you're going for storyline, have the first 20 or 30 done so that you've got a feel for the characters, the clothes they wear, their facial expressions, and the ways their heads look tilted in different directions before you start.

If you're just doing gag a day about whatever makes you laugh I'd say you don't necessarily NEED the buffer.

Agent Smashing

Would you recommend going to conventions even when I'm starting out? Or should I wait for a bigger readership? I'm not talking to grow readership (although it would slightly) but to meet people who know the web comic scene better, networking and what not.

amateurhour

I recommend checking out local shows in your area of varying sizes just to see what others are doing and talking to them and building a friendship. Some cons are cool about letting people leave flyers, and you can do that.

You don't need to buy a table until you've got the merch to fill it up.