Designing a Perfect Front Page for your Webcomic – Part 2
By Tracy on October 13th, 2009Posted In: Blog
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WARNING: THIS BLOG IS FULL OF ADVICE.
Well, How-To's, Hacks, and General Discussion, really; but also alot of guidance on how to do things, and on what not to do. It's what I've learned, and what I'm sharing with you.
Much of it is solid. The rest requires more be said. Please weigh what you learn here with other insights to see what works best for you. Thank you.
For more tips and tutorials, see: http://www.reddit.com/r/makecomics
Posted In: Blog
Now that your comic (with a working navigational system just below it) is aptly positioned as the center piece of your site’s front page, you must consider how best to approach the equally important aspects of marketing, promoting and earning profit from your webcomic site. You must decide the following
1. Will you be adding your own editorial after thoughts to the comic? That is usually accommodated immediately under your navigation bar. As audiences tend to appreciate forming a personal relationship with the comic creator, many webcomics have this feature, while others do not as it is widely felt that the audience should be allowed to draw their own conclusions from the art work rather than be led to any premise by the webcomic author.
2. Do you want to allow your viewers to comment on your comics? This device is generally not employed by the more popular webcomics that instead collect their viewers’ feedback in their forums on blogs. If you do not have a forum or comic specific blog (and small comics tend not to) then a comment section for your viewers is a useful marketing tool to have. Feel free to moderate said comments as you see fit, as subjecting yourself and your webcomic to obnoxious trolls is not considered a virtue. Having said that, being overly sensitive to comments about your art is also not sportsmanlike
3. Will you be monetizing your site? (Using your webcomic site to make money.) If so, you are encouraged to sign up as an Ad Publisher with Google Adwords and Project Wonderful and to place these ad boxes, banners and buttons in the most prominent spaces such as above your header and site description and along the sides of your editorial after thoughts and or viewer comments to maximize your revenue intake. Your footer is not considered a prominent place for ad boxes even though it is an acceptable and popular place to display them.
4. Will you be providing affiliate links to other comics on your site? Making friends with other webcomics is always a great way to get some free publicity for your site. While most webcomics proved small links or mentions of such affiliates, a practical school of thought tends to agree that giving your affiliates some prominence on your site will encourage them to place your links in readily accessible places too. Not only will you benefit from any success they have marketing their site (as they will likewise benefit from your success), but camaraderie is very important in the webcomic world. You will note how the more popular webcomics tend to be grouped into clichés that promotionally and creatively support each other (And yes, clichés do exist on the internet as well)
These are the four secondary considerations that affect your front page’s landscape. It should be noted that more successful webcomics choose colour schemes depending on their genre and subject matter there for a deep blood red background for the quirky Dinosaur Comics would be as inappropriate as a rosy pink for the boding Heroes Inc.
If you would like further help in designing your webcomic site there are many more resources to assist you. I’ll happily point you in their direction.
