Not just any comments. Make engaging, entertaining and informative comments that will entice readers to click your attached link or use their search engines to find out you and more about you and more from you. .

How do you do that? Here are 4 ways you can.

1. Be generous. By all means give feedback where invited to do so meaningfully and sociably.

2. Be funny. If you can think of something amusing to say about the content then by all means do.

3. Be kind. Although some contents do deserve a good dressing down, you should make every effort to state your dissent with as much tact as you can muster with little to no crassness included. (Therefore, No Trolling)

4. Be consistent. Site owners appreciate your patronage and tend to reward regular comments with privileges like hosting your banner on their site, or adding you to their blogroll, or directly their readers to your site, or commenting on your site too.

Yes, comments are increasingly becoming a important factor in existing online. As the internet becomes more interactive where site owners can now track who views their site, which sites they are coming from and which sites they go to, where users can link their various social networking profiles, and where with the use of the Intense Debate plugin, the history of comments made across the web by WordPresss bloggers can be made and voted upon by peers, you should be interested in becoming a top notch commentator and building a reputation online.

Further more, a good reputation online serves at least one good purpose. Commenting regularly and substantially in any community creates a presence that allows you certain privileges within that group and everyone know communities support their most popular members. Will that be you?

A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project outlining how people are receiving their news (including comics) indicates that as today’s media environment becomes more portable, personalized, and participatory:

• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

“In addition, people use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news. And they use traditional email and other tools to swap stories and comment on them. Among those who get news online, 75% get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% share links to news with others via those means.”
The study therefore gives statistics to what we all probably already knew. That dependence on electronic media is increasing and that electronic media is quickly becoming the preferred way to communicate. This means then that making your webcomic available in a mobile phone format and definately (or at the very least) in an RSS feed are components of an efficient distribution strategy.

Also, most successful webcomics (including the King of Project Wonderful, Dinosaur Comics) have surged to the heights of thier popularity through word of mouth rather than through thier using paid advertising.

The above points make a weak argument for the validity of buying ads. (Sorry Project Wonderful) but does not deter many webcomickers from buying ad space everyday even just for the chance to get exposure in places they couldn’t get into on their own. (A positive for the ad companies)

Which raises another issue of getting what one pays for. Yes, unless the webcomicker is paying large sums of money to be placed on major sites with lots of readers, they will get (buy) placement on seldom seen, low viewership sites. Which translates into low click rates and almost no viewers. Even if that is all you can afford its pennies you will be giving away. (Question: If it is just costing pennies to advertise, is the investment even on small sites, worth it?)

What if you decide that paid advertising is not for you, are there free alternatives?

Yes. Recommendations for publicizing your comic at no monetary cost are:
• List it in webcomic directories
• Support other webcomic artists who will let you leave links to your comic on their sites, either directly or in comments, or as guest strips, or fan art.
• Use social networking media
• Exchange links on Blog Rolls
• Participate in webcomic communities
• Post copies of your work in public places like on school, office, library, community, coffee shop bulletin boards, etc.
• Start an emailing list. Ask your friends permission to send your work to them first then ask them to send it to their friends.

Can you think of other ways to advertise your site for free?