Spy6teen

Hey gang! Welcome back to another edition of the newly retitled: Blog@16!

Last week we talked about the factors that led us to the decision of releasing Spy6teen as a webcomic, which in turn, created some good discussions on the future of the comic book medium. I honestly hope that the post has inspired a few of you out there to get out and start creating books of your own as well!

As I’d mentioned before, I (and the royal “we”) aren’t the world’s leading experts on webcomics– We’re learning by doing, which is (in my opinion) the best way to learn anything. In this entry, I’ll talk a bit about what I’ve learned about traffic this week!

Living in Los Angeles, I know a fair amount about traffic– in as much, everyone hates it. Of course, when you’re starting a webcomic, that reverses– traffic suddenly becomes a good thing…to some degree.

When you make the plunge into starting your webcomic, you can’t help but hear Terence Mann’s voice in the back of your head: “Build it and they will come” — and as I’ve found through our first two weeks, that’s true. Our numbers, as tracked by Google, basically have us around 40 to 50 visits a day– of those, close to 40% are returning visitors, so it’s nice to know that we’re building a small audience.

I’ll admit that at our launch, I fell into a trap I believe a great number of webcomic authors do: The quest for “hits”– You build your site, launch it, and begin obsessively checking google to see your stats. You stay up until 4am, wondering why you aren’t getting views by the millions.
The biggest thing I’ve learned this week is that hits are easy– building a readership, that’s something that takes time. I could easily get our hit counter in the thousands by using a few Search Engine tricks– One that I’d come across suggested that if I were to re-headline our site as: (not) a comic starring Miley Cyrus, I’d get the boatload of hits everytime someone searched “Miley Cyrus comic”– I’m not being disingenuous– the fact is, Spy6teen is NOT a comic starring Miley Cyrus– but, would such a headline be a) ethical and b) worthwhile?
How many of Miley’s fans would convert over to becoming Spy6teen fans?
I doubt very many.
On the other hand, maybe I can subtitle with: (not) a Twilight comic starring Robert Pattenson and Kristen Stewart– Hmmm, maybe that’s the way to go. (evil face)

The point is, I could have a number of days getting tons and tons of hits– but since we’re an on-going series, how many would return after spending 2 seconds here and realizing we aren’t a Twilight/Hannah Montana crossover? (Does that exist?) And how much time would I spend cleaning out the comment section of hate mail? (my guess is: a lot)

Anyhow, I’ll admit, for a brief while  I became Frodo with the ring on my quest for traffic– luckily I ran across a few helpful posts via various forums and other Webcomics that straightened me out. The general rule of thumb on a webcomic is that you’ll build a readership the longer and more consistently you update. We’ve updated twice on Monday– on the plus side, we haven’t missed a week– on the downside, yeah- we’ve only got two pages up!
It’s hard for a new reader to gauge if they like the book and plan on supporting us with only two pages to review– I totally understand that. Which is why I’ve more or less held off on doing any kind of massive campaign push. That said, what I have been working on is trying to quietly promote amongst people that understand the webcomic production timeline– various forums such as The Webcomic List and Comic Genesis. Many of these fellow forum members run webcomics themselves, so they’re understanding and supportive of the relative low-page count.

Even though they’re understanding, you still don’t want to go in guns-a-blazin’. I’ve seen a lot people jump into a forum and their first post is “Check out my Comic!” — generally, that’s considered trolling and is not highly regarded amongst the community you’re joining.
The method that seems to be helping us find our audience is simply placing a signature line with this:

…which links to the site. If it catches someone’s eye: Great– if not, no big– The important part is to be an active member of the community– hang out and talk to people– Most of them are pretty cool and have a lot of the same interests that you do. A forum is really more about an exchange of ideas, not a giant billboard.
As out comic builds, perhaps around page 11 to 15, I might start a thread, inviting people to comment or critique– but for now, it’s a bit like inviting friends over to your new unfurnished house.

Another very useful readership builder appears to be our Twitter account– which is here. We have a small group of followers, but I follow them all back and I do try to actively interact with them. One of the things I realized earlier this week is that using Twitter to only update your followers on new pages isn’t the most effective usage of it. To that, I’ve started RTing (that’s retweeting, to you non-twitter folks) other tweets that I think our readership might be interested in. Later this week, I’ll start linking to articles that I find online that also may be of interest…it seems to be a good way of actually using your twitter account for something other than: Hey, we’ve got a new page up!
If you’re on Twitter, please hit us up @spy6teen. I’ll @ ya back!

Another tool that seems to be helping people find us is our listing on Top Web Comics:

Thus far, I think it’s just mostly been me clicking the link and voting for us everyday (sad face)- but, amusingly, with just 20 votes we’ve pushed ourselves from 2045 place to our current standing at 1,111! That’s right, you’re reading the 1,111th most popular webcomic in the world! Still, somehow we’re getting a little traffic from them– despite being waaaaay down on the list.
The real trick with TWCL is to be in their top 10 or top 100– generally those comics are hitting readership numbers around 50k– so I don’t see that happening in the next month!

So, to recap, what I’ve learned this week is to drop the quest for hits and start focusing on the quest for readers– to which, if you’ve read this far: Thank You! You’re a reader!! You are my pot of gold/+5 exp points!

In other site news, we’ll be rolling out some Project Wonderful ads in the next few days– I’ll explain why in the next blog entry.
I’ll discuss this image:

Additionally, I’ll be starting a new semi-regular mid-week update featuring some of DJ Keawekane‘s sketches and bonus art! I’m thinking we’ll start that on Tuesday!

Finally, I just wanted to say thank you to those who have left comments. You guys really don’t know how much they mean to us– every time my Inbox bings with a comment notification, I get downright giddy. I was talking to DJ recently, and he echoed much the same–
I was thinking about old school Comic Book letter columns– which, I’m sure many of you read– and how I feared that we were going to lose them in the transition over to Digital books. That is until I realized that comments are just the new iteration of the letter column– even better, because it isn’t monthly, it’s daily!

Ok, that wraps up this edition of Blog@16! Seeya Monday with a stellar page that will wrap up our introduction section of the book!