I've experimented with advertising at a few places. These figures are approximately a year old but, for comparison purposes, I've set out the results below. I haven't mentioned the duration of the advertisement because, economically, I've found it more useful to compare Cost per incremental Unique Visitor, irrespective of term.


SITE: OnlineComics.net (Sponsor slot)
RATIONALE: Major listings site
COST: USD 6
RESULTS: 100 - 120 Uniques increase
OTHER NOTES: Cost per incremental Unique Visitor - 5 cents

SITE: OnlineComics.net (Partner slot)
RATIONALE: Major listings site
COST: USD 18
RESULTS: 172 Uniques increase
OTHER NOTES: Cost per incremental Unique Visitor - 10 cents

SITE: ROL comic
RATIONALE: Story-led comic with possible similar readership
COST: USD 2
RESULTS: 43 Uniques increase
OTHER NOTES: Cost per incremental Unique Visitor - 5 cents

SITE: Yirmumah
RATIONALE: Gag strip (dissimilar readership) but with high readership
COST: USD 35
RESULTS: 428 Uniques increase
OTHER NOTES: Cost per incremental Unique Visitor - 8 cents


Short term analysis

1. As you'd expect - in terms of absolute numbers - the more you are prepared to pay, the more traffic you are likely to receive.

2. In terms of Cost per new Unique Visitor, however, low cost advertising can be just as valuable as high cost advertising. For me, for example, two consecutive Sponsor slots at OnlineComics.net generated more traffic than a single Partner slot, despite costing less.


Longer term considerations

1. In ALL cases, after the advetisement had ceased to run, visitor numbers reverted to roughly where they were before (i.e. NONE resulted in any significant permanent increase). Therefore, unless you can make enough money from the extra visitors to cover the cost of the advertisement, paid advertising may not be a good use of your resources.

2. After the advertisement had ceased to run, only OnlineComics.net continued to generate traffic (and this is almost certainly due to its function as a listing site, rather than due to the advertisements themselves).

Just to kind of drop my two cents in here as far as advertising on other webcomic sites (like Yirmumah, which you mentioned) - in my experience it's absolutely best if you focus on advertising on sites that have something in common with your comic, no matter if the site you're buying has a high number of readers. It stands to reason that if I were to advertise my (fantasy) comic on a site like, say, Penny Arcade (just to throw an example out), I would probably not get a lot of recurring readers, because the interests of the two userbases are nothing alike. I would probably get a lot of initial hits from people clicking to see what the comic was, but it's unlikely that many of them would be interested or come back. I might get lucky and get a few readers out of it, but it's probably not worth the amount of money that I would pay for the ad.

Watching the results from the projectwonderful ads I have up on my page, the ones that get the most hits are those that are fantasy and/or anthro related - that's what most of my readers are interested in, so that's the type of ad that they're most likely to click on (and continue visiting).

Likewise, I get the most returning visitors when I advertise on sites that are fantasy or science fiction related, and next to none when I advertise on sites that have nothing whatsoever to do with my comic (humor/gag strip sites, video game sites, etc).

In short, to maximize your results, research the site you're buying adspace on first. A whole lot of initial hits doesn't really do much good in the long run if none of those people ever come back to your site.

Anyway, I hope I'm not hijacking the thread or anything, I thought it was a related rant to your long term considerations. xD

No, I don't see that as hi-jacking this thread at all. It's 100% relevant and I agree that, in theory at least, it makes more sense to advertise on related sites. As I said above, however, I have tried both related sites (which, in my case, don't tend to have such high readerships) and unrelated sites, just so I could make the comparison. Surprisingly, in terms of returning visitors, the results were no different.

I suppose the way I would square this with your experience would be in terms of genre. The web has become the natural home of furry and traditional fantasy comics (mainly, of course, because there is so little of it in mainstream print comics) and the fans of those genres will more readily add extra comics to their list of regular reads. The same, I imagine, would be true of yaoi comics and the many other sub-sets of romantic manga.

Fans of action/adventure comics (and particularly super hero comics) may be less likely to add extra webcomics to their reading lists, simply because their tastes are already well catered for and readily available in print. I'd be interested in hearing the experiences of other creators in these genres.

There has been a whole thread discussing project wonderful.

http://www.drunkduck.com/community/view_topic.php?tid=33628&cid=234

I think it should be moved into this forum.

I've only made ads for 3 sites though, Project Wonderful, OnlineComics and Topwebcomics.

I've had the most success on Project Wonderful with the least amount of money.