This one might be an interesting topic.

We all know how to promote our comic in some way, but how do you promote your comic for different hosting sites?

What do you need to do to become popular at Drunk Duck?

What do you need to do to become popular at SmackJeeves?

What do you need to do to become popular at Comic Genesis?

What do you need to do to become popular at your own hosting site?

What do you need to do to become popular at other places?

Your input please.

I'd be very interested in knowing these things too... unfortunately I don't think I'm a great promoter or anything. But here's some useless input.

JillyFoo
What do you need to do to become popular at Drunk Duck?

* First, make sure your comic is as good as it can be (much easier said than done)

* Have a good banner... take your very best picture and make it look n~i~i~c~e. I once found a comic because I clicked on their banner by mistake, and was like, "this looks terrible!" but then it ended up being hilarious and awesome, and I read the entire archive.

* Comment on other people's comics

* Comment in the forums? (not sure if this helps)

* Project Wonderful advertising-- I did it for a little while, and got more pageviews...

*Make friends with people! idk if it helps promote, but it makes you feel all warm & fuzzy inside...

What I'm wondering is, do people who give out mountains of empty 5's (like, a comment that's blank and just has a "5" rating) actually get a readership response?

JillyFoo
This one might be an interesting topic.

We all know how to promote our comic in some way, but how do you promote your comic for different hosting sites?

What do you need to do to become popular at Drunk Duck?

What do you need to do to become popular at SmackJeeves?

What do you need to do to become popular at Comic Genesis?

What do you need to do to become popular at your own hosting site?

What do you need to do to become popular at other places?

Your input please.

I was just about to say this would be more fit for advertising discussion, but then I re-read it and decided otherwise.

Well, since I only host at Drunkduck anymore (used to at Smackjeeves, and stopped at Fur Affinity)

The way I usually get views (not popular by any means, but views nonetheless) is to be active on the forum. Also to post on the "Did you update, and comment on the one before you" blah blah blah one. The "Hey Look what I did" forum is also good.

Also, if you post comments on other people's comics, chances are, they'll go to your comic and check it out too.

What do you need to do to become popular at SmackJeeves?

I think the idea of this was to look at different tactics/ways people at different sites use to get readers.

I think "presence" is a good thing for Drunk Duck. I've been here for almost five years so that could help. I used to comment on other people's comics a lot a few years ago. I do post on the DD forum, but mostly in the comic discussion. I think having a schedule for updating helps too.

If I can come up with a very good example of people with presence at DD it would be people like Ozoneocean being on the forums and... I remember Cheeko had a lot of presence when she was here with participating in the DD events and stuff.


SJ and CG confuse me.

People don't comment much on SJ, yet there's a lot of faves going around. Despite popular opinion it's not only the yaoi comics that get the faves, it's the really damn well drawn manga and tone pages that get the faves. I do not know much more.

CG... I'm new to the site. I think people treat it more as a own hosting site and promote as if it's by itself. We need more info.

JillyFoo
People don't comment much on SJ, yet there's a lot of faves going around. Despite popular opinion it's not only the yaoi comics that get the faves, it's the really damn well drawn manga and tone pages that get the faves. I do not know much more.

CG... I'm new to the site. I think people treat it more as a own hosting site and promote as if it's by itself. We need more info.

I signed up for CG, but it's pending. And I *tried* to do the smackjeeves thing, but the whole layout annoyed me (it's like using a $20 sandisk mp3 player after using ipods your whole life... like, "this is so much better @ dd!" ) it was really difficult to make comments and such, and the site's just ugly : ( idk, though; SJ seemed like such a comment-less tundra... my favorite part of webcomics is reading comments!! page counts are nice and all but they don't give you anything actually thought-provoking.

Gudsnuk, I can confirm that commenting in forums helps.
Lots of people have started reading my comic based on the nonsensical ramblings they read from me on here.
One person even commented on my comic that they wanted to see if it was as strange as I am!

Project wonderful advertising does, as the name suggests, work wonders.

I know nothing of what people get up too on other comic sites.
I assume they are all heathen barbarians, worshipping false pagan gods around blood stained alters. The less I know about those scary foriegn types the better! I marked them in my favourites under "here be dragons!" so I will know to stay away!

Across the board:
*Adverts help.
*Attractive banners help. (I is bad at this one!) But I wouldn't pull the bait'n'switch trick where your promo image is way different than your work. That's might get clicks, but isn't going to help you retain readers if most of the people who're seein' it hit "back" right away.
*Lists/comic forums/banner exchanges/etc.

DD:
*post in forums. That's the only way (I think) to get a new comic noticed at all, unless someone randomly happens upon it and gives it a shout-out in the "Unnoticed" thread or somethin'. Also I'd have a cool-lookin' avatar, that's at least kinda representative of your style. I click folks because of that, but I ain't sure anyone else does.

*comment on comics; respond to reader comments. I've found I get a lot more comments by havin' a dialogue with my readers. You tend to get more specific responses if you let folks know you're readin' and care about what they've got to say.

*update regularly- at least once a week.

*make a good comic! Frickin' duh.

Honestly, I tried mirroring on SJ and I haaaaaated it. There's some good stuff over there, but the majority (of even the good stuff) is like, the polar opposite of what I do. I think DD's more receptive to weirdo stuff. I finally gave up on updating over there (I need to delete my comic).

CG ain't an option for me on account of the html thing.

Making a comic that's any good?
WHOA! Steady on! lets not get crazy here!

harkovast
Making a comic that's any good?
WHOA! Steady on! lets not get crazy here!

Dude! It's never been done! (haha, I kid :P)
It's like a suicide mission! Don't do it!

But seriously, SJ is terrible. To adjust the page order, you have to adjust the time you uploaded it. That's just...ugh. The whole thing sucks.

Drunkduck is awesome.
Never tried CG.

harkovast
Making a comic that's any good?

Well, I wouldn't know a damn thing about that... I mean, I'm just goin' on what the word on the street is. It's all guileless speculation here. ;)

Hyena, well okay, but you want to be careful with those kind of wild, untested theories!
What if some young, impressionable comic artist came on hear, read this conversation and wrote a comic that was...*gasp*...ACTUALLY ANY GOOD???

They'd steal all our hits for starters!!!

I find that posting everywhere and anywhere helps! LOL

I host on DD and SJ. I started on SJ and then moved to DD, I was gonna take down my SJ mirror site but I actually get as may page views there on update days as I do here. Mainly because someone posted a Topic about my webcomic on Snopes.com and used my SJ address, so I garnered a bunch of readers from that.

I think it helps to advertise a lot, I mainly promote for DD, just because I like it better here. I kind of feel bad for neglecting SJ cuz I do have a lot of loyal readers over there. But the thing that annoys me is you can't just put in author comments when you upload a page. You have to go back and do it.

But hey readers are readers no matter where they are reading it.

Ryuthehedgewolf
But seriously, SJ is terrible. To adjust the page order, you have to adjust the time you uploaded it. That's just...ugh. The whole thing sucks.

that's how it is on cg, and on your own domain with any other webcomic php engine.

I actually find that easier, because if i want to set a page in between two other pages that i have been uploaded, i just set the date to be right before the other.

although i wish on the duck, there is a faster way to rearrange pages other than moving the page page by page.

You could confuse people into checking your comic twice by posting on the forums with a gimmick account you created so you could upload a page 'in character'.

But I imagine that kind of thing is frowned upon.

Voidcast active
You could confuse people into checking your comic twice by posting on the forums with a gimmick account you created so you could upload a page 'in character'.

But I imagine that kind of thing is frowned upon.

Weirdest first post ever. Watch out for this guy, he's runnin' scam! lol!

Voidcast active
You could confuse people into checking your comic twice by posting on the forums with a gimmick account you created so you could upload a page 'in character'.

But I imagine that kind of thing is frowned upon.

People can have as many accounts here as they like, but we ask them to stick to one of them when using the forums unless they clear it with an admin first. :]

skoolmunkee
People can have as many accounts here as they like, but we ask them to stick to one of them when using the forums unless they clear it with an admin first. :]

My bad!
I wasn't planing on making a habit of posting under two accounts, if that helps my case. : /

Back on topic, I'm the artist for a Self-Hosted webcomic and in my experience Webcomic lists like Tobwebcomics are entirely useless if you don't have a billion readers already.

I haven't had much sucsess promoting the comic on forums at all, but that's probably because I am terrible at talking things up. Either that or it's so bland that no one has anything to say about it.

Phillby
Back on topic, I'm the artist for a Self-Hosted webcomic and in my experience Webcomic lists like Tobwebcomics are entirely useless if you don't have a billion readers already.

I dunno, man- I get about 100-200 referrals a week from TWC's list, and the TWCL forums (not the actual list). Not a huge chunk of my overall, but it's still something. I don't know how I get any referrals from the other ones, as for the most part their sites are so convoluted that I can't even find my own comic on there!

With TWC it doesn't really help you out unless you're in the top 200 or so- I guess people can't be arsed to browse more than two pages of listings. But it doesn't really take that many votes to get up there- I think only about 10% of my readers actually vote. But no one's gonna vote if you're not offering incentives, unless (like you said) you've got like, billions of rabid fans who inexplicably feel some sort of validation for having a comic they like get a higher rank. ;)

I get quite a few referrals from the Belry Webcomic list....

Yeah, its a furry one.
Damn it!

harkovast
I get quite a few referrals from the Belry Webcomic list....

Yeah, its a furry one.
Damn it!

It's not all furries- I get referrals from there, too; but that's one of the ones I was talkin' about, not bein' able to find my own comic on.

Man I think I need to send an email to the webcomiclist or something. My URL changed, and I've tried to update it for weeks and it still won't change.

any other webcomic lists (other than thewebcomiclist.com)?