The 6 elements of a successful WebComic part 2

This post is part 2, you can read part 1 here.

So, far we covered the first half of the 6 elements of a successful WebComic. The first three are: You, the Story & Art, and the Stage. For this article we will talk about Propaganda, the Audience, and Revenue.

Before we jump into these elements I wanted to take this opportunity to mention you can check out my webcomic at www.madmanofmagic.com. If you enjoy it, please share it with your friends and those who might also enjoy reading it.

Thanks!

Now back to the last 3 elements of a successful WebComic.

4: Propaganda

This is what brings an audience to your site. It is technically marketing, but I like the idea of not promoting your webcomic, but instead spreading propaganda. In my mind propaganda has more of a viral feel to it (technically it’s supposed to be on more of a political a political nature, but lets ignore that for this article).

There are way too many parts of marketing to go over on this post. We will be doing a lot of future articles on marketing, but here is a quick list of different areas you need to be thinking about.

• Branding
• Relationship Management (Social Media)
• Advertising
• Publicity
• Promotions
• And a lot more…

The important thing to remember with promoting your webcomic is that you must continue to experiment with different promotional techniques. I will be sharing what works for me (You might want to sign up to my RSS feed by clicking here) on this blog.

5: Audience

When you spread your propaganda, create your stage, and work on your webcomic you have to keep in mind who you’re making the webcomic for.

The audience could be:

Photographers with a sense of humor = what the duck

Those in College or who Work in Academia = phd comics

Your audience could be as simple as “your friends”. Whoever they may be, you need to have an idea of who your audience is to tailor to them.

• Do they like to comment on webComics they read?
• What social media are they on?
• What websites are they visiting?
• Do they prefer to read WebComics on their PC or mobile devices?

If you do not have an audience in your mind, it makes it a lot harder to have a successful comic. You can also refer to my One Paragraph Start-up Plan for Web Comics article for a look at a description of my audience for the Madman of Magic Comic Book.

6: Revenue

This is where your income comes from.

This is determined by your audience and the amount of traffic you are getting.

If you are doing your webComic as a project of love, this element will not matter as much. I do feel everyone putting their hard work and time into a webcomic deserves to at least to make enough money to pay for their hosting and maybe some coffee money.

Many of you want to take this further and make a full time living on your comic.

This is not possible unless you play with the variety of revenue streams that are available for webcomic creators. You need to experiment with what works best for your site, keep an eye on what others are doing, and be willing to ask people to help support your projects.

The 6 elements of a successful webcomic

Conclusion:

Does your webcomic have all 6 of these elements? Are any of them lacking?

Now is a good time to review your strategy, see what’s working, and take your WebComic to the next level.

If you found this article helpful, please share with your friends and feel free to say “hi” to me on twitter at jasonloveslife.