Ask Me Anything #7 - How Did You Get a Break? (Patreon)

Q: It's hard to get noticed in comics. How did you do it?

A: I accidentally cheated. It was all thanks to a now-deceased service called Project Wonderful, which existed between 2006 and 2018. They were offering a very targeted advertisement system where you could bit for ad space in (among other things) other popular webcomics. Not having read the rules very carefully, I advertised aggressively on pretty much any website that I thought had a large reader base and reasonable price. My ads (including the logo) featured big boobs, so I figured that'd be enough to attract some attention.

By spending about $100 USD a month, I was attracting about 1000 users to my site. After a year, I was at about 10,000 readers (I think I peaked at around 13,000 weekly readers in 2011-2012)

There was a snag, however. My careless advertising meant that I was occasionally putting my ads on website that might not have approved of my somewhat adult content. Considering there were sites like Oglaf that advertised (who was significantly more explicit than my tame content), I thought I was pretty safe. In January 11, however, I received notice that my ad boxes were terminated because I was violating Project Wonderful's TOS.

I reached out to PW and received a helpful explanation from their (very polite and kind) customer rep. She explained that other sites had been grandfathered a few years back as part of deal with PayPal to keep their operation running; they couldn't allow it anymore for new guys like me. So I was kind of screwed. That pretty much halted my growth and I stayed with the audience that I already had. I remained somewhat active as an ad publisher (I could use the revenues), but I couldn't advertise my site anymore.

Project Wonderful eventually allowed an Adult category in their service a year or so later, so I rejoined and began advertising again, but the visibility was significantly less and I never reached the same level of success as I had during that first year. And sadly, Project Wonderful no longer exists, so what worked for me wouldn't work for someone else.

Still, it's my firm conviction that there's always "something" out there that can help new comic publishers get a break. There are new social media appearing every year (and possibly other "awareness venues"), so you need to keep an eye out for those opportunities and become an early adopter. You might not succeed every time, but persistence and creativity will always be your best assets.

And there's the usual approach, which is sure to work if you've got quality content and patience: engage on social media, use the 4C's promoted by the kind folks at ComicLab (Creation, Curation, Commercial and Kindness), and stay active. You may not grow fast, but if you WILL grow if your comic (or other content) deserves to grow.

--Jaycee