Launching Your Web Comic

With an increasing number of web comic creators -- such as Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade -- enjoying financial success, more artists and writers than ever want to display their work online.

Launching a new comic, however, can be difficult for those unfamiliar with the web comic community or web development. How can an aspiring comic creator get started and choose the right hosting method, without getting lost in the crowd?

WHY WEB COMICS?

Before putting your pencil to paper for the first time, consider why you want to get into web comics. Web comic creation is a demanding hobby, and not for the faint of heart or the low on free time.

If you are looking to get into web comics to make money or become famous, you will be disappointed. Most web comic artists update out of the goodness of their hearts, and enjoy minimal or no recognition in their day-to-day lives.

If you love drawing or writing comics, however, and want to dramatically improve your drawing and writing style while reaching an online audience, draw on! Launching a new web comic may be the right decision for you.

THE WEB COMIC BUFFER

After finishing your first strip, you probably want to display it right away. Doing so, however, is a mistake.

Planning ahead by creating a "buffer" of strips will help maintain your popularity in the long run. A buffer is a collection of about fifteen to thirty strips that the comic artist draws before displaying his or her work on the site at all. The buffer ensures that you can skip multiple regular updates without consequence.

Comic audiences are notoriously fickle, and skipping updates disenfranchises them. To keep your readers, you must remain committed to your project and update according to a schedule - at least to their eyes.

When launching your comic, post the first strip or page, then set the buffer by the wayside. Use a comic in your buffer to update during those rare days when you have an emergency, an illness, a late night, or some other difficulty that keeps you from drawing. When you have free time, replenish your buffer.

DECIDING ON A SCHEDULE

Deciding on and keeping a schedule may be one of the most important factors in maintaining an audience. Readers expect regular updates, and may become annoyed or stop reading if you update "whenever the comics are ready."

Decide on a schedule you can realistically keep to. Remember, it is more important to update regularly than update more frequently, but sporadically.

If you are unsure how many strips you can produce comfortably, try updating three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you find yourself able to produce more comics, change your schedule to five days a week, then weekends. If this schedule is too intense, simply announce on your site you will be dropping the frequency of your updates to once or twice a week, and continue to stick to the new schedule.

If you are drawing comic pages rather than strips, try updating once a week to start with.

No matter what schedule you select, be sure to maintain regular updates. Consistent updating is a very important factor to most readers when they decide whether they want to follow your comic regularly.

BUILDING A WEB PAGE FOR YOUR COMIC

Once you have drawn your comics and decided on your update schedule, you can think about displaying your work on a web site. There are three main options for obtaining a comic site. When deciding which option is best for you, consider how you want to promote your comic, and whether you will need hosting or automation services.

Hosting refers to where your comic files are stored, and how they are accessed by your visitors. Automation allows your visitors to navigate freely throughout your comic archive, and may simplify the process of updating your comic pages. Hosting is mandatory, but automation simply makes the process easier, cleaner, and makes the site appear more professional.

Join a Web Comic Collective

A web comic collective is a group of comic creators who join together to split the burdens of hosting and promotion. Joining a comic collective has several distinct advantages for a budding comic creator.

Many comic collectives walk you through the web page creation process if you have no web development experience. The comic collective Drunk Duck, for instance, allows you to create a new page from a template when you sign up.

If cost is an issue, many web comic collectives provide hosting and automation services for free. The web comic collective Comic Genesis provides an impressive free package, including forums, hosting, a subdomain name, and other important web comic tools.

Most importantly, comic collectives come with a built-in audience and support system. Because the other members of the collective are also comic artists, they will almost certainly take a look at your comic and provide feedback if asked.

There are drawbacks to joining a comic collective. Your comic may get lost in the crowd with particularly large groups like Comic Genesis, and most collectives post advertisements on your comic pages. Other artists also may not take your comic as seriously when it is hosted on a free site, simply because it is so easy to sign up with these services. Of course, this problem can be solved by applying to join a more exclusive collective, such as KeenSpot.

Many comics, however, use comic collectives successfully despite these drawbacks. Some examples of popular comics that use comic collective services include Dissent (Comic Genesis) and Edepth Angel (Drunk Duck).

Host Independently with an Automation Service

If you are comfortable building your own basic web page or have a hosting service already, automation clients take much of the guesswork out of coding for comic sites. One popular automation client is ComicPress 1.5, which is a theme for the WordPress blogging software.

This can be a good option because it requires little in-depth coding knowledge, especially if you use the default ComicPress design for your comic site. If you know a little CSS, HTML or PHP, you can also customize the ComicPress theme to visually compliment your comic.

Two examples of comics that successfully use and customize the ComicPress Theme are Scene Language, and Wally and Osbourne.

There are a few downsides to independently hosting a comic. Independently hosting your comic isn't free, and will take longer to set up. Furthermore, there is no built-in audience to review your work like in a comic collective.

There are, however, a few comic collectives that exist primarily to provide promotional links to one another. One example of such a collective is Cornstalker, which is not open to the public, but provides a forum system and promotional newsboxes displaying random comic links.

Host Independently on a Site Built from Scratch

This is by far the most difficult and expensive option, but can provide you with certain leeway in your content and future earnings. This is probably the best choice for already popular or adult comics. Coding is done entirely by hand, usually by the comic artist or a professional design service. Two examples of comics using this method are the popular VGCats and The Apartment of Irony.

Commonly, a new comic creator selects one of the above two options to launch a comic, and moves to an independently hosted site after developing a large audience.

DISPLAYING YOUR WEB COMIC

After deciding which hosting method to use, it's finally time to put your comic up for display. After 10 or 15 comic strips or pages are online, send e-mails to friends and colleagues, asking for feedback. If you joined a comic collective, announce your comic's launch to the other members of the community. This will provide you with an initial audience that can begin the endless process of promoting through word of mouth.