#334; In which Sonya cannot be Idle

I want to talk about advertising. I have a new, single ad box on the Wondermark homepage, replacing the four button ads and the banner that used to be on every comic page. Now as far as graphical ads go, it's just the one box, 234 x 60 pixels, for the entire wondermark.com site (and it also appears at the top right of this page). I'm not really interested in cluttering up the whole site with ads -- I'm one of very few comics in my viewership-bracket without a big leaderboard across the top, and it's on purpose -- but I do want you to take advantage of this single ad box, and here's why.

The money earned from advertising doesn't go towards paying my hosting fees, or buying old books to scan, or even my health insurance. It goes directly towards the cost of convention tables at shows like MoCCA in New York, SPX in Maryland, Stumptown in Portland, STAPLE! in Austin, and APE in San Francisco. (And next year we'll be adding new shows in at least Seattle and San Diego.) Conventions are our chance to connect personally with fans and colleagues, to leave the routine of our daily lives and hit the road for a weekend or a week, saying hello to old friends, shaking hands with people who come to the show, and sometimes making ridiculous movies for you to enjoy. As much as I like the Internet, from day one I have never considered it anything more than a means to an end -- the real benefit is in meeting individuals, real, flesh-and-blood people on the other end of the wires, with their own stories and their own loves and hates and relationships. Conventions are where those connections happen.

But these shows are not cheap. A booth at San Diego costs a minimum of fifteen hundred dollars. Add to that the costs of lodging, food, and travel -- I usually fly commercial, with books and t-shirts stuffed into bulging suitcases; Chris drives his Passat cross-country to every show, packed to the gills with hand-made toys and sculptures. So we offer the advertising space as a way to help defray these significant costs, while at the same time offering an opportunity for ordinary people to gain exposure for their own projects and labors of love - webcomics, small businesses, bands, and creative individuals of every stripe.

And it is a good opportunity: last month Wondermark attracted 160,091 unique visitors who accumulated 1,439,198 pageviews. So it's a good venue for your message, and I hope that advertising on my site does well for you.

But also, a word to the audience. The people who do buy ads on this site do so presumably because they like the comic. If you're here because you like the comic, then you have something in common with them. Won't you spend a click to see what they have to offer?

Thanks for your support!