#420; In which One Thing sparks Another, and So On
The deadline for the Wondermark Semidecennial Make-Something Contest™ draws near! All entries must be received by Monday night, 11:59 PM Pacific Time. If you haven't started, there's still a full weekend for you to get crackin'! I'm giving away over $400 worth of prizes. Details are here!
Also: another kind review of Beards of our Forefathers! I guess the ones who hate it don't bother to tell me about it. UM ER I MEAN EVERYBODY LOVES IT
Labels: logic
posted by The Comic Strip Doctor at 12:01 AM
6 Comments:
Dude, I feel bad that I always read your comic in the RSS, so I never get served any advertisements.
I don't know how much you rely on the ad revenue, but if you do, here are some tips:
First: Don't show the full comic in the RSS! Show like, the top Left corner, or show it scaled down small so the text can't be read. Then people will have to go to your site to read it.
Second: Your RSS goes to the Blogger Wondermark Lite. Not so many ads there. I much prefer the full Wondermark.com site, but I never go there because I always use the RSS to find out when there is a new comic.
I disagree with Ben's second point. I find Wondermark Lite a refreshing, low-calorie alternative to the original site, and would be dismayed if my daily RSS directed me otherwheres.
Re: #420 - You have perfectly captured my personal cognitive process... it makes for great awkward moments!
ben: 1. The value I'd gain in advertising from having more people click through to the site would be, in my opinion, outweighed by the many viewers I'd lose who wouldn't bother to click through the feed. If the options are zero clicks to read the comic vs. one click, zero clicks will always have the bigger audience. I am a firm believer in as few barriers between content and readers as possible.
2. I actually agree with you here, but not because of advertising -- I don't really like having my branding split between two sites. WM Lite was born because I didn't know how to make an RSS feed for wondermark.com. That problem is in the process of being solved. Jack, I hate to say it, but WM Lite is going to go away very soon. You will, however, be able to still enjoy a streamlined version of the site by putting feeds.feedburner.com/wondermark in your address bar.
@darth:
"The value I'd gain in advertising from having more people click through to the site would be, in my opinion, outweighed by the many viewers I'd lose who wouldn't bother to click through the feed."
You may well be right. But why not try it for a couple of weeks to see what happens?
I just bought an artist's edition Beards to pay for my continued enjoyment of the Wondermark RSS feed that shows the full comic. I have it in my "good webcomics" folder because it doesn't require an extra click. I have all the near-useless RSS comic feeds in a separate folder for when I want to expend effort to enjoy them. For example, despite it being my favorite running series, a new This Modern World (feed) gets read so much less instantly than a fresh Wondermark. Scrolling right down the page of all my fresh comics is one of the nicest parts of the day. Thanks thanks thanks.
As somebody writing a book on how digital technology allows wonderful benefits of the free flow of information and easy linking back to authors so that consumers can sponsor them directly on an end-to-end basis, this is exactly the kind of distribution/compensation model I feel best embodies the spirit of the Internet. I hope it works out for you, and if you would like to send me any information about how well it is working, or your thoughts on how you distribute and earn from the work you give away for free, I would be honored to include them in my book and use them along with displaying my copy of Beards as part of my thesis defense. Finding a working compensation model and convincing people that it is viable is the core of my project.
-Nate/ottonomy
P.S. I don't want to see ads; I have them blocked from loading anyway, but I would certainly read Wondermark less if I had to stick it in my "effort webcomics" folder.
P.P.S. Your books are super-reasonably priced!
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