Forum secrets, fess up.

Fleakitten · Post by **Fleakitten** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:31 am

warofwinds wrote:I offer many, many incentives to not only visit the forum, but to register and post. As a smallish comic, before I started offering incentives, I had all of one person (my sister) in my forum. Though I did have moderate shoutbox activity on my own.

Two days ago I put up a notice beneath the comic that the first 3 people who posted in the forum with a picture of themselves would get drawn as a certain race of people in my comic. 2 people signed up, one person emailed. Within a day. I'll be doing something like this again.

I have an incentive to post--whoever posts the 1000th post may commission me for any one colored drawing (within certain limits, of course.) In the past week, there have been about 50 posts, with nearly 800 total. I've had my forum for a month or two now, not too bad.

I post previews only in the forum. I link threads shamelessly. I post secrets and tidbits. I help people with coding their sites. Basically I make my forum a place people WANT to be, at my own expense.

/secrets

*starts taking notes*

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 5:51 am

I have a little FAQ thread that encourages readers to ask characters questions and receive a sketched-out comic in response. The problem with incentives like this is that I actually have to take the time to draw the responses, and I've been letting it slide pretty badly of late. It's very easy to be distracted from the things that matter (i.e. your comic) by little side projects like this, too.

In retrospect, I got a forum waaaay too early.

K-Dawg · Post by **K-Dawg** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 2:29 pm

You got overzealous, but at least you have some unknown people posting in it now. I bet they wouldn't have if not for the few hundreds of posts in there already.

Rcmonroe · Post by **Rcmonroe** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:52 am

For some reason people seem more inclined to e-mail me than to post in my forum. And I always respond, often in a lot more detail than they were expecting, which they always seem to appreciate. I like communicating with readers this way, but sometimes I feel the conversation might be better suited to the forum.

I have no idea why my forum is as inactive as it is (it's not dead, it's just not buzzing with activity). I used to worry about it, because I thought that an active forum was a sign of a healthy webcomic. But apparently some comics have active forums, and some don't, and it's just the way it is. I've noticed a that in a lot of active forums, people talk about everything except the webcomic, and I'd just as soon not have that going on.

Geekblather · Post by **Geekblather** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:59 am

I think that a lot of times having chatter going on outside the world of the comic helps get a baby forum running. It lets the forum go-ers get to know you and possibly the characters if they also participate, and makes it a little easier for them to start talking about the comic once they've gotten to know the other forumites.

Also- I love your new banner

Legendary · Post by **Legendary** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:05 pm

Joel Fagin wrote:You know, I deliberately misspelt "Sheesh" and no one called me on it.

Man...

You guys really are bad at spelling.

- Joel Fagin

I just assumed it was an obscure pun.

Rcmonroe · Post by **Rcmonroe** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:42 pm

geekblather wrote:Also- I love your new banner

Thank you (if that was directed at me).

geekblather wrote:I think that a lot of times having chatter going on outside the world of the comic helps get a baby forum running. It lets the forum go-ers get to know you and possibly the characters if they also participate, and makes it a little easier for them to start talking about the comic once they've gotten to know the other forumites.

I'm sure that's true, and there actually is a fair amount of that going on in my forum. I'm okay with it but I've seen it get out of hand in other forums. I've even seen forums where people would actually berate others if they tried to discuss the comic! Jokingly perhaps, but still. It seems to me the whole point of a webcomics forum is to talk about the comic; if people want to talk about stuff other than the comic they could do it on a forum devoted to something else.

But I don't want to make it sound like it's that big a deal. I guess it's up to me to provide the forum, and up to everyone else to decide what to use it for.

Ff6comic · Post by **Ff6comic** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:21 pm

Hey, guys. With regards to getting people on your forums, I'm with those who say offering incentives is a good idea. I happen to know that people generally like seeing themselves drawn... so perhaps you could propose a contest where the winner gets a small cameo in the comic?

But coming from someone who is pretty bad at posting regularly in forums, I just don't see where the appeal is to even having a forum. Sometimes conversations go so fast you need to check the forum several times a day to keep up.

(Said the person posting in a forum!)

Tyras · Post by **Tyras** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:15 am

I did some thinking about this, and you know what really helps people to want to join? A chat room.

Chat rooms are simple to set up, just use IRC and register yourself a channel. Find some web-applet that lets your viewers join the chat without downloading.
Chats are great for fan relations. They love to be able to talk to the author/artist, and since IRC doesn't require them to register or anything, there's no obligation for them, or registration page to bother with.

Have the chat around for a while, make friends with your fans, then open up a forum. I had 15 members within the first 3 days of opening the forum, and the ones that weren't my friends before the comic started were from the chat room.

Try it. It works a lot better than some silly shoutbox.

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:20 am

The problem with a chat room is that you need more people to make it work because not everyone is there at the same time. You only get a small sub-section of your fanbase at any one time.

Of course, forums are the same ut the messages stick around for the rest to find later.

- Joel Fagin

Tyras · Post by **Tyras** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:26 am

I'm not sure how true that is. A lot of my chatters are prone to hanging around for hours, so there's lots of overlapping.

I mean, I didn't say this was a sure-fire way to increase fandom, but it works/worked wonders for me.

Ff6comic · Post by **Ff6comic** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:41 am

Its surprises me to hear that people would hang around a chat room for hours, but I guess if you have a good conversation going...

Also, I've heard that webcomic traffic is really reduced during the summer months, so that may not be a good time to try to get a forum hopping.

What, then, is the time of year that gets most traffic? Winter?

Tetsuo75 · Post by **Tetsuo75** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:53 am

I was about going to say "yes, winter!" but then I realised my winter is your summer (southern hemisphere here...)! I seem to get more people in your summer (97% of my readers are in the northern hemisphere)... but maybe my readers are afraid of the sun

K-Dawg · Post by **K-Dawg** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:03 am

I will get a chatroom one day, until then I hijacked #cornstalker.

Swimmingtrunks · Post by **Swimmingtrunks** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:27 pm

My forum-goers and lj-communityers actually get to see the comic ON TIME. As opposed to the rest of those losers who have to wait for CG to work.

But actually, that isn't much incentive at all. My forum, save for two people who were already part of the bigger forum it's hosted on, is all but dead. My lj community, however, generates quite a bit more feedback. That might be because a good chunk of people already have LJs. Which was kind of the idea.

Redtech · Post by **Redtech** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 3:52 am

One could argue that it is part of the fact that LJs are a more integrated community than Comic Genesis artists are.

Ff6comic · Post by **Ff6comic** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 4:31 pm

tetsuo75 wrote:I was about going to say "yes, winter!" but then I realised my winter is your summer (southern hemisphere here...)! I seem to get more people in your summer (97% of my readers are in the northern hemisphere)... but maybe my readers are afraid of the sun

It's like I've gone through the looking glass!! So, you get a lot of sweaty Northamericans reading your comic at around this time. Tha'ss cool.
Either way, you just blew my theory out of the water. Perhaps the traffic patterns tend to follow with the school year calendar. When, may I ask, does school begin in Australia?

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:10 pm

ff6comic wrote:When, may I ask, does school begin in Australia?

February.

I never figured out why northern hemisphere schools start half way through the year. I mean, why have an arbitrary delineation of time like a "year" if you're not going to stick to it anyway? Daft.

- Joel Fagin

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:21 pm

Joel Fagin wrote:I never figured out why northern hemisphere schools start half way through the year. I mean, why have an arbitrary delineation of time like a "year" if you're not going to stick to it anyway?

Farmers.

NakedElf · Post by **NakedElf** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 9:10 pm

February.

I never figured out why northern hemisphere schools start half way through the year. I mean, why have an arbitrary delineation of time like a "year" if you're not going to stick to it anyway? Daft.

- Joel Fagin

As I understand it, the school year was originally designed to not conflict with planting/harvesting schedules, when most kids wouldn't be in school anyway.

I think my hits went down while people were prepping for finals, and they seem to have gone up quite a bit as soon as finals in the US were over. That's the only reasonable explanation I can figure, anyway.