Most of my readership is made up of friends IRL and people on the forums.
Although when I went to the con in August I ran into a random fan I didn't know, who claimed her undying love for Turkish and bought something, then ran off again.
That made my weekend.
I probably have OnlineComics.net and The Webcomics List to thank for that - plus wherever else I stuck my URL... I don't even remember anymore.
But yey!
Webcartoonsist appreciate the craft and actively look for great strips. That's why, for the smaller cartoonists out there, the majority of our readers are other cartoonists. But when you find your niche you'll generate readers who have nothing to do with webcomics. PvP and Penny Arcade had a large fan base of gamers. The same for The Noob. Sluggy has a lot of Sci Fi fans. If you don't have a niche but you put out a good product most of your readers will be other cartoonsists. Since there are thousands of web cartoonists out there you can still have a pretty healthy fan base.
Well, we all count on other webcomic creators to post links to us on their websites and vice versa as well. It's a give-give fanbase, at least. What can your friends do? I mean, really, what good are they?
Mr. Caravaggio wrote:For smaller comics that doesn't surprise me. You have to figure all the people who order "cat fancy" probably own cats too. Though they may not contribute. Let's see. Restaurants, people who eat there eat at the businesses of others, quite a few people who go to small gallery openings are also artists themselves who may later have an opening.
The artists, maybe, but your other two don't work. People who read Cat Fancy don't write articles about cats, and most people who go to restaurants don't own restaurants of their own.
I've wondered the same thing in a public setting and someone told me that it was a figment of my imagination.
I have no idea. I know my biggest reader is the thing that's making me draw them which is just redundant. I'm now sure what that means.
it probably is a bunch of other webcomic people, frankly.
so how do you break past that barrier or do you really want to?
surely there must be some people who aren't also artists, etc that read at least one webcomic out there. That's why I like that big comic site that links your listing right along side garfield and other.
and would you get tainted feedback from other artists? after all, they know the ins and outs can better spot the flaws, right?
does the normal reader of daily comics truly worry when something isn't drawn quite right. hell, they and I read my newspaper comics so fast I don't think I'd even notice. I only notice if I don't get the joke. Not even if it's relatively stupid. As long as it makes sense.
Delusional schizophrenia isn't just for breakfast anymore--Ben Affleck
I don't know how many regular readers I've got, but from the odd post on the tagboard and the even odder...I mean rarer...email, the best I can figure is that half of them are creators and the other half are...miscellaneous?
I'm basing this on the fact that most of the comments I get come from names I don't recognise from places such as this. To begin with though, yeah, of course creators will be your main source of readers.
Seems I'm one of the minority though. I didn't read webcomics before I started drawing this one. Probably why I've been told my beginning is apparently cliched...
Remember when your imagination was real? When the day seemed
longer than it was, and tomorrow was always another game away?
A lot of the people that contact me are people who neither draw nor write. I've also gotten quite a few emails from around the globe, which is a weird feeling.
The vocal section of my fanbase (about ten to twenty out of the eighty that read RotD regularly) is made up mostly of folks who don't make their own comics. A few of them are friends and family, but the rest are - not surprisingly - simply folks who are interested in RPGs.
The non-vocal portion? Y'got me. Smug bastards, just sitting there reading and never saying anything . . . I'll get them one day. Oh, yes . . . one day . . .
Existence is a series of catastrophes through which everything barely but continually survives.
blackaby wrote:I think a lot of us were non-comicking readers before we had comics. Viger & I have been fans of webcomics since Way Back When (we're PA & Buttlord fans, for a start), and it's only now we've made one.
You have the buttlord link?! I've been searching for that for aaaaages sionce I lost it...
Mr. Caravaggio wrote:For smaller comics that doesn't surprise me. You have to figure all the people who order "cat fancy" probably own cats too. Though they may not contribute. Let's see. Restaurants, people who eat there eat at the businesses of others, quite a few people who go to small gallery openings are also artists themselves who may later have an opening.
The artists, maybe, but your other two don't work. People who read Cat Fancy don't write articles about cats...
Yeah, I kind of said that, now you're just making me look silly.
ryclaude wrote:
blackaby wrote:I think a lot of us were non-comicking readers before we had comics. Viger & I have been fans of webcomics since Way Back When (we're PA & Buttlord fans, for a start), and it's only now we've made one.
You have the buttlord link?! I've been searching for that for aaaaages sionce I lost it...
I'd weigh in, but I don't think I have any readership, so...
Hell, I'll weigh in anyway.
I think that diligent readers of webcomics get inspired to create their own, and that's why so many readers are webcomic artists. Especially readers of CG comics; there's that link at the bottom that give them the tools to do it.
"If you hear a voice inside you saying "you are not an artist," then by all means make art... and that voice shall be silenced"
-Adapted from Van Gogh
I've been thinking a lot about Cortlands observation and I definitely have seen that kind of thing going on...but I must admit that most of my readers are people who are not cartoonists at all.
I get a lot of science fiction/fantasy fans....and I get a lot of people who are involved with digital artwork in some way shape or form...buit I have very few readers who are actually webcartoonists themselves.
One things for certain though, the good people who are kind of enough to read hail from all over. So far I have gotten fanmail from Brisbane, Austrailia...some people over in Munich...in addition to a nice North American contingent. (I hoping one day somebody from Asia will sigh in )
)
