Hello and welcome to the middle of the film.
Sorry for the delay in post. Going to the range to blow off steam with my shotgun became quite the reverse when a live round got jammed in the chamber and the slide release wouldn’t open. . .so essentially it became like defusing a bomb. A very ‘shotgunny’ bomb, but I digress.
Anyway, let’s get into it, at work and don't have much time. Today is mainly about marketing your comic, especially the theories of paying for marketing versus grassroot ‘free’ or ‘very low cost’ marketing.
If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you may recall that I worked up some marketing materials, mainly bookmarks, that have the blogsite and facebook listed on it. The theory was it didn’t cost anything (day job let me print out the bookmarks on extra card stock we had) and comic book readers, well, read. So If I gave them a free bookmark that had the site information in it, it would, logically draw more traffic. So far my feelings are mixed. I’ve gotten them handed out at comic book shops and one of my friends, Ben (from http://frogofthunder.blogspot.com/) dropped out what was left of my bookmarks at the San Deigo Comic Con marketing materials table since I couldn’t attend this year. And while I saw a slight increase in traffic, it didn’t seem like it was being generated by the bookmarks, but rather by my internet efforts.
At this point I’m thinking digital efforts for all of my marketing efforts. I seem to get a wider reach and as an independent comic publisher, I need everything I can get, and obviously I don’t have a lot of time to do it in.
One great thing that’s come up recently that may assist with this is Google. Blogspot is owned by Google and apparently I’m picking up enough traffic that I just received $100 free Google Adsense. I’ll be thoroughly reviewing the information once I get home and as long as there is no strings attached be trying this out. I’ve thought about using both Adsense and the Facebook ads to draw more people to the site. IF Adsense seems to garner in traffic, I’ll definitely think about putting some money into both.
On a side note, in a discussion with one of my retailer friends, we discussed ads in Diamonds Previews. And his advise which I have to concur with was: don’t. If you are unaware of what Previews is, it’s a large monthly catalog that goes to retailer shops and that they select comics out of (Diamond Distribution is the worlds largest comic distributor, at least at the time I write this. . .in a few years it may be iTunes which really bums me out but more on that discussion in a later post). The problem is that Previews USED to be how comic fans picked out the comics coming out; you’d go to the store, look at their copy (or buy yours) and tell the retailer what you wanted. . .now with sites like comic related, newsarama, comic book resources, etc. most comic fans already know about up and comic comics and just walk in or email their comic shop what they want pulled.
So in a nutshell: I recommend internet marketing over physical marketing, I’ll be using Adsense soon so I’ll post my results in a bit, and recommend getting the word out on your comic by using internet news and trend sites over paying for it.
I’ll have a post with more panel art, scriptwork, and whining about not being able to get to San Deigo for Con for the first time in years later. . .actually nothing on that last part, skip that.
L8R ZINOS!
-T
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