Back in 2011, in June I attended the Comics Launch Pad with a few friends. There was a lot of useful seminars that went on, and new crazy ideas as to what comicing will be like in the future. With the coming of the digital age, less and less people are using books to read and more are using digital technology. For example, the kindle, many use it for reading as it's easy to carry around, it stores hundreds of books and it only weighs under half a kg. The same will happen for comics.
Nowadays, newer generations are growing up reading everything on a screen, comics included. Many don't care if the comic is digital or paper back they just want to read comics. When buying comics it has to be of a high quality if they are to be keeped. If its a cheap looking comic then it is most likely to be disposed of, if its high quality it is bound to be put on a book shelf.
Web & Webcomics
The internet and webcomics have been around since the 1990s, their has never been a middle man between the internet and webcomics. There are lots of different formats for comics online but the most popular seems to be strips. Some examples below:
My Cardboard Life - Pirates by Philippa Rice
Menage a 3 : Kind of Soft
From what I've seen with the online comic industry a lot of artists start online with big projects then move more towards printed projects once they gather a big enough fan base. For example Yu + Me: Dream, a very popular webcomic where the artist managed to entertain a huge audience and make some money from merchandising products from the comic. She also improved her art work as she went along over the years, as well as contain many different styles through out the story to fit the dream like world she created.
<-The start of her comic in 2004.
Megan Rosalarian, has improved vastly over the years the image of the right is near the end of her webcomic. She built up a huge readership and she finished the comic to suit her and her readers need for an end. She has six volumes of this comic in print, as well as other projects.
You need a readership of over 10,000 to make any real money in webcomics as only 1-5% of your audience will actually buy things from you such as t-shirts, books etc.
To achieve this you need to stick to a schedule, making regular updates, so if you're doing a regular comic format page you need to update once a week, if its a strip comic then it's at least 3 times a week minimum. You need to keep the readers coming back for more so you need to feed them chunks of your story to keep them hanging on and wanting more.
Advertising yourself correctly works as well, it gets you out there and people find your online presence more easily. For example using face book, twitter, comic message boards, blogs etc helps. Getting to know your audience is always good too, shows you want to know what they think, make them feel involved with the project.
Nowadays, newer generations are growing up reading everything on a screen, comics included. Many don't care if the comic is digital or paper back they just want to read comics. When buying comics it has to be of a high quality if they are to be keeped. If its a cheap looking comic then it is most likely to be disposed of, if its high quality it is bound to be put on a book shelf.
Web & Webcomics
The internet and webcomics have been around since the 1990s, their has never been a middle man between the internet and webcomics. There are lots of different formats for comics online but the most popular seems to be strips. Some examples below:
From what I've seen with the online comic industry a lot of artists start online with big projects then move more towards printed projects once they gather a big enough fan base. For example Yu + Me: Dream, a very popular webcomic where the artist managed to entertain a huge audience and make some money from merchandising products from the comic. She also improved her art work as she went along over the years, as well as contain many different styles through out the story to fit the dream like world she created.
<-The start of her comic in 2004.Megan Rosalarian, has improved vastly over the years the image of the right is near the end of her webcomic. She built up a huge readership and she finished the comic to suit her and her readers need for an end. She has six volumes of this comic in print, as well as other projects.
You need a readership of over 10,000 to make any real money in webcomics as only 1-5% of your audience will actually buy things from you such as t-shirts, books etc.
To achieve this you need to stick to a schedule, making regular updates, so if you're doing a regular comic format page you need to update once a week, if its a strip comic then it's at least 3 times a week minimum. You need to keep the readers coming back for more so you need to feed them chunks of your story to keep them hanging on and wanting more.
Advertising yourself correctly works as well, it gets you out there and people find your online presence more easily. For example using face book, twitter, comic message boards, blogs etc helps. Getting to know your audience is always good too, shows you want to know what they think, make them feel involved with the project.
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