Measuring Success in Webcomics
Some people, because their webcomic is their livelihood, need to measure the success of their webcomic in terms of revenue. However, if you are a hobbyist webcomicker, or are doing the webcomic as a side project, or the like, you may not be looking for success in the form of advertising revenue or merchanidise or whatever.
If you are in a situation like mine, you are probably most interested in measuring your success in terms of just the size of your readership, and also by treating that as an indicator of how well you are executing your comic, which may be your primary objective. So, as a result, I look at my referrer logs pageview totals and the like somewhat obsessively. And while there is an upward trend, I don't have a good idea of how quickly I should be expecting the audience to grow.
It has been approximately seven months since Ben and I started Terror Island, and we have now between 200 and 250 unique visitors per day (looking at days we update). And while it is totally awesome that 200 people (many of whom aren't relatives or friends who read it simply to be polite) come check out our comic, I'm not sure if those numbers are good or if they are just, you know, meh.
I don't know that I have a lot more to say about this, I just felt a bit weird because I know what I care about; getting a lot of people who read and enjoy the comic, and I have detailed measurements that indicate to me how many people read the comic (and presumably enjoy it), but ultimately I don't know how to use that data to figure out how I should feel about how we are doing. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
six comments:
I’m in the same boat and I wonder the same things. After six months, I see upward growth but I don’t know if it’s better than can be reasonably expected or not. I’m subscribing to the theory that good floats and crap sinks, so as long as I keep seeing increases I’m doing well. I assume. I’d really like something more objective to compare it to. At this point, I’d be extremely pleased if I had numbers like yours.
When I fish around on forums for ‘what makes a webcomic successful,’ there’s very little helpful advice on what to expect. Those who are successful are either unconcerned about it or don’t seem to be sure about what it is they are doing right.
For the benefit of advertisers, I post the monthly pageview totals on my sponsors page. Though my numbers are smaller than yours, perhaps you can compare and see the beginning of a common pattern. I can provide the other details if that will help benchmark things.
Delos Woodruff (URL) - 07 01 07 - 11:32
So, what you’re saying is that you need to feed your ego?
Don’t be ashamed, none of us would be making free comics if it wasn’t due to our egos. But the web audience is for the most part an audience of geeks. And from what I read, Terror Island isn’t aimed at tapping into geek interests.
You need to decide if your goal is to make something to be proud of, or something that will get you a big audience. If you want the big audience, you need to change your material to what that audience wants (Portraying members of a geek subculture as superior).
But if not, then just continue to try and put out the best comic you can and damn the rest of it.
William G (URL) - 08 01 07 - 12:22
William G, I am going to excerpt from my reply to Joey Manley at the TAC blog.
“My goal is at least partially to provide entertainment to others in making the comic, and how many people are reading our comic effects how well we are executing that goal. Now, a comic could be phenomenal, and not be reaching anyone because no one knows about it, but, it could also be that people see it and aren’t drawn in. Steadily increasing in the size of your readership (not cross-comparison with other comics, but just your own stats over time) indicates that people are finding it and coming back for more, which is an indicator (though not proof) that you are successfully creating something with entertainment value.”
My goal is to make an excellent and entertaining comic. If our audience size doesn’t have a positive trend over time, that means we are doing something wrong. It could be that we aren’t publicizing enough, or it could be bad content. I am trying to get a sense of what sort of growth is to be expected so that I can evaluate our success at entertaining people. I don’t necessarily want a big audience like penny arcade or the like; or at least, that’s not my goal. My goals are to make a comic well, entertain people, and enjoy myself doing it. My question wasn’t how do I get a bigger audience, it was how big should I expect my audience to be.
Lewis Powell (Email) (URL) - 08 01 07 - 20:13
If those 250 are always there, and loving it, then you’ve already met your goals.
William G (Email) (URL) - 09 01 07 - 09:12
Lewis, I have a Google Analytics account for my site and is there any way to be able to tell the exact URL of the sources or do we only get to know the domain?
[William] (Email) (URL) - 13 01 07 - 17:27
if you click “cross segment performance” and select “content” it shows you more referrer details.
Lewis Powell (Email) (URL) - 14 01 07 - 21:04
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