What I've Learned From a Lack of Success in Webcomics

It was back in February of 2004 when version 1 of SkitZo MaN dot CoM went live. The one-panel twisted gag SkitZo MaN webcomic (or cartoon, depending on who's definition of "comic" you use) based on idioms, proverbs, puns, was not new to Geoff (my co-writer) and I, but this was our first time to introduce it to such a potentially large audience. Several of our friends became fans, as well as a few other randoms, but the strip never really reached as wide of an audience as I'd have liked, and after a few years of trying and failing to expand the readership and monetize the site, I called it quits. It was somewhat successful from a creative and learning standpoint, but certainly not from a business or popularity point-of-view.

Why? Well, I'm not entirely sure. But as I've reflected on the subject, and learned more about making and marketing webcomics, I've come up with a few things that I think contributed to SkitZo MaN's lack of success.

1. Lack of a buffer.

Actually, when I first launched the site, I did have a good-sized buffer of a couple of months' worth of strips. I was only updating once a week then, so that didn't take much, but it meant that for the first little while I had no problem keeping up. But when the buffer ran out, I never really got it back, and looking back, I think this would have helped. Because I didn't have a buffer, problem number 2 arose...

2. Inconsistent updating.

Once the buffer ran out, I started to miss the occasional week here and there. Sometimes Geoff wouldn't be able to come up with a good gag on time, and sometimes I'd have a list of his ideas but not be able to get the actually strip finished that week. Then, when a really busy month or two would come up, the site would be dormant for weeks at a time, which is basically like suicide for a webcomic.

3. Only one panel once a week.

But even when I was able to stick to my schedule, I don't think publishing only once a week was enough. Who wants to wait a whole week for the next installment of something that takes about 20 seconds (if that) to read? The most successful webcomics are usually humor strips that publish on a consistent, daily schedule, making it harder for people to forget about them in between.

4. No Archives on launch.

Like a lot of novices, I started publishing the strip and promoting the site with only one actual strip on the site. So a new reader would come, and even if they liked it, would not be able to go back and read more. As the Webcomics Weekly guys having pointed out numerous times, it's hard to get hooked, or to even get a feel for what the strip is about, in the 20 seconds it takes to read the one-and-only toon on the site.

5. Too narrow a concept?

This may be the big one. I don't know; it's hard to look at your own work objectively sometimes. Doing a comic based entirely on re-interpreted aphorisms and idioms is, well, limiting to say the least. No wonder it was hard to come up with new ideas! I mean, we had lists of cliches and stuff in the hundreds, but to take each one and come up with something original and funny punch line in only one panel was challenging. Now, challenges can be a good thing, and I think self-limitation actually helps creativity in some ways. But what if we had expanded the concept to include more character-based, story line driven ideas? Would that have given us more to work with? Would it given us broader appeal? I don't know for sure, but I think that deciding to limit the strip to the idiom thing made us suffer in both a lack of ideas and a lack of an audience.

So that's the sad history of my attempt at a producing successful webcomic. Hopefully I can apply what I've learned to future projects, and if you're a webcomic creator yourself, you can learn something from my mistakes as well. Or do you have your own mistakes to share? What have you learned from failed attempts?