Join Webcomics.com
Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 4:57PM Starting today, Webcomics.com will begin charging a $30-per-year subscription fee. That fee is going to be used to help support what this site has become -- and allow it to achieve its full potential.
Webcomics.com has established itself as a tremendous resource of practical information for webcartoonists. By joining today you will have access to:
- Frequent updates of news, advice, tutorials and strategies by webcomics veteran Brad Guigar.
- Monthly contributions by webcomics pioneer Scott Kurtz and Penny Arcade's Business Guy, Robert Khoo.
- Personalized features like a new e-mail-based organizer to help you plan for upcoming conventions.
- Feedback and guidance for your comic and the small business you'll create running it.
- A fully rounded, indexed repository of two year's worth of information that you can use to help improve your work.
- A moderated, passionate, supportive community of webcomics creators.
- Inside information on conventions, vendors and other entities that webcartoonists access to advance their businesses.
- Deals on merchandise.
For a low subscription of $30 per year, you will have access to all of this plus the entire Webcomics.com archives, one of the most helpful and supportive forums for creative people on the Web, and several members-only offers.
Webcomics.com Terms of Service.
FAQ
Most webcomics are based on the free-content model. The "How To Make Webcomics" book is built around it. Why is Webcomics.com becoming a pay site?
Simply put, Webcomics.com isn't entertainment; it's a valuable resource for webcartoonists. It would be difficult to continue offering this site for free in its current state -- and impossible, given the improvements we have planned.
Why not just run ads?
This will be very much a niche site. There will not be as much value for an advertiser as there will be for subscribers.
Why $30 per year?
It's an inexpensive buy-in that almost any webcartoonist can afford. It has an added benefit of keeping out people who may not be as serious about webcomics. It naturally weeds out comments from people who may be passing through, and results in distilling comments to those from people who are committed to improving their comics.
Reader Comments (272)
Ryan: $30 bucks a year isn't a lot of money spread over the entire year, but for some people it's a lot of money to pay upfront in one big chunk. That is why I asked if there were any plans to do monthly subscriptions for less. People have an easier time paying 5 bucks a month than 30 bucks all at once. Yes I know 30 bucks a year is less than 5 bucks a month, but for some people, especially the aspiring webcomic artists or self-employed schmo, it's a lot easier to pay 5 bucks than 30, especially if you're not sure if you're going to like the site enough to be a member for an entire year.
As entertaining as Brad and others' writing styles may be, this site is not simply entertainment for me. It's very helpful business advice for a burgeoning industry, and following some of the advice on this site has earned me money. Well worth the 30 bucks/year for me.
Now if I could just get the registration problem taken care of...I'd hate to miss this week's posts.
I can understand why this was done. I only wish I had some warning. However, doing it this way is most likely for the best. People would have complained endlessly on the forum. Besides all you have to do to get the fee is skip McDonald's a few times a week.
The things Brad and the gang have taught me about webcomics is priceless. I've already got the book, but I'd gladly give you guys 30 bucks a year to help support your cause. You guys have helped me so much, so I have no problem at all with the fee.
whoa whoa hold up just one gosh darned minute... nobody said ANYTHING about skipping McDonalds!!!
I will just wait until you guys do your next book. I think the site was great but I guess I'm too much of a hobbyist to justify it. I'm confident $30 might be worth it but I only recall Brad doing posts, or those are the ones I remember reading. For $30 I would need to be sure it would get updated often with useful content and by more than one contributor. I did learn from the site sometimes but not always. I really hope you have some free sections on the page at some point or at least give previews of the articles. If I knew what the true content ends up being I could possibly change my mind. I wish you well but I'm disappointed I will no longer be able to see what you have to say. I do understand you should be compensated, just wish you would have chosen ads instead though.
I agree with Ange. my webcomic would never have gotten off the ground if it wasn't for the podcast, and I'm now a year and a half in. I'm more than happy to support the ones who got my butt into gear and gave me the information to do it. :)
This is a surprise...it took me a few minutes to get over the shock. I understand why you're doing it though, and I wish you all the best with it.
I would need to know more about 'the improuvement you have planned' before I put down my $30.
Hey guys!
First I want to say that nobody should be disappointed unless they're disappointed at the fact that they can't afford 30 bucks for a year access to this amazing resource. That's my feelings on the matter.
You can think of the new Webcomics.com as a sequel to "How To Make Webcomics." You spend 15 bucks for that book, and now we're asking you double that for it's follow up. Why? I'll give you two good reasons: Robert and Khoo.
Webcomics.com can be one of two things: It can be a public forum where people come to ask the same 10 questions over and over, or it can be a valuable resource for a select few who actually can use the information to improve their creative lives.
I enjoyed Webcomics.com the way it was, but let me tell you guys where that was ultimately leading: To no webcomics.com. Brad Guigar has a wife, two kids, a day job and a webcomic of his own. And he's been kicking himself in the ass to make sure there's something new here for you guys every weekday because he loves making comics and he wants to do right by this domain.
So please, let Robert, Brad and I to turn Webcomics.com into something that's here next year and provides for everyone. Not just compensation for Brad's time, but a manageable resource and community that we can meaningfully address.
Webcomics Weekly was a lot of fun. And we were excited about it for over 100 episodes. But it's grown into the four of us making time to answer the same 10 questions over and over. We'd like to do more with our time. You should want us to do more with our time.
The book is there. The 100+ episodes of Webcomics Weekly are still free and available for you to download and listen to while you work.
But Webcomics.com is going to grow into an actual resource that we can really turn into something that's never existed before. Just like how Wordpress, Comicpress, Google adsense and analytics, and project wonderful didn't exist when I started PvP.
It's 2010. Something's happening.
What?
Something....WONDERFUL!
Or wait, was that 2010 or 2001? Crap.
Regardless....ALON-SY!
I thought you guys said in the HTMW book that subscription walls were bad because they limited the number of people you could reach as well as the amount of money you made vs. if you kept the site free and charged like mad for everything else. I really don't see what the difference is here.
I follow plenty of other people's blogs for free -- about marketing, copywriting, creativity, productivity, freelancing -- all blogs that I can relate back to webcomics and use towards my work. I don't need to pay $30 to read yours just because it's talking specifically about webcomics.
I'm curious whether this means you're no longer willing to accept submissions, and a little confused why previously submitted articles have to go under a subscription wall as well. I had sent links to my previous articles to a prospective employer as proof that I had written for a blog before. Now those links are no longer viable, and it doesn't really look good on my end. I've emailed cached versions, but I wish I did not have to.
Not to mention that you're now charging for access to my writing without notifying me or asking for my permission. Though I know how difficult the logistics of informing everyone who has written for the blog of this changeover might have been, it would have been the correct and professional thing to do. I imagine there are many other people whose hard work is being charged for without their knowledge or permission.
In addition, I don't see the value in employing a subscription-only model when this model has had so little success in media in general. If the New York Times couldn't make it work... Besides that, your own book (albeit in a section written by Dave Kellett) has this to say about the subscription model: "Online readers have shown again and again that they're not willing to pay for content online." Even if the subscribers here are willing to pay for this service as a tax write-off for business expenses (Kellett mentions this later as something that has helped the Wall Street Journal support a subscription model) as webcomic artists, how many are making enough for that to be a viable option? And if they're unable to see any of the content on the site to begin with, what's attracting any new readers to pay for content in the first place? WSJ.com at least has a generous amount of free articles.
I really enjoyed using this site, and I tried to make the content I produced for it as valuable as possible for readers, but I'm shocked and disappointed at this announcement and its abruptness. I think this is a move that will shrink the community that uses this site significantly, to the detriment of everyone involved.
I think what some of the folks are trying to say (and this is directed at some of you cynical snarkers) is that while we all enjoy the content that has been provided to us here and appreciate the advice they offer the meat of what Webcomics.Com has to teach is largely in the book. And while we have all learned a thing or two here on the forums much of the value was in communing with each other.
To make a point, Brad, Kris Scott and Dave didn't have Webcomics.com to help them become successful; they had each other and other friend they made in the business (Scott still relies heavily on Robert Khoo who is the business mgr for Penny Arcade... Webcomic friends of Scotts'). That's what I came here looking for, a community to share info with and for a short time it was wonderful. I'm just not confident that that community exists anymore and even if it did I'm fairly certain that putting it behind a subscription wall would kill it.
I would never suggest the content here is without value and it's thier site, they can do anything they want with it. But I wouldn't be so dismissive of those of us who feel this is a mistake. Time will tell, if I'm proven wrong and the community thrives I'll be the first to admit it; $30 in hand with a contrite request to be allowed back into the kingdom. Right now though I just don't see it.
Subscription walls are HORRIBLE for getting your content to the masses. That's not what Webcomics.com is trying to do. It would be silly to try to do that. The MASSES only consume webcomics, they don't want to make them.
If we were to have written "How to Make a website about How to Make Webcomics", then we would have told you a subscription wall is just fine.
Honestly, In all seriousness, I think webcomics as content scales. Teaching people how to make webcomics will not scale.
Scott, that's an excellent justification. If that had been put up a week before closing the doors to the club house, I'd have had no problem with it. I just don't like the way it was done. I stand by my initial post; if we did that with our comics, we'd be playing to an empty house. Entertainment or priceless wisdom, you need to respect your audience/customers.
I didn't realize Comicspace/ Webcomicsnation had bought this site.
Seriously, I'm sure it seems like a heckuva deal to the people making the site, but it feels kinda shysterish to me. A good chunk of your audience are people trying to figure out "the secret" to making a living making comics and now you're telling them that for 30 bucks a year, you'll share the secret only with them.
Yeah, we all know how much people love to pay for _good_ content on the web. Clearly if the content is worthwhile, people will pay for it.
Have you guys considered a daily print version of this too? Maybe you could even include an entire page of comics in it?
A sad day for comics.
@Abby: I understand completely. Just drop me an e-mail (hit the "Contact" button at the top of this page) and let me know which articles you'd like to have removed. :)
Brad, do any of the other Half Pixel guys even contribute on a regular basis anymore? I haven't been paying a lot of attention but it seems to me that you are posting the bulk of the material on the site.
Chris, I've posted the majority of the posts on this site.
@ Rachel
The difference between a subscription model for a webcomic and for what is being done here is that a webcomic is a non-essential piece of entertainment. When someone visits a webcomic, they don't know about the artist/author, or the story, or the characters, so they don't know if they should pay before becoming invested. They could be throwing their money into a pot and end up not liking the story.
In this case, Webcomics.com is a resource of information which has proven to be extremely useful and important to a lot of people. To many people, it's an invaluable source of information for building their own business that, in turn, would hopefully make them money many fold over their investment.
So paying money for something that would improve your ability to make money off your webcomic versus paying money to something that provides at best 5 minutes of entertainment every day? Seems a clear-cut distinction to me.
Every now and then I'd come across a entry here that caught my eye. I'd see it on the RSS and said, "Oh hey, that's cool. I hadn't thought of that." So while I only watched this site casually, it proved to be a real kick starter for me on several occasions. I'm disappointed at your decision to make this a subscriber-only thing, but I guess it can't be helped. Business is Business after all. Just do me a favor and don't make us pay for any future podcasts or tell us to subscribe to the blog if we ask you a question that was covered here. Thank You.
Good Luck with all this.
Graham!? Skip McDonalds a few times a week? How often to you eat at McDonalds man? Are you feeling ok? Need an angioplasty or anything?
I totally get the vibe that the guys are tired of answering the same old questions to every new crop of webcomicker (to be honest I never saw any of them post more than once or twice on the old forums and most of the questions asked abuot specific articles were answered by the article author). I'm sure that gets old. And the time needed to run this site is probably prohibitive if it isn't generating revenue.
It's a tough call.
But I will point out that you can buy "How to make Webcomics for $7 on Amazon so for me, considering I run a site that generated about $40 in ad revenue it's first year, giving $30 of it to the guys is a hard pill for me to swallow. Especially since I'm not convinced that a lot of the content will apply to me (I'm not much of an artist, more a writer and I've started using a 3D program to make my comics which means prety much everything they have to say about art just became useless to me).
Like I said, its a tough call. But I'll tell you this much. I'll still read thier comics every day and occassionally buy thier merchandise aaaaaannnnnddd I look forward to seeing them at conventions (where they will do panels that will probably touch on a lot of what they talk about here at the site). I hope they look forward to seeing me too. I love these guys.
Two main thoughts...
One, I don't know if you have, but it would have been nice to have been warned such a thing was coming, at least to your regulars. I come here quite a bit, a couple of times a week, and I haven't heard of this. This is kind of abrupt, and I cannot help but feel negatively about this.
I found your site useful and informative, but I won't be buying. I have found similar advice and information elsewhere. (Not for webcomics specifically, but for other web-based ventures which can easily be adapted to webcomics.) ...And it is free.
Two, for all the newbies dropping by, what reason have they to give you their $30? There are no past archives of the previously free material. There is only your word Webcomics is "one of the most helpful and supportive forums for creative people on the Web".
If I were a new guy coming by here looking for web comic tips and advice, I'd move on to the next site. Your word that this is a valuable site is not good enough for me to blindly pull out my wallet.
I cannot help but think this was a mistake. But, I wish you all the best.
Yeah I...really don't understand this. Considering all the championing you guys do for non-subscription based methods of subsidizing one's site I am saddened that this is the route you chose to take for webcomics.com
Couldn't the site be subsidized by having ads? And if not, then why do you think a subscription wall will fare any better? I'm not trying to be snarky. I'm genuinely curious as to what the logic here is beyond simply compensating Brad for his time.
Quick, everyone to the Google cache!
My two cents: I wouldn't mind paying the $30 a year if
a) This means the quality of the content on the site is being taken up a notch or two. I suspect that with Khoo contributing, it will be. Not that the content thus far was of poor quality, but to go from free to $30 a year requires something more to justify it.
b) I had an extra $30 to spend right now.
Like a lot of posters, my only real complaint is the abruptness with which this change was made. It is sudden and surprising. I don't think anyone was expecting this. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
And last I checked there were only 65 episodes of Webcomics Weekly. Scott, where are you hiding the other 35?
Abby, to be on the safe side, I have removed your posts now that the subscription wall is up.