My fellow webcartoonists,
As we come to the end of the first month of the new Webcomics.com, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what has been an amazing four weeks.
Moving to the subscription model caused an uproar. People could not understand how we could possibly place our site behind a pay wall. The backlash was tremendous.
And so was the support. I can say, without exagerration, that our membership today easily exceeds where I'd expected it to be by a factor of three.
Looking back over the first four weeks
If you signed up during that time, you enjoyed the following benefits:
- The usual high-quality, timely posts you've come to expect from Webcomics.com
- An overview of Webcomics from an industry model perspective written by Robert Khoo -- who then engaged in a discussion with commenters.
- A frank and brisk discussion about webcomics with Scott Kurtz, who has been a consistent presence on the site.
- Discussion, both on the site and in the forum, among serious webcartoonists discussing issues at amuch higher level of discourse.
- Fantastic member-submitted content, such as Jeffery Stevenson's step-by-step method for maximizing his Project Wonderful ad campaigns and Marvel letterer/fellow webcartoonist Chris Eliopoulos' guide to hand-lettering.
- Excellent discussions in the Private Forum.
- An exclusive deal on a table at C2E2 that delivered a 200% return on your subscription -- when there's a waiting list of people trying to get into Artist's Alley. In other words, our members were able to get in when others couldn't -- and we paid the members for the privilege!
And it's only been four weeks.
Addressing the critics
Now, obviously, there have been detractors. There has been anger. And there has been a overwhelming amount of misinformation.
And, as you may have noticed, I've been pretty much absent from those discussions. This is for several reasons. First, as a general rule, I don't argue on other people's sites. Too often I find my participation merely brings additional eyes to the misunderstanding I'm trying to dispell. Secondly, I firmly believe in the "Show, Don't Tell" principal. If I spend all my time telling people what I'm trying to do with this site, I'm not spending enough time actually doing it. Incidentally, that's the third reason I've been absent from the discussion. I've put more effort into this site in the past four weeks than I've put into it in the preceeding four months.
The "How To Make Webcomics" Argument
So, let me take a few moments to share some thoughts about some of the common misconceptions I've seen out there. I can't keep trying to explain that the free-content "Webcomics Business Model" my co-authors and I champion in How To Make Webcomics doesn't apply to a site like this. I still operate four other webcomic sites -- all of which are free and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
But I can't monetize Webcomics.com by selling T-shirts. And this site will not be supported by ad revenue. These are concepts that people either have the intelligence to understand or they don't. If you don't get it, I can't be smarter for you.
The "Tribe" argument
For those of you who have indicated that I have abandoned the commnunity that I helped create -- that I was "a leader who left his tribe," I can only say that I would love to have been as influential or as powerful as you say. As a leader, I could have said "do this" or "do that" and you guys would have followed.
I'm clearly no leader. As soon as I said something that my "tribe" didn't want to hear, many of them abandoned me.
And that's OK. Because I never imagined myself to be a leader.
The announcement was handled poorly
I could have made the announcement three days prior and fielded the same volume of complaints -- but it wouldn't have changed the final outcome.
And then all of the people who thought they were offering valid suggestions ("Just put up a donation button") would have felt disenfranchised.
Which is worse? And does it matter? This is one thing that I couldn't change (even if I wanted to).
What happened Jan. 4
Webcomics.com (as it had come to be known) was finished on January 4 -- whether I'd have switched to a pay model or not.
If I hadn't switched, I would have left. And without my daily moderation, editing and posts, the site would have come to a slow halt -- or changed into something we would have been embarrassed by.
Webcomics.com had two parts -- the "site," or the main page, where all of the official Webcomics.com posts were featured and the "forum" where anyone could post a topic. With few exceptions, I wrote four posts a week for the "site" part of Webcomics.com. Guest submissions amounted to a small fraction of the site content (my estimate is close to 25%). All of the guest submissions were read, edited and, in some cases, enhanced by me. Forum posts, of course, were dominated by reader-generated content.
(The old forum, by the way, has been preserved as a readable, searchable archive. None of it requires a subscription.)
Without the site content, there's little reason to visit Webcomics.com on a regular basis.
The forum, of course, would continue, but part of what made the forum useful was that I moderated that forum. If someone posted something ill-informed or aggressive, I would either try to clarify the factualness of the post (or, in the case of the latter, quell any flame-ups before they started).
Without my daily involvement, Webcomics.com would have become, well, like almost any one of the many forum-based sites that have sprung up this month to fill the void -- spotty at best and, at worst, ill-informed peers spreading misinformation, sparse daily site-content of note, and ugly flame wars.
I liked Webcomics.com too much to see that happen.
Truthfully, it would have been closed down before things could have gotten to that point.
So, one way or the other, Webcomics.com -- the way it had come to be known -- was finished on January 4. Over.
I couldn't justify the expenditure of time any longer. I have a wife and two boys and darned-near-80 hours a week in professional commitments. Anything that cuts into my little bit of family time had to be justified in dollars and cents. Webcomics.com couldn't be justified in that way.
To continue working on Webcomics.com, it had to generate revenue. Now it does. And I can continue to pour my heart into a project that I have a passion for.
Other common comments
A few other comments about Webcomics.com that deserve to be clarified are:
It’s unlikely non-subscribers will be submitting articles, and less likely that subscribers will submit content
This is completely wrong. If anything, I've seen offers to submit content increase. And I have more offers coming in. One difference I can note is the quality of the submitted content is markedly better.
Why give away content for free to a site you’re already paying for?
Because a subscription to Webcomics.com is more than just paying for content. It's a community of serious webcartoonists. The subscription price has two effects: It funds the running of the site and it keeps the less-serious webcartoonists out. The result is an amazing community of serious professionals (and semi-pros). The submitted content is coming from people who understand what they're actually getting for their subscription. If you think you're paying for the content at Webcomics.com, you're only getting a fraction of the big picture.
Thus, the burden will be primarily on Brad (and Half-Pixel) to keep the great content coming. I hope he realizes the challenge he’s taken on here.
Webcomics.com is not a Halfpixel project. Although they are subscribers, Dave Kellett and Kris Straub are not involved in the running of the site.
Beyond that, little has changed. Again, disregarding the forum, I generated close to three-quarters of the content for the main Webcomics.com site. This is nothing new. People are still free to submit what they'd like to share, and as has been the case for the previous two years, I run the ones that I think are good enough. :)
Oh, and this has changed: We're able to offer more opportunities to our subscribers. Within our first two weeks, we've offered a deal that presented a 200% return on the subscription price for people who were able to take advantage of it. In other words, some of our members have made their money back and put and extra $30 in their pockets in the process. And they still get everything the site offers.
People will never pay for something they can get for free on the Web.
This is absolutely true.
And what we're providing at Webcomics.com -- columns by Robert Khoo and Scott Kurtz, exclusive deals, knowledge-share among dedicated webcomics pros and semi-pros -- can't be found anywhere else.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 5:00AM 
