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Networking Your Webcomic
Your webcomic is up and you're ready for readers. Building a reader base starts with networking, which starts with linking.
A brief recap on the value of links: You want people to link to your site, because one-way links are the most valuable. You also want most of your links to be from comics, because a link to your comic from a janitorial supplies site will be read by search engines as a favor from your uncle, and discounted. A few closely affiliated sites, like t-shirts, art and gaming, are OK.
Make use of webcomics blogs, where one mention can get you hundreds of links for reasons that we're still examining. Use The Webcomic Blog List to find webcomic blogs and descriptions for sending out review requests and press releases. The list is updated frequently. Sadly, many blogs do not answer your mail, nor acknowledge it. If a reply is important, try requesting it, but don't be discouraged. Some blogs will get to your material in time and others will seem like a black hole. Not all blogs are the same. Don't let one or two experiences set the tone for the lot, though I recently got a letter at my blog saying only mine and one other answered their inquiry. I did notice that one or two that did not answer did go on to mention the submission, however.
It's considered mildly rude not to drop a thank you note to a blog that gives you heavy coverage or a positive review.
These sites are popular webcomic networking/linking destinations, and vary in quality. With the exceptions of Belfry, Piperka, Comixpedia and OhNoRobot, you kind of mark yourself as a newb by participating.
We're mingling our recommend link sites with some others that are popular but don't meet our standards in some way. Try the good ones first and give them as least a few weeks to start appearing on Webmaster Tools. By then, you may have found some other places as well, and can pick and choose.
* = Recommended
*TheWebcomicsList is a giant link site. Just sign up. The forum is quite active but we find management unresponsive to problems. Spammers are tolerated, even encouraged by moderators, which can be disconcerting when you are trying to have a discussion with someone. The owner is a dud, with little to offer the webcomic community. A "gubbin" is a worthless, frivolous item, by the way, which tells you something about management's attitude. Lots of advice is offered, and some of it is at least partly accurate. It's "recommended" because it is effective, not because it lives up to its promise.
WebcomicZ is another giant link site, with an appealing design as these sites go. One of many redundant sites; almost every webcomic site has a copycat or two, which is a shame, considering the useful site concepts that are floating around.
*Belfry is a giant link site with a layout that seems to make it one of the better traffic generators. Reports user popularity of listed comics. Also a subscription site. An under-rated site of great importance to webcomics.
Buzz Comix and Top Web Comics are link sites with voting -- comics are engaged in regular competitions to be tops in their category, or overall. Some participants put voting buttons on their sites and take it quite seriously. Voting results are a measure of organizing prowess more than fan enthusiasm: the top-ranked comics almost all distribute -- or used to distribute -- various fan premiums to encourage voting. Meanwhile, networks of vote traders have organized around common themes. Buzz released a complete rebuild in August 2008, including Piperka-style bookmarking. At this writing, most of the reaction has been negative, with grating design and confusing interface the main complaints. ChoiceComics is also a voting site, with a different look and feel, and is smaller. Reader reviews are more prominently featured, but you can review your own comic, as I discovered when I did so under the impression I was supposed to. (Five stars, if you're curious.) You might want to take a look at my coverage of voting sites, here.
Below are screen shots of some link and voting sites.
ComicListing has friendly management, and a huge list of webcomics past and present, but the site is hurt by design and text limitations. Partnering with a designer/writer could make this site huge, but for now it's mostly a large and awkward list.
*Comixpedia is a webcomic wiki, so learning to use the needlessly complex template and posting an article about your comic is required for maximum effect. But you can add your comic to the list of webcomics. Slow server, pain in the neck and poorly maintained, but essential.
*Oh No Robot is a webcomic search engine. You enter the URL for each page of your comic and as much descriptive information as you desire. Most people do it gradually, but you can allow readers to help. Some people visit and let the robot select a random comic for them to view. You'll get traffic from people who like your work and visit your site. I've asked a lot of people about their experiences with the site, and the consensus seems to be that it's a good idea better served in other ways, like having search on your site (Which Oh No can provide.) I do get link backs from the pages I have entered here, but not most of them. Go figure.
Piperka is a bookmarking site. Your comic joins, and people can read and bookmark it conveniently, along with their other favorites. Over 2200 member comics as of 7/08. People who read your comic on Piperka will not count as traffic to your comic's site, but it usually only takes a tiny slice. I have not found backlinks from Piperka in my link reports, or they would be recommended.
ComicLink is a new site without flashy graphics. They require you link back to them. Very fast and easy. Not sure if it's going to get off the ground yet, though. Our testers finally gave up.
Frumph is a crumbling site offering news, links, ratings and reviews. Unlike many sites, the owner is visible, and occasionally writes with news. Forum. Bills itself as super-friendly; "super suck-up" might be a better term, until you offend the owner and get a bizarre reaction. Our test went poorly, with him displaying a dark side and occasional druggy haze. Ultra-defensive when confronted. Traffic very low. After publicly denying it, launched replacement site, Webcomic Planet, and deemed it a collective. For saps.
Horror comics can request addition to HorrorFind, a directory of all things horror. By Night is a horror collective.
Rubifruit is a banner exchange program for comics sites by women. It includes blogs, podcasts and the like as well as webcomics. TomGeeks is a collective that accepts reasonably qualified women webcomic creators.
Link Building Wiki is a huge compilation of link related links. Essential. But I haven't tested them all. Still, a must-visit.
*Webcomic Collage is like a visual version of the comic link list on this site, and you can join for free. Worth a look regardless. Has a section for comic profiles.
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Don't forget this site. We want to know about your comic URL first, but also look at our logo gallery as a possible place to submit. If you sell shirts, send us the link and we might feature one. Learn what's here. The web is full of people duplicating material that is easily accessible on this site. Use the form on the home page for easy communication any time. We generally confirm submissions with an email. ________________________________________________________________
*DeviantArt is an artist's showcase site where you can interest people in your work and link to your site. Definitely one of the more popular sites for networking and drawing attention. Not so much a place to register and get a link as a place to add another showcase for your art.
Comic hosts offer varying degrees of of service and publicity. See our PORTALS section for a run down of all the major hosts and how they work.
WhoLinks2Me is an ugly, often uninformative tool that over-promises to small sites but is useful for larger sites. Any results it does return are likely to be of interest, however. Enter the URL of a major site like CNN to see more robust results.
*XPASE is a little different. To get your link, link to it on your site, then click the link. You'll be invited to fill out a short form, and you're in. The search engines definitely pick this one up. As of Spring 2009, it seemed to be fading, along with Dragonwire, a rough Piperka clone with very little traffic. You can still add your title to the list in about five minutes.
Forum Signatures are an inconsistent part of your arsenal. Most forums allow you to easily create a custom signature, and include a banner. Excluding the banner, mine looks like this:
Bengo
http://lilnyet.com ( Li'l Nyet comic ) http://scratchinpostcomics.com/ ( Scratchin Post comic ) http://floatinglightbulb.blogspot.com/ ( Webcomic blog ) http://psychedelictreehouse.com/ ( Webcomic resources ) http://webcomicbloglist.synthasite.com/index.php ( Webcomic blog list )
Here's why: I have discovered a few forums don't recognize links without the http-colon-backslash bit at the front. A search engine will recognize them, but you want the forum to recognize them so they will change color and inform other forum visitors that they are clickable.
Search engines aren't keen on lists of links. They like links in blocks of text. I don't know if the descriptive text I added after each one is enough to satisfy, but it can't hurt unless the forum limits how many characters you can use. If you hit a limit, consider keeping your text descriptions, chopping the signature count, and rotating it once in a while.
Hint: If you discuss one of your links in your post, move it as near the top as you can. Putting it in bold helps, if it doesn't make your blog look shabby.
Hint: Keep several different signatures in a word processing file for ease of access. You don't want to be making them again and again.
Hint: Pick your author name and stick with it. My wife and I use our longtime nicknames, Bengo & Pug, to sign our webcomic, condensing some long names to something short and memorable. We make no secret of our real names (people don't seem to like mystery people) but our signature is pretty constant. Only on Twitter and some blog posts, due to lack of planning, do we have different names (Bengo is Scartoonist and Pug is LilNyet).
Explanation: Leaving your signature on blog comments seems like a great way to publicize your site, but it turns out that most attempts fail to produce links on Webmaster Tools. The reason is that most blogging programs add "no follow" tags to URLS left in comments to help reduce spamming. Thus, the links won't be read by search engines, and often won't appear or function even if they do. My advice? It's part of your signature, and the "no follow" concept is getting long in the tooth. Use your signature anyway, and some blogs will let it through.
Another criteria used to rank sites is how often the name of the site is mentioned, especially in blogs, which Google searches for precisely this purpose, among others. Thus, mentioning your site helps, even if it isn't counted as a link. Just don't be a blowhard about it.
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