The State of Colleen’s Industry
on January 1st, 2011Thank you to all the loyal readers who have helped make A Distant Soil a success online. This graph shows the huge jump in traffic and visitor counts between 2009 and 2010.
I had a website for 10 years with blog and message board for six of those years, posting comic pages regularly for 70 weeks. Yet I saw no significant rise in my traffic or sales between 2003 and 2008.
In January 2009, I hired DC McQueen to redesign and reformat the website, and to make the webcomic the lead feature. The old website was shut down. The old posts could not be imported into the new format and were either scrapped or restored one by one.
The new site and webcomic did not show any increase in traffic or sales for months. In fact, after an enthusiastic, initial blip, traffic plummeted after the new site went online, bottoming out in April 2009 at only 8328 page views for an entire month, down about 15,000 page views per month from the old site.
The number on the left represents page views. The number on the right, unique visitors.
Dead low daily traffic count:
About a month later, traffic began to rise again, and stalled until November of 2009. Then, this happened.
The majority of the traffic for 2009 can be accounted for in the last two months of the year:
Traffic dropped again, then jumped back in August 2010. Traffic then doubled between August 2010 and December 2010.
For those who like to click on the Project Wonderful ads to get a look at other people’s traffic, my PW ads are back up ads and do not show accurate traffic levels for my site. They tend to rank a full third lower than my internal stats. EDIT: Also, keep in mind that PW ads can show very different results depending on where they are placed on a website. They do not reflect the traffic of an entire site, only the page views for the ad.
Note that I make a distinction between page views and hits. Lots of folks like to conflate their popularity by bragging about their hit count. One website which shows an Alexa ranking of about 5 million (which is very low,) claimed 5 million hits in six months. Millions of hits makes the site sound pretty popular, doesn’t it?
Page views account for each pair of eyes on an individual page. Hits are the packets of information sent from the site to the server. Depending on how many bells and whistles a website has, a single page view can account for 5-50 packets of info.
My site sends about 6-7 hits per page to my server. Here is a screen shot of my page views versus my hits for the month of December:
The left hand column shows the page views per day. The right hand column, the hit count.
The second bottom: the daily average. The bottom number, the totals for the month.
So, with 347,673 page views, I got 2,139,472 hits.
A combination of a wide variety of factors can account for the site’s rise in popularity, but I’m not entirely sure what they are, and I welcome your observations.
Most of the traffic on the old website was driven by blog posts. Most of the traffic on the new website is driven by webcomic readers. The more attractive pages later in the series account for much of the site’s appeal. Webcomic readers have short attention spans and are unlikely to stick with a site if the first page they see is unappealing. Earlier ADS pages are less likely to grab new readers and keep them. Later pages show a significant increase in staying power.
Still, A Distant Soil has a lot going against it:
1) Few long form serial dramas do well online. I can count successes on my fingers.
2) I can count the number of successful Western print to web comics on the fingers of one hand.
3) My work is copy heavy, which is garlic to the webcomic vampire.
A Distant Soil will run M-W-F through 2011. The sales on the site are up, the site is self supporting.
GOALS:
1) Triple traffic in 2011.
2) Work part-time on ADS in 2011
3) Full time throughout 2012. It could happen.
4) Jeff Smith plans to finish Rasl in 2013, I plan to finish ADS in 2013. We plan a victory tour together in 2013.
Nice goals. Hope to see you at the finish line.
Just some information that might help:
I came here through a link on Comic Book Resources back in 2008 or 2009 for the first time since I am very much a fan of your work but hadn’t seen anything from you since “Reign of the Zodiac” and remembered seeing a few random issues of ADS back in the mid-90′s and being very intrigued but unable to find any back issues thru my tiny little shop in Louisiana. I followed the site pretty regularly for the first few weeks and then my computer got sick and didn’t have home computer access for a while.
Then there was a link earlier in 2010 to your Very Bad Publishers posts I think on Comic Book Resources that reminded me how much I had been enjoying A Distant Soil and the VBP posts are very helpful and informative to someone considering their own comic career.
And, now that I’ve read all of the published A Distance Soil collections, it’s fun to follow along each week and revisit it one page at a time.
Thoughts on the “long form online” issue:
I can only think of one strip that ran its course successfully. That was Bruno. I’m sure there have been others, but that’s the one I know best,.
I miss Bruno.
Others, like Venus Envy, disappear without a word. The strips at Girlamatic appear to be chugging along, though I’ve not checked in for a bit.
Of course, many works, like ADS and Finder, jump media successfully.
I remember how irritated comic fans used to get at fill-in issues. Now online, it appears that’s de rigeur. I’m guilty of it as well, having not posted a new page of A Private Myth since October 24. And I post art weekly. Some magnum opus, huh?
I laud your goals for 2011, and hope to set and live up to such a high standard for my own work.
I’m also very happy your work is being read and appreciated on a wider level. That Webmaster business sounds like just the ticket.
I’m also quite eager to see how ADS ends!
Sorry to kill the buzz, but the web traffic for Finder is dead low, about 100 page views a day. I’m not reading this as a success from print to web. For an Eisner-nominated book, I read this as very bad. And it’s a shame, because Finder is awesome.
The entire Girlamatic site has a lower stat ranking than mine. I don’t know the exact numbers per strip, but the highest I could find was averaging about 3,000 page views per day. After how many years online? Geezus. Many appear to have been abandoned or moved their websites.
Galaxion, which has been ongoing for years, is getting modest traffic – again, only about 1,000-2,000 page views per day. Sad, it’s a really nice comic.
I’m looking at PW numbers, and while they can be off, stat rankings compared to PW #’s can’t be THAT far off. And I showed you my exact, internal numbers. You can compare for yourself.
I still can’t find any Western long form serial print to web dramas averaging five figure or better daily page views. Except mine.
You can’t make decent money with 2,000 page views a day.
You’d think comedy strips like Apes and Babes would do better, but even Frank Cho is not getting the numbers he ought to get, even though his numbers are OK.
There does not appear to be much crossover between the print and web audiences. If you are in print, that means nothing re the web numbers you get. And vice versa.
I disagree strongly that “..many works, like ADS and Finder, jump media successfully.” I’m not seeing it. I’m seeing two different audiences with two different sets of habits, and it takes a long time to reach one and then the other. As I have found out for myself. It has taken YEARS to find a solid audience online, and I think it’s going to take another year more to turn that into decent income.
Any webcomic that can’t get more than a couple thousand page views a day after years in production is a disaster. That’s a lot of work for very little return.
If the audience wasn’t out there clapping to revive Tinkerbell, I was ready to chuck it last year.
The whole thing reminds me very strongly of the self publishing boom and bust. Utopianism followed by wake up call.
I’ve heard other creators (Cameron Stewart in particular) say there is little to no overlap between print and web comic readers. Cameron has a sizable print audience as he’s done a lot of mainstream superhero work. He thought that would translate somewhat to his online webcomic but it didn’t (or at least not at first – it’s gotten more popular now). His webcomic http://www.sintitulocomic.com/2007/06/17/page-01/ is really good and worth checking out.
Bingo. That is what I keep trying to get through to people. Some yahoo of dubious credentials on some techy site went on a rant about how artists like me should be able to monetize the web – piracy or no – what with us being so famous and all. Surely we must have a kajillion fans!
But news flash: there is almost no crossover between our markets! Different buying habits, different everything.
A reader who saw my work at Disney is not my fan. That reader is a Disney fan. They may not read my next job just because I did something for Disney. Same thing for Spider-man, Sandman, or any other work I do. Credits don’t translate into fans.
Can’t seem to get it through to people!
And someday, one of the print comics publishers is going to be honest and admit in public that their downloadable comics are only moving a few hundred copies per book.
Who wants to be the first?
What, no takers?
The brilliant work by Stuart Immonen, Moving Pictures, did not do at all well online, and he eventually removed it.
Based on Cameron’s rankings, he’s getting no more than 100 or so page views per day. Outrageous. That’s great-looking work.
Print to web is not working for most print comics creators. At all.
The top webcomics are gags and joke strips, and have been online for years.
The good news for a work like mine is that even though it is old work to me, it’s new to everyone who sees it for the first time. No one reading this comic in Russia cares about the publishing history. They see what they like, and they read. It’s all new to them and that’s the only thing that matters.
Half my current readership is foreign and I have more online readers than I ever had in print. Making that pay is 2011′s goal.
It’s interresting too that while irl success might not translate to online success, online success is more likely to turn into irl success. At least as far as comics sold goes. There are a number of local creators who I only found out about through their online presence and either ordered their books from online or sought them out at cons and in bookstores. It’s also interesting that the material they publish online and in book form is different. There might be a collected work of the online stuff at some point, but usually the book stuff is not put up online in it’s entirety. All that fully supports the notion that the two mediums work slightly differently or at least usually cater to different needs.
That’s interesting, and it’s hard to tell because the economies of scale are different for each.
I’ve spoken to a number of webcomics creators who were deliriously happy to sell a few hundred or a few thousand of their GN’s. If I sell a few thousand GN’s, my reaction is “meh”.
Then again, my income is split with a publisher, retailers, and distributors. More than 70% of every sale does not come to me.
I’ve spoken with creators who were thrilled to sell 50 comics at a convention. For me, that spells disaster.
We each define success based on our expectations, track record, and needs. I complained about my falling sales, but when compared to other small press books, my sales were healthy.
Just like when I compared my webcomic traffic to other print to web comics: I found I was doing really well.
I recall one well known webcomic that went to Image and found that the Image brand did not significantly increase their sales or bookstore presence. They finally left.
For my part, the Image brand had a very positive effect on my bookstore presence.
Color me informed as regards Finder. More’s the pity. Carla’s work is astoundingly well-written, well-paced and smartly drawn, and she’s a pistol.I hope the move to Dark Horse brings her the level of success her work warrants!
I must offer partial dissent on “Credits don’t translate into fans”. Maybe I’m the “almost” in “almost none”, but I’ll give a book a chance if it has an artist or writer whose work I respect on it.
In any event, thanks for the clarification. I want to take some time and review all this stuff before I yammer about it any more.
Bodefan – I think the “credits don’t translate into fans” can be a highly variable thing. In comics, there certainly is the factor of “fans of the character” not necessarily following particular writers and artists. But, I know some readers who will follow a specific writer anywhere, and who at least look for all work by a particular artist.
Outside the comics arena, it might be a bit more possible for a writer (in particular) to develop a following who will buy whatever the writer does. I know some folks who do track writers for TV (or writer/producers – consider Josh Whedon and J.J. Abrams). But again, it takes a bit of audience cultivation to develop that following (plus delivering consistantly good work).
“Audience building” is a business craft that hasn’t really been taught much, though you can find more people willing to start coaching you on it now – under the term of “branding”. But it requires a bit of work and planning. I’d say Colleen does a pretty good job of it. Me, I’d rate so-so, since I haven’t really gotten it very “live” yet. I just spent a part of the day revamping the blog for my book, in order to make it more effective for marketing.
Anyway, I always learn from Colleen.
Fantastic. This ties nicely into something Steve Bissette has talked about in his recent posts (more specifically, the comments) in that it can take years for an artist to make a profit on a long-form comics work, but it can eventually pay off.
I’m really looking forward to the conclusion of ADS. I hope your audience keeps growing along the way!
I just do a gag cartoon webcomic, but I need to do it in a better way. It’s over at Webcomicsnation right now, and that ain’t cutting it. WordPress might be in my 2011 future.
@ Bodefan: I apologize. I should have been more clear.
Credits don’t necessarily translate to fans. It does happen. But with 3.5 million worldwide sales on Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that the vast majority didn’t translate to fans.
I learned this also when I worked on Amazing Spider-Man while self publishing A Distant Soil. I saw virtually no crossover in the two markets, and was unable to appeal to that readership. As one might expect.
Sandman: some audience crossover. Not huge amounts, but some.
Finder is great stuff. But the stat rankings are very low. It’s not getting the numbers. Same with Desert Peach. Great comics, not getting the numbers.
@ John: I’ve been emailing Steve Bissette about this and our takeaway is that it takes such a long time for long form comics to pay off that most people will never be able to stick it out. The traffic jump this year on my website is not a sign of profit: it’s a sign of promise.
That said, A Distant Soil has made good money over the years, and some years much better than others. It can work. But I wouldn’t bank on it.
My last GN actually did better than I thought and netted me around $20,000 profit. Which sounds decent, except that it took me a year and a half to draw the book. That’s a good part time gig for a creator, but one can’t live on that. That’s $1100 per month. Ow.
Naturally, earlier volumes did much better, and sinceADS sells year in and year out, in the long run (the very long run,) it always earns a decent page rate.
But you may have to wait years to get a return. That’s a huge investment and risk. For about three years running, my actual royalty income on ADS was about $1,000 per year. Ow.
It’s doing a bit better now, especially considering the income from the website. Which didn’t really jump until August of this year, in direct relation to the sudden jump in my web traffic. Still a long way to go to get the thing back to being solid, but it is all very promising. Nice way to start the New Year!
I have the old graphic novels, so I wait for the novel covering what I don’t have to be released. And I come here every day to be one of your page-views. Hah, I count as a foreign reader because I’m in Japan, though I spent my formative years in Seattle.
Recently I bought the Fey Winds webcomic’s first graphic novel. I also used your links to buy The Writer’s Legal Guide” or whatever that title is, and have lent it to a friend who is underway on a novel she’s writing.
I am so glad that I’ve kept up with your work, and can do my little bit here and there to give you income.
Er… the bit about Fey Winds was meant to illustrate that I put my money where my mouth is. Not implying that you’re tied to that webcomic. As far as I know, you’re not.
@jamie coville…
I don’t know. I’d have to read quite a bit of it, but the art doesn’t suit me. Not to mention on page 6 http://www.sintitulocomic.com/2007/07/07/page-06/ the only difference between the third and fifth box is the dialogue balloon. *sigh* I may get flamed for disliking that.
Eh, each to their own. I think it looks pretty cool.
I’ve had several people advise me not to bother to court overseas readers because they don’t buy. That’s nonsense. I’m getting very loyal readers from around the world, and whether they buy or not, they help finance the work with traffic.
I’m all for Estonia, baby. Wuv to the Ukraine. Welcome back Attiki, Greece. Hugs to Budapest! Kisses to Roskilde, Denmark!
I feel I should mention that Cameron’s comic is part of the Transmission X collective (http://www.txcomics.com) and likely gets most of it’s traffic from there. A lot of the creators freelance in comics and/or some other media and the webcomic is a 1 day a week thing. Not every creator keeps that schedule though. A lot of them do it to work in a different style than they are known for and so they’ll have something that they own.
Regarding crossover fans there are 3 hurdles to jump, those that will follow a creator from book to book (within DC/Marvel) those that will follow to a smaller or self published books, then those that will follow them online as well. You can argue a 4th, they might enjoy their monthly comic work but may not buy an OGN (or vice versa).
Thanks for that valuable input, Jamie. You know so much about the industry, I truly appreciate it when you contribute.
Full agreement about the crossover fans thing.
You can explain this over and over to people, and they never believe it even when it happens to them: there are fans of what you just did, and then there are your fans.
Many a creator who tried to go solo during the self publishing boom got a shock when their Marvel/DC fans did not follow them to whatever small press thing they were doing.
I fully expect everyone reading this to love all the graphic novels I am working on…
You forgot Finland.
That whole “overseas market not buying stuff” might just be that the overseas market wants different things. I know Vertigo does very well over here and collections of older DC and Marvel works, partiularly anything that Alan Moore has had a hand in, have their fans, but I’ve yet to meet a single comic book fan that would buy and collect mainstream superhero GNs. Even collecting single issues is rare these days, never mind untranslated single issues that would have to be ordered from abroad. I did find a few of those books at the library though… they always seem to be free….
Anyhow, I couldn’t say on how the sales are in Asia or even Australia. But with the status as art that comics mostly enjoy over here, there’s a pretty wide variety of European comics available in almost any language spoken here. Even though US creators are still probably the best known, there’s so much on offer from the locals that the marketing of a brand alone isn’t going to get sales. The content will.
The overseas market doesn’t buy stuff re webcomics because most of your mail orders will be domestic.
You’re talking about books and product available from major publishers via foreign licensing and distribution agreements. Most web comics don’t have that. They do mail order and mail order overseas is expensive.
EDIT: T-shirts, books etc, lower sales. For my part, I’ve seen a rise in sales of original art overseas. But product? Much lower. And since many webcomics are drawn digitally, I’m betting original art isn’t a big part of their income base.
One reader’s opinion:
I don’t visit webcomic sites daily, or even weekly. Usually it’s monthly, I’ll spend an hour clicking through the new strips, get a satisfying chunk, perhaps leaving a comment, and that will be it.
If I can recall a creator, I’ll buy stuff from them at conventions, because I like books, and it’s a way of supporting work I like.
I think I discovered this site via The Beat. I’ve known your work since… it was at Aria (although I might have sampled one of the graphic albums earlier), and read it mostly via the graphic novels. I do peruse the daily pages, but I know it will be much easier to read and much more rewarding (larger image) when the collection is published.
I visit this site daily (the others I visit daily: The Beat, Robot 6), to look at the nice picture up top, and, more importantly, to learn somethings about the industry and related topics from a respected, talented, and knowledgeable professional. Don’t feel bad… I like the artwork, but I come here for the essays.
Thanks for the peak [sic] behind the curtain. Glad your traffic is increasing, and that people are discovering your work. Ever thought about having your “army” promote your work on Facebook on one particular day? Perhaps create a post we all can link to via Facebook, sort of an introductory page?
Oh, and to make your head swell even more, you are one of those creators who gets an automatic glance from me regardless of what you are doing. Who else is on that list? Kyle Baker, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Harlan Ellison, Evan Dorkin, Mark Waid, Scott McCloud…
That’s very interesting, Torsten, and yes, that list does turn my head.
Your browsing habits illustrate how difficult it is to suss out actual readership from the pile of unique visitors. Depending on how the system is set up, unique visitor counts can be reset every day, or every week, or every month.
I know lots of people tend to choose the largest number to determine their unique readership, but that’s delusional…or just plain old hype.
Exactly what the core readership is is hard to pin down, but mine is definitely in the healthy five figure range.