A quick snapshot of my current stats, as reported by Jetpack. Green notes about how many people read a decent chunk come from Google Analytics.
Over the past few weeks, I experimented with running a broad ad campaign, looking at what Google Analytics told me about how people were behaving, and then narrowing my focus to a couple sites that were standing way out ahead of the pack in terms of how many people actually sat there and read a bunch of the comic. I’m down to about $10 in my Project Wonderful account, so this is still not a self-sustaining thing yet, never mind a profitable thing. (I have PW set to just pour any ad revenue I get back into the bin for buying more ads.)
All advertising was on various webcomics via Project Wonderful, an ad network primarily used on webcomics. Which narrows my focus to “people who are already interested in reading comics on the web”. I need to find places to advertise to “people interested in science fiction” as well.
I think my next step is probably to finally get around to making an ad or two with that quote from Phil Foglio, then buy the top banner on Girl Genius for a while. That’s definitely a place to find people who are interested in lady-focused cartoony SF. After that, I’ll probably grit my teeth and do a bigger ad buy (low four digits) that actually grabs the top banner on some of the bigger comics of today.
I mean I could also just not spend money and focus on crafting my art into perfect little ultra-sharable nuggets of tumblr/reddit-friendly viral content, but let’s be honest, that is not a place I want to go with my work. That way lies the Oatmeal and Zen Pencils, neither of which I want to be.