Using a Convention to Drum Up Promotion

Conventions are a great place to get some additional publicity for your comic. There are a number of ways  to use the convention to get more viewers for your comic, and most of them will do wonders for your comic. Just remember to have some fun with them and you should do well.

Big Jar of Toys: Take some cheap promotional toys and fill a jar with them. Make sure that your webcomic and its URL are on them first, obviously, and make sure that the item is sort of fun and applies to your comic. The jar will empty by the end of your time at the convention, and all of a sudden a lot of people will have your webcomic’s URL in their pocket.

Cosplay: It may sound silly, but sometimes silly works. The idea here is simple: People take pictures of other people in outfits. If yours is interesting enough, you will also get pictured. If it is really interesting, they will find out what the costume is of and post contact information about what they find. Ergo, if you dress up you have a chance of making someone’s wall and getting some fame for your webcomic.

Pamphlets: Paper may sound outdated, but if you offer a pamphlets that summarizes your webcomic, lists important characters and story arcs, and offers trivia and contact information, you create a handy-dandy reference for your comic. As this can help people get into your webcomic by making it less intimidating, especially if your webcomic has been around for any amount of time, you also create a ticket into enjoying your comic.

Sponsor Passes: Conventions usually offer a sponsor pass; it is a little more expensive, but offers a small ad space on the convention schedule itself. This means that, for paying a little extra, you get your URL and a cute ad in the hands of everyone at the convention, at least those that are supposed to be there. Sometimes this also means becoming part of the links on the site, which is worth it as well; for those doing even basic SEO for the webcomic, this means a backlink to your site that actually increases your site’s relevancy, helping your ranking on search engines.

Table Contest: You can also run a convention from your table. This means that you offer a decent prize, run a lottery, and the winner(s) walk away with a decent prize. Just make sure that you don’t run the drawing at the same time as any major events and that local laws allow it, and you should get some decent publicity for your webcomic.

This is the tip of the iceberg. You can show up on panels and help out the convention, but you should explore opportunities yourself. Have fun, and you should have better business after the convention.

Using Items to Promote Your Webcomic

The use of promotional materials can be one of the greatest debates that you will have. The obvious minus is the cost, however inexpensive; even at twenty cents or less, including a promotional prize as part of the package sent to anyone that buys your book can seem to be expensive to most people. However, it does have the advantage of setting you apart, and can help build your fanbase. If you happen to be at a convention, then using cheap promotions items is a great way to spread your URL. For the cost of a few dollars, you can give a number of people a cute, possibly useful item that can lead them all to you.

There are a number of sites where you can find cheap promotional items, such as 4imprimt.com. You want to find something that works for your comic, and isn’t to expensive; in general, you are probably looking at items that cost 10-25 cents apiece, which puts you in the pens, pencils, and toys group. If you can find something that allows a line or two of print, then you have found a great way to get your URL out there. You want to debate any of the more expensive items, such as USB drives and key chains, but you may still want to pick some up so that you can use them as prizes.

There are a number of ways to get some business out of this. If you shave had books printed up, you can always ship them with the promotional items. If you are at a convention, you can fill a jar with them and just let people grab them. Some items you can offer as prizes, in which case you gather interest through the contest. You can even set them up in a local comic book store as freebies; the store should be more than willing to help you out.

Just remember to have your comic’s name and its URL; without that information on it, the item is useless. Sometimes you can throw on a logo; if that’s the case, then you need to have a black and white logo ready to go. These little items can be very effective at what they do; give them the best shot by making sure that they can be used to find you, and you have a great way to promote your comic.

When you just want to avoid sex

Obviously the easiest way to do this is to become a writer. Otherwise, the specific problem here is that sometimes you just don’t want to write a sex scene. You’re either writing an all-ages strip, the sex scene would disrupt the flow of the story, or it just feels wrong for the situation at hand. In those situations, it pays to know a few ways to deal with the need for an intimate scene but without the sex.

Dancing: It happens in the movies all the time: Instead of having the characters go hot and heavy, they engage in a scene of slow dancing, usually all by themselves. It ‘s a nice intimate moment between a couple, with all of the focus on the couple. It allows the artist to draw a nice, close picture of them, heads upon shoulders, nice and tight, sharing an embrace without it being on the sly, so they can lose themselves in one another. Sounds sort of romantic, right? This is probably the best solution.

The Slow Kiss in the Rain: Done right, this works really well. The rain allows a nice silhouette on the couple, allowing the artist to focus on the couple’s emotion. If the couple is having a long day, the slow kiss acts as a nice break from all of the action, allowing them a few seconds to lose themselves in the kiss. It allows you to slow things up for a moment, while at the same giving your characters a second wind. It doesn’t require rain by the way; anything that screens them works, even a quick blur.

The Fast Kiss/Slow Reaction Shot: One of the couple gives the other a quick smooch, and rushes off even as the other reacts to the kiss. This allows the action to keep up while giving the couple a necessary romantic moment. It only takes a few frames to accomplish, but does so much to show the relationship of the characters.

The Surprise Gift: Although one of the characters is doing something else, the other character finds or uncovers or even has delivered to him or her a small present. The target character smiles and then finds a place or use for the item in question, usually remarking how perfect the item is. It’s a fun little scene, and moves along the relationship. This also allows you to move the plot along through a small coincidence (you know that aggravating situation when something happens and it comes off as if by luck, like when the bad guy just happens to run out of ammunition or someone shows up at just the right time?), but one the audience should forgive you for.

The Boring Meal: Sometimes you just need to slow things up a bit and give the couple some time together. This is when they should eat together; an intimate dinner with them in each other’s arms, possibly feeding each other. The annoying comedy version has them at the ends of a long table, but that should be avoided unless you can actually play it for laughs. Otherwise, the couple should disappear and just enjoy some time together under the guise of doing something practical. Although this adds an intimate moment to the relationship, it needs to be boring; the meal needs to bring them closer and having any action will have the opposite effect.

There are obviously other ways to go without sex, but these should get you out of most situations. Just remember that you need to emphasize their relationship, and sometimes it just takes slowing things down a bit to accomplish that.

Good Merch vs. Bad Merch

Although I love sites like CafePress and Zazzle, but sometimes people create too many products. It’s not that there aren’t some good ideas out there, it’s just that sometimes not enough thought was put into the idea. In essence, the creator creates some merchandise that should not be created. Just look at some of the scarier superhero merchandise that has been created over the years, and you’ll quickly see my point. You don’t want to make something that will be a joke years down the road, so there are some things to keep in mind.

Don’t betray your comic: If you run a kid’s comic, there is always the temptation to do something more risqué. By the same token, there is always the temptation to do parody material with serious material. The former is a bad idea, whereas the other can work rather well. The former idea betrays the comic; it takes the comic into an area that you may not want it to go, and more to the point may come off as sort of weird. If you’ve set up certain themes in your comic try to continue those themes in the merchandise as well.

This is why parodies work; it gives you a chance to look at those themes by going outside the normal lines of your comic. There’s a line of shirts where the TARDIS shows up in front a Disney princess; it works because of The Doctor can and usually does show up in weird places, and the added whimsy of the princess as a potential Companion works out rather well while exploring how much they need to be paired with someone. When we see Gabe as a carboard-tube samurai it works; Gabe can be a jerk, but seeing him imagined as a samurai speaks to how gamers see themselves as noble warriors, and still falls within the theme of Penny Arcade poking fun at gamers.

Ask a friend to look over the idea: Sometimes in the rush to create something you may overlook some simple considerations and a new set of eyes can catch something weird that you may have missed: an out of place innuendo, a simple spelling error, even something as simple as too many fingers. Just knowing that someone else will be looking it over may kill some of the stress of completing it in the first place. But always have someone else go over the idea.

Don’t put your logo on everything: Just because you can have thongs doesn’t mean you should, especially if your comic emphasizes innocence and purity. If you can create a great Christmas ornament, go for it; otherwise don’t worry about it. Just because something is possible, doesn’t mean that it should exist; just be true to the comic and you should be okay, and don’t force into areas that it doesn’t belong in just to make a buck, or you will find that the comic itself will suffer.

The merchandise should expand the comic: It’s a weird idea, but this can actually help your comic. If you have one-panel ideas that really work for the characters, such as a couple snuggling or a family snapshot of all the characters, but just wouldn’t work in the comic, a T-shirt or a calendar may work out well. You can always run it as an extra in the trade paperback, but sometimes you want to get the image out there, and putting it on some kind of merchandise works.

Keep these ideas in mind and your merchandise has a chance. You just don’t want to put your artwork on everything or it comes off as you are schilling your comic, and that’s never a good idea.