Thread "Wowio: Make lots of money from your webcomic!" in forum "Networking & Community Projects*"

Posted at 11:09AM, Sep. 20, 2007

My DrunkDuck webcomic, Grounded Angel, has earned us $1,368 since we put it up in April as a set of seven free, downloadable PDFs on www.Wowio.com. I'd like to share the love, so if any of your webcomics creators want to put your work up there and make some cash, get in touch with me.

I'm looking for high-quality webcomics (preferably in comic page, rather than comic strip format) that have large archives.

Reprinting your work on Wowio in no way interferes with your comic on DrunkDuck, nor does it interfere with an eventual print collection.

Send me a private Quack and we'll talk!

-Steve

Posted at 8:09PM, Sep. 20, 2007

There has to be a catch.

I mean, you said those PDF's are free… what is Wowio getting out of this?

Posted at 10:09PM, Sep. 21, 2007

There has to be a catch.

I mean, you said those PDF's are free… what is Wowio getting out of this?

WOWIO gets advertising revenue from companies that have their ads inserted by WOWIO into those PDFs. Meaning, your comic gets distributed with an ad or two and Wowio gets paid for it. I guess they pass along some money to you too… but I can't figure out how to upload stuff and whatnot.

Posted at 10:09PM, Sep. 21, 2007

There has to be a catch.

I mean, you said those PDF's are free… what is Wowio getting out of this?

WOWIO gets advertising revenue from companies that have their ads inserted by WOWIO into those PDFs. Meaning, your comic gets distributed with an ad or two and Wowio gets paid for it. I guess they pass along some money to you too… but I can't figure out how to upload stuff and whatnot.

Makes about as much sense as anything else in this place. I'm more interested now into doing this.

Posted at 1:09PM, Sep. 22, 2007

Yes, I'm interested in publishing my popular comic penis on Wowio.

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 2, 2007

Would it be wrong if I said I'm interested in publishing my popular penis in a comic on Wowio?

Posted at 1:10PM, Oct. 24, 2007

I've been looking into these guys and have basically hit the wall, so I'm going to post what I've found out for the benefit of anyone else who's curious.

For starters, I PQ'd the_poet a few days ago and haven't received a response – don't know if that means he ignored me, or if he just checks DD infrequently.

I registered with wowio to check out their service. Their end-user license is about what you'd expect. They seem to take pretty good measures to protect the products they make available – each comic (or other) PDF has the downloader's name in it in a couple of places (every downloader has to provide name, non-anonymous e-mail, and answer a marketing survey before being granted an account), every page has a unique serial number, and they state that they use other "non-visible" markings to determine exactly who downloaded a given file as well. They state that if one of their files turns up on a file sharing network, the downloader can expect to have his or her account terminated, and in cases of large-scale license violation can expect to have legal action taken against him or her.

Fair enough – that's about the best you can hope for in light of today's organized piracy.

Is wowio a fly-by-night scammer? It seems doubtful. Their sponsors are Verizon and (I have heard) Electronic Arts. Likewise they're distributing some VERY well-known material, such as the original Flash Gordon newspaper comic strips. It seems unlikely to me that wowio would be able to attract such major sponsors and major licensees without having a solid business plan and respectable practices.

So that's all to the good. Here's the tricky bit.

The only place that I've been able to find on their site where you can inquire about publishing your material through them is their contact page, and as soon as you identify yourself as seeking publishing information (via drop-down box) you're informed that "WOWIO only accepts submissions from professional publishing firms at this time."

So apparently most of us here on the Duck are immediately out of the running. I tried to ask for additional info via the Publisher-Seeking-Information form (I'd love to see a copy of the contract that webcomic authors sign), and got the following in my e-mail:

(paste begins)

Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
From: postmaster@BARBRADY.WOWIO
To: barking_frog@roadrunner.com
Date: Today 12:53:05 pm

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

kellison@wowio.com

(paste ends)

So it APPEARS that the contact account for publisher info has been deleted. Not terribly professional.

My conclusion given the "only accepts submissions from professional publishing firms" in conjunction with the dead contact e-mail is that they've got the publishers that they want at this point and are no longer looking for new material.

If anybody gets any additional information, I'd love to hear it – I'm eagerly looking for a way to make at least enough money back from my webcomic to pay my artists and cover my advertising, and wowio looks like it might have been exactly the kind of marketplace I've been looking for IF they were open to new contacts.

Posted at 5:10AM, Oct. 26, 2007

Thanks Frog, lotta good info there. I kinda wish it were real so that I could make some moolah. Pay for my anime habit eheh!