I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Looking at other webcomics today, I'd say I'm outside the mainstream in respects to style and content. Maybe old fashioned. But I believe there's an audience out there for me. I guess I imagine grown up type people with jobs and kids. People that read or miss reading strips in the Sunday paper.
What kind of audience do you imagine you are appealing to? Where do you find them?
I think a huge part of our advertising effort is targeting other webcomic creators. are we the only people reading webcomics? Where do the "Normal people" look for this kind of entertainment?
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Who is your Audience
For every fellow webcomic creator there are a few who dream of it but never do. They follow and read the comics and maybe in a way share the experience of the creator.
Plain readers are less likely to comment so they are the silent majority. It is said that for every comment there are three lurkers. I don't know. I only ever found any of the statistics of my own work too depressing and pitiful to consider.
My usual response to audience is to ask "what's that?" Nothing I have ever done has ever gotten nor deserved anything as grand as an audience. Occasional reader, but never an audience.
I draw for me and my two former roommates who inspired my story. So that's my target audience. Who else is reading? I dunno. Used to be a couple amazingly supportive comic artists (well, writers, mostly writers). My audience has always been limited. I suck at art (and used to REALLY REALLY SUCK). By the time the art was tolerable, it was a really long comic that intimidates potential new readers.
On the topic of readership… Back when we could put html code on our pages, I used a hit counter that monitored all kinds of stats, which included a "referred by" list of websites. I started noticing a big spike in visits and go curious. The main referrer turned out to be an erotic lesbian blog. There was no blog mention of my comic or anything. It was just a link in the site owner's links list of things she liked. Not many people link to me on their own (I joined databases and things), so that was my silly little source of pride. For a short time, if you asked who read my comic, the best guess I could make was "lesbians?"
lol UB that's hilarious!
As for my target audience, I just want EVERYONE to be my audience - is that too much to ask?!! ;)
Seriously, I suppose I mainly geared the Godstrain toward 'introspective types' like myself: people who think about the 'Big Stuff' (ya know, the largely useless musings about things we'll never know the true nature of, at least in our current state of existence… Stuff like: Life and Death, the Nature of Reality, Dreams, Philosophy, Physics, the Philosophy of Physics, the Physics of Philosophy… *slaps head*) Errr… yeah…
But… I also like art for its own sake and wanted people to like my stuff as a work of art too…! I know that was hard for them at first, but I have gotten better… :)
I also like to spice in a bit of action, intrigue, and romance, cuz I like that stuff, and I think my 'audience' does too. It makes characters feel 'real', and having characters that feel real makes the heavy stuff more interesting and relatable, methinks!
Banes wrote:I used to think most of my audience was fellow web comic-creators (us being the incestuous group we are…) but with the return of stats, I realized I have a LOT more more people taking a peek that actually comment on it, so… Yeah, still probably fellow-creators! ;)
I think my audience is mostly web comic creators and people who enjoyed the 90's.
I am unable to define my audience in terms of any specific demographic, but I can draw the following conclusions, based on comments I receive on the comic and discussions elsewhere.
ADF readers jealously guard their solitude, but also enjoy time spent with treasured friends and family. They are generous to a fault but won't be taken advantage of. They have long memories. They solve problems in unique ways and see things others don't. They look beneath the surface and get to the heart of the matter. They laugh long and hard, never more so than when they're laughing at themselves.
They are hard on themselves yet tolerant of the failings of others. They like to listen, but not to the sound of their own voices. They don't seek positions of power, yet in times of adversity, their unique qualities make them natural leaders. When others argue over details, they see the bigger picture. They plough their own furrow, with their own unique sense of style. They are intelligent, kind, creative, talented, loyal and fun to be around. Yet despite all these outstanding qualities, they are highly modest and self effacing. They also quite like the number 6.
Ironscarf wrote:
I am unable to define my audience in terms of any specific demographic, but I can draw the following conclusions, based on comments I receive on the comic and discussions elsewhere.
ADF readers jealously guard their solitude, but also enjoy time spent with treasured friends and family. They are generous to a fault but won't be taken advantage of. They have long memories. They solve problems in unique ways and see things others don't. They look beneath the surface and get to the heart of the matter. They laugh long and hard, never more so than when they're laughing at themselves.
They are hard on themselves yet tolerant of the failings of others. They like to listen, but not to the sound of their own voices. They don't seek positions of power, yet in times of adversity, their unique qualities make them natural leaders. When others argue over details, they see the bigger picture. They plough their own furrow, with their own unique sense of style. They are intelligent, kind, creative, talented, loyal and fun to be around. Yet despite all these outstanding qualities, they are highly modest and self effacing. They also quite like the number 6.
OMG, how did you know I was a Gemini?!
Nice reader profile Scarf!
My readership is split between amazingly beautiful, talented, intelligent women who're also snappy dressers, and handsome, intelligent, rugged men.
What they both have in common is their fondness for G-string underwear and the fact that they get dressed up to read each new page of Pinky TA: The men in full black tie, the women in figure hugging, glittering black cocktail dresses.
I have an odd niche in the wider Playmobil comics community. For some reason there are a lot of Spanish Playmobil comics, and there are some links to my pages from a number of sites that collect such websites together. Other than that it's the usual collection of fellow webcomics creators and the occasional person who stumbles upon my site. Every now and then I look at the stats for my webpage, and it's mostly a flatline of a few people a day looking at a few pages each, but every now and then you'll see a user spike 1000+ pages in a short time, and I know another person has read Character Development.
Seriously I'm not really sure who my audience is.
The people who comment are other webcomicers, great people all of them, but stat numbers suggest that there are a lot of other people too… I don't update much so I don't know why they're still coming.
Adminning this site means I have links to my profile on the front page, because of news posts. Presumably curious people follow that to Pinky TA.
I honestly don't know the majority of my audience.
I created this survey for my comic back in December 2015. Did not get many responses but the few I got really helped figure out my readers.
You are more than welcome to fill it! There is a bonus strip when filled!
http://www.comicbookbin.com/johnnybulletsurvey001.html
Reader feedback is probably a better gauge for how well you're doing with the local webcomics community than with readers in general. Nearly all of the feedback I've gotten on my comics and most people get on theirs is from people they know, whether from in the forums, or working on community projects together, or because they've been reading and commenting on their comics. People who don't know you generally don't bother to leave comments too often.
I have no clue who my readers are on this site. Back when I had my own website, my traffic tracker gizmo recorded hits from dozens of countries all over the Earth… but I'm sure a lot of that had to be bots. I was really big in Germany and South America for some reason. I see my older comics reposted enough that I know people are still finding them somehow, and I just recently found out that some of the characters from 'Death P#rn' were added to a "Bad Girls Wiki"… which I didn't even know was a thing, but apparently it is. But who are the faces behind any of it? I'll never meet most of them.
I do, from time to time, get emails from readers, and they span the whole spectrum: An erudite Medieval history buff from London, a married couple from Boston, an exotic dancer from France, a divorced mother from Mexico… and yeah, some are weirdos. Years ago, someone named "Snoozle" sent me this little gem (it was in response to a blog post I'd made about my site being hacked).
Fucking hackers are pathetic. Stalking is where the real talent lies. I'm the president of your fan club and I'm happy to inform you that we are preparing a full scale attack involving sponge bob handcuffs a rusty saw and using your severed big toes as sacred masturbatory tools.
So CHEER UP! YAY!
It did cheer me up.
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