Monday - October 25, 2004:

The top web comic sites intrigue me. I'm convinced that, other than the top handful of sites, most sites are getting their votes primarily from their creators. Furthermore, Journey Into History will never approach the top of the charts. Why not? There are a couple of reasons. First, I'm catering to a small audience, web-comic creators. Not only is this a relatively small group of people, but it is a group of people who have an interest in not voting for my site because the vote would be in direct competition with their own site. To be fair, I have received feedback from a couple of creators who did vote for JIH. They felt bad that my comic's ranking was so low. JIH was not always ranked so lowly though. A couple of years ago, I went through a stretch where I dutifully voted for my own strip every day for several months. This moved me well into the top 100 on several different top lists. Add a wife or a couple of computer terminals to the mix daily and a person could easily move their own work into the top fifty or on their own. Throw in a parent, spouse and a couple of friends or kids and you've got yourself a top ten hit.

Secondly, for me the incentive programs offered are a little counterproductive. They force me to take time out of creating the strip. A clever creator who wanted votes could post some major plot twist that was only viewable after voting, but this seems disingenuous. The only reason they would vote would be to see the end of the strip and not out of any real conviction about its quality.

Third, there are plenty of ways to guarantee a rise in the rankings of JIH, none of which I'll be adopting. Namely, these include the incorporation of cleavage, sex, swearing, nudity, video games, blood, and sprites. Oh, and for good measure, adopt an anime art style. I don't have a problem with any of these tactics. If your goal is clicks, the right combination of the ingredients combined with four or five of your closest friends and family voting for you on a daily basis will do the trick.

Maybe participation in the top lists are a good way to attract new viewers, and I'll play the game for a couple of months here, offering original art as a prize to people who vote every day, but outside of the top ten or twenty strips, they're not a good measure of the internet's finest web-comics. Instead, I'm more excited about some of the reviewing sites out there including the Webcomics Examiner (for which I write) and Comixpedia. Websnark also offers an important model for getting at the best webcomics. For this model to work, several blogs in the same vein are needed. By Eric Burn's own admission, there are more good web comics out there than he can do a good job at reviewing. The HB comic blog will try to do a little reviewing from time-to-time, but I don't claim to have my finger on the pulse of the good stuff, at least not on a daily basis. When I stumble on some rare gem though, I'll be sure to share it. Also, I think the upcoming Webcomics Nation service offered by Joey Manley can help. There are apparently hundreds of creators on waiting lists for an account that will combine hosting, CMS (content management system), marketing and sales for comic artists without the need for them to have much programming knowledge. We need more of these community models. I would like to be a fan of the Keaner group, but I can't view many of their strips (the ones hosted on keanspace.com) without disabling Norton Internet Security and even that doesn't always mean I'm able to see the strip. I'm often turned off by the several clicks it takes me to disable security and reload the page only to find out I still can't view any of the strips. I've had more luck viewing strips associated with Drunk Duck, but I haven't done the kind of exploration needed to comment on the model. The Modern Tales group interests me. Heck, I'm part of it, but it is a tough environment for new comics to survive in. More Fun is barely surviving despite having Shaenon Garrity and Roger Langridge's names attached. Of course, I don't exactly know how Journey Into History will fare in the popularity department. The strip's not associated with any of the conglomerates and I'm not willing to pay for advertising. I pay enough out of my own pocket for hosting. The visitor numbers have been climbing slowly but steadily. I hope That's due to the daily updates and my ever-increasing interest in making the site a neat place to visit. I guess in the end, the clicks and comments matter a whole lot more to me than the rankings. Thanks for checking in.

-Bob Stevenson