| Project Wonderful: Probably an Actual Good Idea |
[May. 31st, 2008|09:43 am] |
I was at a panel on "monetizing" comics and someone asked the extremely snarky question:
"Have you ever seen an ad on Project Wonderful for anything other than another webcomic?" (Hypertext added.)
And of course the answer is not often. So the immediate crowd reaction is to chuckle a little at how misguided the idea of webcomic artists trading around links and a few quarters along with them is. But I thought about it for a while thereafter and decided it's actually a great idea, no lie. Here's why:
Let's say you get a whole bunch of users on Project Wonderful. A whole bunch. Let's say you've got users of every popularity level from Howard Taylor to your basic "not even my friends are looking at it" comic. Let's say they average 5$ a month paying in.
Very quickly, a pyramid structure to this market will become apparent. At the bottom, you have users who pay in their five dollars and get a few cents back in ads, and at the top you might actually have a guy making a marginal living off his comic.
So-- isn't that kind of awful? I mean, isn't that just a shady pyramid scheme? Well... not exactly. For one thing, unlike the pyramid schemes you hear about in 70's cop shows, Project Wonderful has a built-in meritocracy, or if you want to be precise, a popularity contest. See, whoever's got the most eyeballs is the one making the most money, and if a popular comic stops updating, well, they stop making the most money and someone else moves up.
The other thing keeping Project Wonderful from being intrinsically evil and/or a bad idea, is that paying a little in to support other artists... isn't really something a webcomic artist will feel bad doing. Also, with few exceptions, artists don't generally start out supporting themselves with their work. We've all got day jobs. Some of us have pretty lame day jobs, but all the same, we webcomicers aren't exactly expecting to get rich quick off the webcomics scene. But the few coins in the jar that the upper half of us might get with a project wonderful ad sure might feel nice. |
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| Comments: |
We added PW to Code Name: Hunter a few months ago, with the expectation that it was never going to bring in a lot or any cash. The idea instead was to be able to offset our own advertising campaign, so we weren't throwing in ten, twenty bucks at a time and watching it disappear down the whole. Generally speaking, it's been a fair success. We've only added funds twice, both times when we ran ads on Schlock Mercenary or Shortpacked (or another high traffic site)
*quickly gags you* You fool! They'll know now!! | |
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