As promised – here I am again with some webcomic wonderment. Ulysses “Seen” is a stand-alone comic affiliated with no-one but a few friends we like to link to. That’s a conscious choice – one that might be made for a number of reasons. There are alternatives though and the question I want to pose today is why would you choose this route over any of those alternatives? By standing alone, as this site does, the obvious and main benefit would be one of control. There’s nobody here to tell you what to do or how to do it. The reason this site looks the way it does is because of the time and effort put in by those who have created it. The limits are only made up of time, money and knowledge. Money is always tight but if you have the time and the knowledge then most everything is possible. If the creators behind Ulysses “Seen” want to change something and it is technically possible then there’s no one can stop them. Were this comic to be hosted anywhere else then the requirements of that host would have to be taken into account and those changes might not even be possible.

Aside from the question of physical control over what the site looks like, which might after all come down to only a question of aesthetics, there is a more important aspect to the question of control – a question which continues to puzzle webcomic creators to this very day. Something that concerns not only webcomic creators, but musicians, artists, writers and any other kind of creative who needs to earn money to survive – the question of monetization! How can anyone hope to make money out of a webcomic? Well, you’re not going to get very far in any kind of business if you’re not the one in control of your own product I would have thought. The product here, a comic, is free to the audience. Print comics have a cost attached. The web though has corroded that link between product and price to a point whereby the cost of producing the product has to be recouped by means other than just slapping a price tag on the digital object. Subscription fees are a tricky business online and most consumers are reluctant to go that route unless you can make a very compelling case for it.

Currently though the most obvious way to monetize any website is through the selling of advertising space either directly or via some sort of affiliate scheme. At least by controlling your own space on the internet you have the opportunity to bring this idea fully to bear on your site or product. The problem with most hosting sites is that their technology falls short of precisely what it is you’ll want to be doing with that affiliate advertising. Their advertising will always take priority over yours anyway. Sometimes it’s either impossible to figure out a work-around or just more trouble than it is worth – the actual revenue from advertising being somewhat limited by the turnover of visitors through your site. At least this gives you an incentive to push those numbers up!

Regardless of the aesthetics of your site then and putting aside monetization, what other reasons would you ‘go it alone’ like this? I can think of only one other and that is the attitude commonly referred to as the ‘fake-it-until-you-make-it’ device. That sounds like a put down but really it’s something that all fledgling businesses have to embrace if they are ever to grow to point where they can sustain themselves. We’re all ‘fakin’ it’ to some extent and in order to get people to realise that your ambitions are real, your attitude serious and you’re not the kind to be put off by minor setbacks you really have to set your stall out in the marketplace in a way that at least suggests people should take you seriously.

Ulysses “Seen” is an ambitious ten year project. The team behind this project wouldn’t want anyone to think they take it lightly and the ‘do-it-ourselves’ approach further cements that idea in the mind of the audience. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they were not seriously engaged in this project. Would they have the same kudos if they were hosted by a third party? Would they have to pull their pants on everyday and get to work if they knew they could rely on another contributor to take up the slack?

I hope you find these questions interesting. As a creative you’ll be asking them yourself if you’ve not already started. As a reader they are sure to impact the way you use the internet and pay for goods and services and there are many who think the time is coming when all this FREE stuff on the net will just disappear. The forces of capitalism are still strong! But are there any other advantages I’ve missed about the self-hosting route. More importantly perhaps what are the disadvantages? Next time I’ll be looking at the alternatives to what we do here and asking what advantages they might have to offer comic creators. Feel free to discuss

Tags: comix

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:13 am and is filed under Like in the Funny Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.