So, I’ve managed it. I can produce a decent looking M-F strip without sacrificing an awful lot in the art or writing department. Or at least I think so.

I’m a simple guy. I like to get a reasonable amount of payoff from doing pretty much anything. If I fart I want it to smell as bad as it sounded, if I pull open a door for some crooked old woman I want thanks. If me and my friends save the city of New York from Gozer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I want to emerge from the scene with crowds roaring with praise and perhaps a catchy theme song blasting out.

The problem I’m not getting any payoff for this webcomic at all. I’m plastering away for hours every night for what feels like absolutely nothing aside a small amount of self-satisfaction. I’m enjoying drawing Permanent Temps a lot more daily than the two/three a week updates of the past, but I can’t shake this feeling I’m probably wasting my time.

Time rhymes with whine. I guess this is me whining.

This comic does actually have a readership. About 60 people a day - some who leave comments that I enjoy reading and some who don’t. Some just leave stupid comments which I’ll just delete (Spambots and friends being dicks).

60 to me seems like a low number. Actually, it is a low number. Out of all the billions of people and space aliens who browse the Internet, this comic can only keep a steady, but measly readership of 60? I once read a great post about webcomic numbers that stated you only get the hits and readership you deserve.

Maybe that’s all the work here deserves? Or maybe all an idea for a webcomic like this one deserves.

Out of those 60 or so hits I ponder what percentage are just other webcomic authors who are coming here out of habitual concern someone else is doing a strip [today] that is better than the one they’re doing rather than actual enjoyment of the work? Sizing up the competition. I know I’ve done that plenty of times over the years.

And then, despite all the work going into this strip every day, I can infrequently produce a mediocre gaming comic on http://www.gamebrit.com which will land so many pairs of eyes on it the thing may as well be a pair of boobs in public. I don’t have to explain how frustrating that is to actually feel I should be drawing comics I don’t want to just so I can attain some sort of decent readership.

I don’t advertise this comic a lot, so maybe that’s the problem? I mean, isn’t word of mouth the best way a webcomic can be promoted? This goes back to the “readership you deserve” stuff earlier which makes me think people just don’t spread the word because they don’t like endorsing rubbish. I know things like Project Wonderful and attaching a body billboard to an immigrant in London can yield results, but nothing beats an average joe getting your URL tattooed on his forehead out of sheer zombie-like commitment.

I think what I’m going to do is work as I have been up to the end of this chapter, updating every weekday, and then stop and take a really good look at the situation. This isn’t a threat to end the comic if more people don’t start reading it - definitely not. But don’t be surprised if I go back to less updates a week or even start over doing something completely different with these characters. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for your continued support.

I’m messing around with the main page a little bit. If things look weird, it’s because I fucked something up or am currently trying something fantastic and new, but probably the first one.

Someone commented that the RSS feed is triggering for comments. This is because you’re still using the old feed at Page2RSS which was cowboy powered and would trigger when anything about the main page was altered. You’d get excited a new comic was up and get on the site to find I had just put a single word in bold. The thing must have gone crazy this weekend when I was changing everything to Comicpress.

So how can we fix this? You need to be using this feed, which is new with the new system and should update properly with any luck. I have very little knowledge about these complex new web technologies like RSS, so it’s very possible subscribing to this new feed will actually blow up your computer. Click it at your own risk.

I figure the site is now functional enough to be left alone for a week to see how it performs.

As mentioned in the previous post, there will be a lot of changes being made in the near future. A heck of a lot of layout tweaks are needed and I’m interested to see how that behemoth of a Twitter app will perform over time. I’m no real expert on website design, so even something as small as modifying CSS was a real learning experience. I now feel I am “the man” at assigning site-wide link rollover colours.

You’ll notice there’s the ability to leave comments on pretty much everything I do here now. I will read these comments and maybe print nice ones out and carry them around with me for a while, so please do make use of this exciting feature. As always there is a forum you can become a member of, but as time goes on I’m feeling less of a need for it to exist so don’t be surprised if I send it packing sometime.

Well, that’s about all I have to say for now. May go see Terminator Salvation later if I have time.

Alright, been tinkering a while now and I think I’m starting to get the hang of this. Looks somewhat like the old site now, right?

There’s still so much to do though, but it’s already pretty obvious this is a much better system to be using.