How do you get a webcomic off the ground?

Consistent update schedule, time, and a threshold of quality.

>tfw you'll never be a Yea Forums darling like the It Hurts guy

Go back in time to 2004

Same as getting huge on youtube. Post shit super regularly. That's it, quality is secondary. People have attention of agold fish and need a new slew of new content., no matter how poor it is. Same reason family guy/simpsons is also still going.

>tfw actually made a webcomic in 1999 but didn't stick with it

Tits

This. Back when there wasn't much competition anyone that committed like this would eventually become get a dedicated fanbase. Nowadays everyone has a webcomic and your likely audience will only want free stuff and scoff at the idea of paying for anything. So an extra piece of advice is to make a comic aimed at people in their 20s and 30s as those age groups will likely support your comic if they like it. You'll do even better if it's fantasy and/or zombie based. And even, even better if there's porn attached.

I made this.
Ask me anything.

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That's cute.

this was true in 2000. now you gotta make it about sexual degenerates and pander, pander, pander

Wrong; you need at least ONE (01) waifu material. Regular updates + waifu = successful webcomic.

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>Shortpacked has official porn
>people have jerked off to Shortpacked
Darkest timeline.

What's your average number of page views? Has posting on Yea Forums helped you out? Where else do you promote your comic and which are the best in terms of exposure? How much are you making on Patreon? How often do you update? Do you do porn?

>Tfw my brother and I are trying to give a comic idea to Image
It's impossible if you're not an artist ain't it?

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Literally nobody cares unless you have work experience or a degree at the very least. Even artists nobody gives a fuck about unless you can submit a portfolio of the house style at minimum

Be homestuck

OP said off the ground, not so far underground that light can’t reach

I'm thirty two
The ride never ends

Homestuck from 2011 to 2016 was far from underground. Half the cosplayers are conventions were Homestuck and Hussie was pulling in 10k a month from merch sales. That's only 5 years but it was still a very impressive 5 years.

>page views
I think its around 1.3 million a month to the site at the moment. There are almost 300 pages of comic though, so after you do the math its slightly less impressive per user.

>Yea Forums
I don't really think so? Some webcomic artists are more willing to give me anonymous advice here, so I guess knowledge is power.

>exposure
Getting on the front page of Reddit and Imgur are the two main drivers of traffic, and then you keep those people around and engaged by directing them to Instagram and Discord. Facebook *should* be a a good place to direct people too as well, but I currently have a small audience there.

>Patreon
$605/m. I'm a little behind Ronnie and Slackwyrm.

>Update
I usually update on WednesdaySaturday/Sunday, but lately I've been doing Patreon comics so I'm trying to get through them a bit quicker.

>porn
No, I'd be real bad at it.

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I’m too old to admit how old I am.

good joke user

is this real

Contrary to what some others have said, I think the biggest factor is having an audience in mind? Like, way too many creators get into it with a mindset like "my comic is for anyone" and no targeting beyond that. This makes it hard to advertise, or for communities to latch onto your work and discuss it.

That's not to say you should outright pander to an audience, but just having any groups in mind that will appreciate your work more than average is advantageous. "Webcomic fans" isn't an audience anymore.

Credentials: less readers than the sword comic guy but I make more, probably because I shamelessly niche target.

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Update regularly
Don't make it about fucking teenagers
Don't make it about people "Playing Video Games" if it needs to be related to a video game, make it set in that lore.
Either have it be a series of jokes, or a narrative with deep lore.
Have a waifu, preferably smaller and cute, possibly nonhuman if you can get away with it.
Don't stop people from making porn for even one second, don't even bitch, don't even hint that you're against it. You don't have to make it, and a lot of the time people might even prefer you don't, but don't you stop that porn from getting made.
Zero real world politics, I mean it.
Have a Discord later on in the run when you have enough fans, not when you're just starting out. If people show up to the discord and see nobody there for a long time, they will leave.
Don't start out with a Paetreon either, do it when you have fans.
Don't make the discord paetreon exclusive. Special ranks work, paying for access doesn't.
For the love of fuck don't do grossout, it's impossible to be good in comic form.
If you thought any of these terms were too much, or were something you simply couldn't do, just make a furry comic and pretend you're a narcissistic retard so idiots that discover comics through porn websites will cling to you like a cult.

I mean, what you just posted was basically deep throat so you might be better at porn then you think

>I shamelessly niche target.
like what? or how?

Yes.

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>I think we're the oldest people on Yea Forums now.
Not. Even. Close.

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>No, I'd be real bad at it.
Market it as shitty porn for the ironic audience.

I tried ironic porn already. It was a huge success but I can't pull this stunt twice.

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networking, mostly. there are enough amateur webcomics ranging from a few pages to vast years-long archives that have no real readerbase simply because the exposure isn't there. our how's your webcomic threads are pretty good to get your roots in on Yea Forums but that's about it

paywall

I had an idea for a webcomic: An electrician gets zapped and now inhabits the body of the dog at the house he was working at. Now he can talk to the cat(also he kept his face so he's a fat Polish guy). But the cat only makes puns based around the word "fur" and other animal things and it always ends with the cat raping him.

adult swim would probably greenlight this if it were 2005

What subreddits specifically would you use for doing so and how would you get to the front page of imgur

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Based boomer.

Get back to work, Kaz.

This is great

Just /r/comics.
/r/funny, /r/memes, /r/dankmemes are all pretty hostile towards original creators sharing their work there, but you can. /r/webcomics seems to work for some people, but they don't like me there. I get the feeling they're a bit more discerning about who is 'allowed' to post there.

I'll occasionally share something to /r/programmerhumor or /r/gaming if its hyper-relevant - one of my comics got to the front page via /r/gaming but I wasn't the one who posted it.

As for Imgur, I post collections of 5-10 comics. One-offs don't really work, they like having a few episodes to scroll through. I generally just go for a central theme like, "Here are all the ones about fire swords" and use all 5 available hashtags.

Some people complain they're not in chronological order, but it never hurts to test these things. I'll happily rearrange the order of comics on the site if there are metrics that prove it makes people read for longer.

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How much do you pay for hosting and was your website hard to set up?

An extremely cool guy built it and hosts it because he likes the series.
All I did was pay for the domain.

Before that, the domain was pointing at a tumblr page with a webcomic theme. I would recommend doing that when you're starting out. It's very easy and costs virtually nothing.

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Great advice in both of these. Especially

>Zero real world politics, I mean it.

Politics is ebola, even if I happen to agree with it.

Alright thanks

Not all the Swords jokes are good but this one is. Made me laugh proper.

I chuckled, very good comic.

Only good webcomic I've seen in what feels like years. Thank you.

Sounds lame, but the answer is to just do it. Create a cast of characters you're interested in exploring and just do it and do it consistently (whether that be daily, weekly or even monthly)
It's a fact that art and writing quality plays almost zero factor into the success of of entertainment.