And here I was thinking I was chatting to myself!

My webcomic traffic post from last week has enjoyed a few more eyeballs than I expected - mainly due to a kind link from Comixpedia which was picked up by Digital Strips and Fleen. That'll teach me to spin out half-baked postulations, eh?

Interestingly, the discussion has moved quickly to one of the ratio of "number of readers:making a living/turning a profit", which is an interesting development. Although I never mentioned that thought specifically in my original post I guess the connection has always been in the back of my head: ergo, more readers for my webcomics would naturally mean I'd be able to start making money from my work to the point where it became a 'day job'. Despite always believing this in some non-specific and vague way I never had a magic number of readers that would be a catalyst for this. To be honest, I think my projects would need a helluva lot of readers before financial liberation would ensue. Even if I did reach a magic number I don't actually have anything much in the way of product, plus I hate running advertising (despite having a small Google AdSense thingy on Magellan) - so all of that probably leaves me in a situation of not ever earning much even if I had over 100,000 readers per day.

Merchandising is a drag and I'm somewhat anti-consumerist, but it is still the most likely way I'm ever going to spin some financial gain. Probably the majority of webcartoonists who've ever tried self-publishing will admit that publishing printed versions of their comics is not a great money spinner, especially when printing colour comics (which mine are). And believe me the ratio of people who ask about a printed version and/or say they would buy one compared to the number who actually buy said printed version is (in my experience) somewhat alarmingly unbalanced (that is, plenty want one but then won't buy it once it exists. Yes, I am a bitter man). As for merchandise such as t-shirts, caps or mugs, I'm not sensing an interest from readers for these items. Magellan doesn't lend itself to iconic moments or sayings for a t-shirt although that hasn't stopped other cartoonists, often with very good results.

Possibly my main comic project just isn't merchandisable anyway. If that's so I'm just going to have to get used to doing them for the love not the money, even if I do get a million readers a day!

Has to count for something, right?

I don't know about other webcartoonists, but if they're anything like me (at least in this regard) they will care about their stats. They will care how many readers they get and how often and all that stuff. Like I say, I don't know if they do, but I know I do. Most of the time I pretend that I don't care, but really, deep down I do. And I know that because I'm always checking the page views and the Extreme Tracker stats I've stuck on my comic.

There are probably five levels of readership numbers:

1. Stellar: so many you can't really count them; 100,000+ readers per day; eg Penny Arcade, PvP
2. Super: high to very high; 10,000-100,000 per day; examples? I don't know!
3. Maintaining altitude: medium to high; 1,000-10,000 per day
4. Limping along: low to medium; 250-1,000 per day; eg my comic goes here!
5. Hello? Hellooo? Anyone?: nothing to low; 0-250 per day; eg many webcomics
   

Magellan is a bit hard to judge since I have it on Graphic Smash as well as Comic Genesis but I'm guessing the fourth catagory is the best fit.

Readers come and go, I'm sure many only read in blocks (I' myself have taken to doing that now for all but my most favorite - trying to keep up with tens and tens of plot lines on a weekly basis was getting pretty difficult). So daily stats probably don't reflect true reader numbers anyway. All the same, if I could lift the readership into the third category I think I'd be a very happy webcartoonist. It should be possible, maybe that should be my mission for 2007!

Guess that's why they call it the World Wide Web...

It's a sad little fact that I am a stats whore - I really love knowing how many people are or (as is usually the case) aren't visiting my webcomics and reading them. To this end I use Extreme trackers on all my sites... technically it only measures hits to the main page, but I have my doubts. At any rate it gives me a ball park figure of traffic and soothes my need for stats.

Recently, Extreme started including little flags which, if you hover over them, give you the name of the country and location of the ISP. For some reason I find this wildly fascinating. The number of different countries I've seen listed has really boggled my brain - North, South and Central America, United Kingdom, Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and various Asian countries. Can't say I've noticed Russia which is a bit odd. China and other communist Asian countries aren't represented either, but that's no surprise.

The US accounts for the majority of visitors to all my various webcomics, which I suppose is to be expected - it seems my work is more widely read overseas than here in Australia. That was a point I tried to impress on the many Australian print based cartoonists at the Supernova Pop Culture Expo late last year. They weren't all that interested in getting their comics online even though they were amazed when I told them how broad my readership was, but that's another story.

What weirds me out though is when I notice a little Australian flag - especially when I hover over it and it reveals that someone in Sydney has checked out my work. Makes me wonder if I've ever been in the same space as that person - like on the same train, or on the same bus, or in the same movie theatre, etc. As you can tell, I seem to have a lot of time for weird thoughts (see the 'walking' entry below, this seems to be when my brain does a lot of rambling of its own!).

Maybe it's just me but I do find it an intriguing concept. Did they like it, did they hate it? If I was in the same room and they found out I was the guy who did such and such a comic would they let me know what they thought of it? Actually it has happened a couple of times over the last few years, fortunately in all instances it has been positive.

Anyway, please don't think I'm spying on you, dear reader. The stats thingy doesn't give me that much to go on anyway and, by and large, I'm really only interested in the number of people visiting my comics. If you do visit any or all of them - thanks!