Good morning,

Well here it is! #500! This week’s strips were a metaphor for how Rick’s webcomic experience has been – more specifically mine. The last two years have been an egotistical roller coaster ride with more downs than ups, but overall a fantastic experience. With that in mind, if you’re interested, I’ll explain…

I broke out in March of 2008 with a vision of conquering the comics world – just like Rick’s press conference in Monday’s strip.

I quickly realized that the artwork was not what I was envisioning in my head. Plus attracting an audience was much harder than I had imagined. While I continued to develop the comic, my unrealistic dreams of owning the comics world overnight justifiably crashed. Just like Rick in Tuesday’s comic. The first responder is symbolic of the various people who have offered encouragement and inspiration to keep going.

With my experience in advertising and marketing, I was hopeful that I would find a way to break through the webcomic industry’s struggles to find a workable business plan. Ultimately, I spent money advertising and I’m confident that with the banners I put together it was enough to gather a lot of interest – and click thrus – with 25 thousand pageviews in June of 2009. The problem was that despite improvements I made in the artwork, the strength of the writing didn’t keep pace. People were coming to the site, but not coming back. In Wednesday’s webcomic, Rick loses his sponsors – that were never really sponsors – much like my mindset of making a big splash was causing me to lose opportunities at building sensible revenue streams.

So now, I’ve kind of rebooted the comic. What was once going to be about Rick and his life in a cartoon world, we learned it was more interesting to work with shorter storylines, and build less of a barrier of entry into learning about Rick and enjoying the comic. Concentrating on the writing and developing the new story theme of Rick being Super Stickman and not knowing it has slowed the growth – just like Rick’s experience in yesterday’s strip. The valuable thing to take away here is that he finished the race. Leading to today’s finale – Rick has all pistons firing…

Number 500 symbolizes everything I’ve learned over the last two years. Despite how fast I think I’m going, how much I’m pushing the comic to grow, I’m still just driving a wagon until I invest the time and foster the growth.

Still here? Wanna head out with me while I look to make another 500 comics? One thing is for sure. I’m taking the first 500 and using them as a positive learning experience. I’ve had a lot of fun hanging with Rick, I’ve met some great people, made some new friends and learned that people you’ve never met can help pick you up and help you through some of your most trying times. I’m thankful for all of that and I appreciate the time it takes for people to include Rick into their lives.

That’s all for me today. Hope we’ll see you Monday for #501 – it’s gonna be GREAT!!

Thanks for dropping by!
Ken

©2012 Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs. All Rights Reserved.

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Good morning!

Big day tomorrow #500!!!

Thanks for dropping by!
Ken

©2012 Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs. All Rights Reserved.

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