Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

Good Monday morning! Hope you had a good weekend! I spent my weekend frustrated. Frustrated enough to consider giving up doing the strip. I’ve never been this far behind on it and it’s frustrating me…

So, I did some soul searching this weekend and I came to an important conclusion.

Now maybe you’re asking:

• Did you climb to the mountains and seek wisdom? Nah, I live in Florida – not much in the way of mountains.
• Did you go to a church, synagogue or mosque to seek divine guidance? Nah, I saw the light when the Gators won the National Championship a few weeks ago.
• Did you walk the beaches and look for a revelation in the footprints in the sand? Nah, I wish I spent more time at the beach – and that brings me to what I’m trying to say.

I sat and I thought (and I talked to my lovely wife – who listened and offered empathy). I love doing the comic but it’s taking too much of my time. It takes me hours to put together and seconds for you to read. Quite a difference considering I haven’t made a dime off the strip. In nearly a year, I’ve poured in about an average of 20-25 hours a week. Over the course of a year, that’s a lot of time.

Time…

So I sat and I thought and I came to a conclusion about time and how I am going to be more careful about how I handle my time with the strip.

First and foremost, I have to forget about coloring the strips for now. I underlined some of the reasons in Friday’s blog post. It’s a time issue. It takes me an extra 25-30 minutes per strip. That’s two and half hours a week I could be spending on drawing and improving my writing. Done.

Secondly, I have until the end of February when I have to decide if I want to renew my membership over at GoComics.com’s ComicsSherpa service. I’m not really happy with the service I pay for, as a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the angrier I get. Here are some of the pros and cons of ComicsSherpa and let me know what you think:

Pros:

• Audience – according to the site statistics, I’ve grown an audience of over 3000 page views per month – that’s over 100 per day.
• Exposure – I get part of the GoComics traffic.
• Possibility of syndication – GoComics is owned by a syndicate. Syndicates are the best way to get your comic into the nation’s dwindling newspapers. The possibility is miniscule.

Cons

• Cost – I pay for the service. It’s not expensive, but it’s more than my site hosting per month.
• Measuring – the site statistics are horrendous. The first day of the month shows I get single digit visits, which is peculiar since every other day has over a hundred – this has been consistent since I started the service. Twice this month, the statistics showed I had zero visits.
• Lack of service – I’ve tried to ask questions about the statistics and other things and haven’t heard back.
• Cross promotion – the only way to promote my own website is to feature it IN the comic. Not a big deal, but it adds TIME to publishing the strip.
• Lack of functionality – from the user’s perspective, it’s extremely difficult to find my (or any other ComicsSherpa) strip on the site. Site navigation is horrible. The layout of the page is not user friendly and ComicsSherpa users are not privy to the features the other comics on the site enjoy.
• Monetization – GoComics adds advertising on my comic’s page on their site. They also have recently added ads in the email subscriptions. I see none of this revenue and I am not credited for any clicks or impressions. I provide the content (and pay for the privilege) and they reap ALL the rewards.

Third, blog posts. I’m going to be smarter about what I post. Some days I may not have anything to say. Some days, I will pull out my soapbox and blabber out what little brains I have. Today, obviously I’m a little [insert self-depreciating insult here].

So there you have it. I’m inserting a poll in this post. If you can’t see it – go to the site and check it out. As always, I would appreciate your feedback.

[poll id="8"]

Now that you’ve read this far and heard me whine – save time on your own and get the strip in your email. Join the Rick the Stick family and increase the site readership here. Sign up friends and your other family too. Just let them know to there’s a verification email coming their way since I don’t spam. Get on it! CLICK HERE NOW and fill in some email addresses – SPAM FREE!!!

Good night Helper, Utah
Ken