Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

Rick the Stick #492

Good morning!

Only 8 more strips to go until the big 500 (not including today)!! Getting some positive feedback about the direction of Rick “awareness” of the super situation he is in. I’ll be rolling out site changes over the next couple of weeks, but not much since I hear rumblings of an updated version of ComicPress. Regardless, I think next week’s strips will focus more on the illustration aspect and less verbiage. I’m going to challenge myself, I’m going to try and pull off some cool angles and just push my abilities.

After all, starting in March it could be the final year of the strip. That’s not hyperbole or impending doom talking, that’s reality.

I’ll explain in case you’ve haven’t heard. I’ve been doing this webcomic since March of 2008. It’s been a huge growing process. From fantasy to reality. It didn’t take long to get knocked off my high horse and I’ve been steeping in reality for a while. This isn’t a pity party so I’ll move on…

Here’s how it breaks down. I’ve been trying to grow the art and the writing as fast I can and over the course of the next year if the response isn’t there, then we’ll have given it a good run. I set goals from the beginning that I wanted the first year to be about getting the comic done consistently, and getting a system down – I did that. The second year was about building awareness. In June, we hit over 25k page views. That’s almost a thousand per day – pretty darn good and I was very proud – but I wanted to remain realistic. With that in mind, I took a good look at the analytics of site and was curious if people would stick around. They didn’t. I attributed it to the writing. That’s when I slowed down and tried to buckle down on the writing. I also cut my ad budget to make sure my measurements and assumptions were right – and they were.

Over the last two months, we’ve grown back some readership, but unless something drastically changes, I’m afraid we’ll fall short. Short of what? That would be the third goal of making money. I’m realistic and don’t expect to make a living off of the strip right now. I don’t think the strip deserves it – yet. I just want to cover my costs. I would love to be able to pay to go to a convention.

I love Rick, I love telling the story and I love doing this and when I grow up, that’s what I want to do. But my goal right now is a little shorter, a little closer in reality and in my opinion modest and achievable.

Believe me when I tell you that I am giving it my best shot. You don’t get to 500 if you don’t. I’d like to make it to 50,000 and I hope it’s a great ride, but today is about #492 and tomorrow is about #493. That’s the reality.

Thanks for dropping by and your support!
Ken