Rick The Stick – a comic on the Interwebs

Good morning!

Actually, a GOOOOOD MONDAY morning! What? You hate Mondays? Save your hate for another day as a lot of exciting things happening with your friend and mine – Rick the Stick. If you’re interested, it’s a little long, but please read on. If you’re not, you may want to scroll to the bottom paragraph where I politely ask you to subscribe via email – but be forewarned – you may miss something pretty average! Scroll at your own risk!

Here are some things that are happening:

The storyline. We left off last week with Rick explaining how his parent’s died and how he was told by his grandfather – rather bluntly. This week we pick up where we left off and learn more about the mysterious death of Rick’s parents. Today’s strip also features a cameo from Kris Straub, one of the HalfPixel guys and creator of Starslip and Chainsawsuit. When I was planning the layout of today’s strip, the chalk body outlines reminded me of the characters in Kris’ comic Chainsawsuit. Hopefully, you think it’s humorous. Coincidentally, next week features another HalfPixel guy – Brad Guigar. Brad has been very encouraging with his kind words towards this strip and is a really nice guy – at least nice enough to stand next to me. Back to the storyline, I am trying to make it more interesting and easier to jump into at any point. So there may be shorter story arcs or other jumps to help move things along.

The store. If you looked in the old store, you may have the stuff there was well – blah. Well take a look at the new store it includes EXCLUSIVE shirts modeled by my friends here:

That’s right they’re wearing them and they’re hot – the shirts that is! All the products may not be showing yet, but there are four designs.

The ads. Well this isn’t really exciting for you the reader, but really – it can’t always be about you can it? Okay, sure it is, but if we want this magical ride to Mediocreville to continue, we need to generate some revenue. Wait what? I’m telling you the reader we need to generate revenue? I’ve done some deep soul searching regarding this. The reality is, that while we’ve (and I include myself in this too) come to expect content on the innerwebs to be free, we really should look to support advertising on websites. I’m not suggesting that you go to a website and start clicking on the ads – that’s fraud and I don’t support it. What I am suggesting is that we need to realize that advertising and supporting artists/writers IS what will keep a lot of the content we love free. I’m guilty of doing this: I see a banner, but rather than click on it – for some reason, I open a new window or tab in my browser and type in the website I saw and travel on my merry way. I think I’m suspicious of the pop-ups and pop-unders that you get all the time with advertising. Regardless, of that evil practice – it’s time we start supporting those sites we visit and love. It’s also time that websites start understanding that charging CPC rates is not effective unless the advertiser is constantly optimizing and testing their ads – and the cold hard truth is that 99% of them aren’t. And if you’re wasting valuable ad space running crappy banners for someone and they’re only paying when there’s a click or action – your getting screwed. Your supplying impressions, not leads. Don’t let them sell you otherwise. I realize some of us may not think we have an option, but you do. Don’t waste those valuable impressions!

The ad campaign. All that being said about ads, I will be starting to advertise through Project Wonderful to start. Why? Because I’ll be advertising on site that have people that are already into webcomics. I can’t be too ambitious (and obnoxious) to think I can convert most of the world over to webcomics on my own. So I’ll be using ALL the revenue (t-shirt and book sales and ad revenue) to support this – as well as my own money I make from my freelance work. I have grown this site purely organically to date and the time to share the mediocrity with more people is now. I appreciate the support everyone has given me, but with a larger audience, it will allow us to do some really great stuff.

Now you know what I’m doing right? So now you’re thinking “Hey! Where’d I put that jelly donut? Or maybe you’re thinking “Hey! I really need to pee.” Or you could be thinking “Hey! What can I do to – you know, like – help out?” I’m glad you asked. First, if you really have to pee – go ahead, I’ll wait. Second, you can be a carrier! A what? A carrier. We can spread Rick the Stick and our commitment to mediocrity across America like a virus. We’ll call it germ warfare. You see – if you’ve read this far – you’re already infected. Now, you have the power – or more appropriately, the sickness (and you are sick aren’t you) to make Rick contagious. Wait. Is this right? Hold on. I think I need to run this past the lawyers – I don’t want the Department of Homeland Security thinking, we’re actually spreading a contagion or hazardous disease. Okay, I just got word – I shouldn’t say any of that and I should just ask you to tell a friend. Okay? Soooo ignore the beginning – except the go pee part. It’s not good to hold it in. Get on it! CLICK HERE NOW and fill in your/someone’s email address – SPAM FREE!!! And thank you!

Ken