I'm considering trying to post and sell my comics (Wayout west & Mercenary Pig- both posted here on DD)on MySpace, but I'm totally new to the MySpace site (I'm an old man totally paranoid about Big Brother and voodoo technology). I went there but saw no specific category for comic books. Has anyone out there used MySpace to post or sell their indy comics? If so, please advise!

Woulda been better to post this in comic discussion.

Myspace is really only good for one thing so far as comics go; spamming the crap out of it as a advertising method. And from what I know it's not particularly effective even in that role.

In short: myspace is almost totally useless so far as comics go.

arvtoon
myspace

no.



some people utilize myspace to advertise and get themselves known. I'm not sure it's the place to advertise a webcomic, though.

I've not tried to sell comics at MySpace but I do have a page there. There's no harm in using it, but it's not especially “comic friendly”. You can advertise your comics by issuing Bulletins but your Bulletins only go to people you've already “befriended”.

There are a couple of comic groups on there which you can use but, as far as I can see, they seem to be pretty inactive.

My recommendation would be to try ComicSpace instead (or as well!) It's less well-known but it was set up specifically to be a “MySpace for comics”. You can post sample pages from your comics (or whole comics if you want to) and any Bulletins you issue can be made “public” (i.e. available for everyone to read, not just your “friends” ).

Feel free to compare and contrast …!
My ComicSpace page
My MySpace page

lba
In short: myspace is almost totally useless so far as comics go.

This.

Really?

Have any of you tried?

Because you're wrong. ANYTHING can advertise on Myspace. Including comics. One in a blue moon I saw some DD users make accounts as their characters, gathering quite a bit of attention and adding more to their comic. But no, it's cool to hate myspace. you're cool kids.

If there is anything I've learned, it's that a high percentage of communities don't visit other ones. I started mirroring our comic on smackjeeves and we now have acquired people that never heard of us before. I'm even thinking about mirroring on comic genesis.

My point is that people usually pick a community and stick with it. So why not try to tap a community that is new to webcomics? I say go for it! :D


DO anything to promote your stuff. Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing all the time and expecting different results.

Just be careful with info harvesting sites like myspace, okay? Always keep in mind that everything you say/post is being closey analyzed and marketed to.

I am friends with quite a few DD users on myspace. Personally, friendship is a good way to get you and you're work out there

lefarce
One in a blue moon I saw some DD users make accounts as their characters, gathering quite a bit of attention and adding more to their comic.

I remember, Rich did that… He made them have convos with themselves :!
We also have a DD page so..It's not like there's anything bad about trying every resource that's available. you make myspace sound dangerous, Spang

Wow! I wish I got this much response when I announce new posts on “Hey, Everyone look what I did!” Thanks for the comments. I agree any venue to try and push a comic is a viable one. I was particularly intrigued by the “ComicSpace” tip. I will indeed check that out, but also plan on finding a way to make MySpace work. thanks, gang!

mishi_hime
…you make myspace sound dangerous, Spang

I don't mean to, but… Some people just post way more information than they should. And it can be dangerous for those people.

Always good to err on the side of caution.

Hey, Spang-

What exactly do you mean by “mirroring”, other than the obvious? Are you just talking about posting the same material on other sites, or is there some magical way to have an entire post of a book show up on other sites without having to upload each page individually? That would save a lot of mouse-work!

Sadly, Arvtoon, there is no magic mirror post. Not that I know of, at least.
I've got a profile/gallery on ComicSpace ( http://comicspace.com/g ) and have met a few DDers over there. When I launch my upcoming project I do plan to use MySpace ( http://myspace.com/gothamart ) to market it.

All the best,
Gil

lefarce
Really?

Have any of you tried?

Because you're wrong. ANYTHING can advertise on Myspace. Including comics. One in a blue moon I saw some DD users make accounts as their characters, gathering quite a bit of attention and adding more to their comic. But no, it's cool to hate myspace. you're cool kids.

Actually yeah, I have Lefarce. It's not exactly decent of you to assume.

I tried using myspace both to mirror and to advertise and I found that the general audience there doesn't give much of a crap about webcomics. Not to mention that the myspace site just isn't set up in a way that's conducive with comics and daily posts. If I were going to use a blog site to host a comic, I'd be far more likely to try something like Live Journal or Xanga, which are still poor choices when contrasted with DD or Comicgenesis. On top of that, when I did it, there wasn't much of a method to advertise anything short of clicking on profiles and sending messages to people en mass which sucks up a huge portion of one's time. And that was viewed in much the same way as all the pornbots: pure spamming.

So basically, there's just far better and easier avenues to use for promotion and distribution. I'm not saying it's totally impossible to use myspace as a tool or accessory to your comic, but I am saying there are other things which would probably be more productive.

arvtoon
What exactly do you mean by “mirroring”, other than the obvious? Are you just talking about posting the same material on other sites, or is there some magical way to have an entire post of a book show up on other sites without having to upload each page individually? That would save a lot of mouse-work!

The future of web development is in interoperability and sharing- RSS is the first step of that, the second step is widgets and google gadgets, the third step is… ? who knows?

So one day soon I think there WILL be a way to upload in one place and have that broadcast out and mirror itself to other places. Technically if you want to fiddle forever with RSS feeds in multiple locations, you can confabulate something akin to what you want.

For now though you're stuck, for the most part, with updating manually in multiple places.



Facebook/Myspace isn't great for comics, but the upside is that it's a completely new audience, and whatever catches on there can spread very fast. It doesn't hurt to put yourself in other places (other than making updating a bit more work). Many comic authors also update through LiveJournal because people can ‘friend’ them and automatically get the comic delivered. People also put their comics on DeviantArt because of the whole hive mentality thing that can happen there. Hell, you can make your own google gadget if you wanted to, you could be on people's igoogle pages (but they'd have to know the url- I don't think personalized gadgets go into the searchable bank.)