Serious question; I can't even figure out how to use X …. Making me feel like a boomer.

I want to be more puppeteer

Have you tried Bluesky yet? The Duck admins will follow you if you follow them.

Oh wait you're already in that other thread and know about Bluesky.

I post comics on my own site, and here and on CF as shadow sites, the way annual webspace fees are going up this might be my last year for my own site.

I don't, really. It's too much effort and it just makes me depressed. Lots of people heard about my comics by now but very few care to even read them. When I did promote my comics… well, I made sure to release them as e-books so I could upload the info to online book databases and community sites operating with such databases often center around challenges. Read x books from this author / read this series / read x books with the word y in the title, you get it. People who would read comic books or graphic novels anyway will be happy to collect some virtual badge for it and if you play your cards right, you might even get a feedback or two. I managed to get one fan that way, but I had to wait an entire year and like 9 others who signed up never even bothered to start reading it.

Still, if you're lucky it's a good way to promote your comics, all you need to do is edit them together to a single file, self-publish it through some local ISBN-giving service or through an online one (some services will automatically put it on Kobo, Barns & Noble and like 9 other stores for the price you set, although in a shitty format optimized for e-book readers and not a good reading experience) and after that you just upload the book information to sites like Goodreads and more. Then you have a community of people who loves to read and a portion of them loves comics and graphic novels, just more into print than webcomics generally. An online community is where you can promote it through community activities. Including it in lists, recommendations or challenges.

Why this way? Well, because your work is not the number 1 hottest shit on Webtoons or Canvas which means there's always gonna be a thousand other webcomics to compete with for people who use Webtoons or Canvas and such. You wanna reach people who aren't against webcomics but could care enough to read yours for some reason.

Another way would be grabbing the attention of someone who reviews or promotes webcomics on a regular basis and has an audience. On youtube, blog, etc. That can always misfire, but at least you tried. I never managed to get an extensive review for my comics outside of the Duck and I literally featured a cameo of someone in Blessed Days who reviews stuff and even sent him a message about it. Another time I wrote out a competition for reviews of my comic, saying some would win free copies of the ebook version. But no one gave a f and people aren't downloading it even for free, so I guess I really suck at finding my audience.

Yeah, I don't promote either. I learned the hard way many ages and moons ago that promoting your work only pushes people away than it does garnering their attention . . . and if you do, then they'll bomb you with dislikes and negative comments just to spite you. “Oh, you're so shameless and desperate for attention! Your stuff sucks, that's why nobody will look at it!” I've found that those who have found my work by accident and/or of their own volition genuinely enjoy it compared to those who I try to promote to.

So you want to be more puppeteer eh? I can get with that.

If you do promote be prepared to discover one of two things:
*Your work is worse than you ever suspected
*Your work is far better than you thought and you really are as talented as your third grade art teacher said.

However neither of these things will get you any readers.

Because people can love your art and think your stories are clever – but just not their cup of tea. Leaving you wondering precisely how to make a cup of tea they will drink. And sometimes you have to compromise your artistic vision because it really isn't for mass consumption. Pure Vanity project that no one sees like you do.

You know you don't have to say anything about your comic. Just a brief blurb about the subject and an image with the title. Nothing else. No promotion just putting your creation out there.

Buying a ticket so maybe you can win the lottery rather than just asking deities or fates to bring readers to it. You know who insisted I promote? My therapist and my psychiatrist. You think I just pulled this off because of some attack of arrogance? I'm not that self confident. It turned into a coping mechanism to deal with my issues and it turned into self-affirmation.

Don't let anyone (especially yourself) tell you anything different. This is proven advice from mental health care professionals not some stupid comic creating hack whose work really, really stinks. Oh, what a long trip it's been.

Put it everywhere. Top 100 webcomics, Social media platforms that you're comfy with (Discord and forums. Instagram and X can be disappointing unless you're some kind of manga or superhero clone. Deviant Art is so full of AI and requires a lot of networking. Make that TV TROPES page. I use so many I wouldn't dare. I did get some feedback from reddit because I coined the term “femoid” made infamous by incels)

I used to use Twitter by posting in “promote your stuff” posts by other users but they kind of dried up in favor of artists saying the world is doomed and the field is dead because of ai, which could be remedy by making art.

Now I slip on my comics when talking to other posters in-between wars.

I used various subreddits too, and currently gearing up to promote Fur Coats for next year via indue comics on reddit.

Just stay far, far away from webcomics there, they get nasty.

(EDIT:I forgot to say I use art galleries to promote my stuff too)

I just put a topwebcomics banner on my page and hope someone else votes for it too so its in the top 100 and someone is interested in it

I just sell mine at the local shops. I don't gets the social medias too wells.

nichemode wrote:
I just sell mine at the local shops. I don't gets the social medias too wells.

Really?

I did that once when I lived in Missouri, I printed out my own “zine” version of Rex, like the first storyline, and sold it to a small time comic shop. Kind of missed that.

I am tempted to go to a mail order like thing, make issues and mail them out for money orders.

Furwerk studio wrote:

nichemode wrote:
I just sell mine at the local shops. I don't gets the social medias too wells.

Really?

I did that once when I lived in Missouri, I printed out my own “zine” version of Rex, like the first storyline, and sold it to a small time comic shop. Kind of missed that.

I am tempted to go to a mail order like thing, make issues and mail them out for money orders.

I'm preparing my first finished comic for this. It's its fifteenth anniversary.
Already have buyers lined up.
Did some of my art on t-shirts and people want them too. I just did it for me. It was cool to see how they came out.

For promotion, I used the internal DD advertising slots, and for my former comic the comicad network, both paid for but quite cheap.

But I never tried to publicize the printed version of my comic (I have one in italian, I tried to sell it at some comicons but with negligible results).

EDIT: PS: I can't stand twitter, I tried bluesky but it bores me too, also I don't want to hear continuously about american politics.

I post new pages on bluesky and then I keep shitposting.