Traffic

[Devon Lake]

Ookay, as always seems to be the dilemma when I actually have a comic up, I have no bloody clue how to go abouts getting traffic to it. I mean, of course there's "make stuff that's good", but really, that doesn't help unless there's actually word of mouth going around or some such. Do link exchange thingies work well?

Honestly, the best plan I have as of now is to make a really spiffy guest comic much bigger sites, and pray that the author breaks their hand for a week or goes on vacation and asks for guest comics. I remember that one 8-Bit Theater guest comic I did back in the day got me somewhere around 100 times the traffic I usually get on a daily basis... Not that that's too bad a plan, but... Is there anything that more suits my being lazy?

http://www.aftergame.net/users/devonlake/bastards/icons/banner.jpg (http://www.aftergame.net/users/devonlake/bastards/index.htm)
Edit: Thought I might as well put up the banner.

[Slackbot]

Ookay, as always seems to be the dilemma when I actually have a comic up, I have no bloody clue how to go abouts getting traffic to it.1) Submit your site to the popular search engines. Google and DMOZ are the biggest. Don't bother with Yahoo; they don't update fer ****.

2) give your site good meta tags. Search engines assign a lot of weight to these. Use keywords and blurbs that accurately describe your work. For example, here are the META tags I created for The ViviSection:

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="The Vivisection, a tiny little site for a tiny little mage, Vivi. And any other Final Fantasy related stuff that I feel like slapping up.">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 9, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy Origins, Black Mage, Black Mages, Vivi, Vivi Orunitia, 8-Bit Theater, fan fiction, fan art, song videos">

3) Put a link to your site in your sig. That way you advertise it every time you post without spamming.

4) Don't overhype. Don't tell people how great it is; when people do that my immediate reaction is that it's probably self-indulgent crap. If it's good stuff, let them say so themselves.

[Devon Lake]

I've never found search engines to be all that useful. Most of the time when using a search engine, it's for very specific reasons such as finding information on a given topic as such. Generally, if you're looking for RPG walkthroughs, chances are you're not particularly interested in RPG related comics. In any case, the sheer gerth of pages means that if it's anything particularly general and useful, it's probably not going to turn up at the top of any searches because more popular sites are usually posted first in the searches so that if you're at the top, you really don't need to be. Even go and try looking up 8-bit Theater through google without using "Nuklear Power" or "8-Bit Theater"... Ya, I don't think much of searches.

You're right about sigs though. Bah, why can't we shove banners in our ones here!? Wait, I know the answer to that... *Grumble *grumble...

[Slackbot]

You may not find search engines useful, but I sure do. After Google snagged The Vivisection I started getting hundreds of hits a day as opposed to a few dozen. Popular searches that led people to my page include "black mage fan art," "final fantasy 9 doujinshi," "vivi final fantasy," and similar topics that are covered on my page.

[behemoth]

if u put meta tags in ur site, it helps

[Devon Lake]

Heh, I once remember looking up a list of the most frequently searched for Meta tags in the hopes of raking in hits... Of course, most people were looking for porn rather than psycho rants and bloodshed.