Monday, January 09, 2006

Cartoons: our strategy, our target audience and our navigation!

Bif's recent post on 'infrastructure' got me thinking over the last few days. Bif made some very interesting points, based around our navigation and how 'Bloggy' types might be more comfortable with it than Webcomic types.

It started me mulling it over in my mind and reviewing our 'strategy', such as it is. The start of the new year is as good a time as any for this kind of thing!

We did focus more on getting the most out of the blog phenomenon, rather than going the web comic route. There were three reasons for this, at least on my part:

1. Blogging is huge and constitutes a much larger portion of the online community than webcomics
2. I don't know much about webcomics
3. Single panel cartoons are different to webcomics

I'm not sure if I have those points in the right order, but I think the first point is the biggest issue.

Blogging is huge and constitutes a much larger portion of the online community than webcomics

In terms of getting our cartoons out to the widest possible audience, it made sense to target, as much as possible, one of the fastest growing technologies on the web today.

To quote from an article by ParticleTree on Small Business Blogging:

"50 million Americans, or about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, visited blogs in Q1 2005. This represents an increase of 45 percent compared to Q1 2004."

Not only are there a LOT of people reading blogs, there’s more people reading them every single day.

In addition to the growth, the study also revealed that "the average Blog visitor viewed nearly 16,000 pages over the course of the Q1 2005 - 77 percent more than the 9,000 pages viewed by the average Web user. The average Blog visitor spent nearly 18,000 minutes or about 23 hours per week online, while the average Internet user spent just over 10,000 minutes or 13 hours per week online." What’s even more startling than their enthusiasm, is who these readers are. The following details are from the results of a survey conducted by Blogads:

• Blog readers’ median income hover between $60,000 and $90,000


• 75% of blog readers are over 30 years old


• 75% of blog readers are men


• 75% of blog readers are looking for news they can’t find elsewhere.


• 72% of blog readers never read blogs through an RSS


• "Clearly the blogosphere is crawling with certified grade A opinion makers."

These statistics clearly show just how huge blogging is and their internet habits show them to be a huge potential readership AND by the looks of things a potential market if we ever figured out how/what to sell them...!

I don't have any stats to hand on the Webcomics community or it's readership, but I think it would be very hard pushed to compete with blogs!

One of our key excercises to getting our message out to Bloggy types and Blog readsers was to provide our cartoons to people who want to display them on their Blog or website. (some more thoughts on our syndication model here)

We felt this was an ideal way to gain exposure to people who might otherwise not have ever found us - an audience with a wildly varied interest range as opposed to those specifically interested in webcomics. Which brings me to the next two points...

I don't know much about webcomics

It's a terrible admission, but there, I've said it. The fact that I don't know much about webcomics obviously plays a part in our decision to lean toward blogs, as Bif says, we have made more friends in the Blogging community than in the Webcomic community. Bif reads a lot of webcomics and roots out some pretty good stuff which I then get exposed to through his blog - but apart from that I know very little about the Webcomic community.

It's not a good thing. I should have a much better grasp of the Webcomic community, but time is finite and I already have so many millions of things to be doing that I just don't find the time.

Which is another reason I think focussing on the Blogging world makes more sense - there must be loads of people like me who don't have the time to explore the Webcomic world, but who enjoy being exposed to comics or cartoons when they stumble across them. Therefore, hopefully, having our cartoons out there on various sites helps build our audience.

Now don't get me wrong - the Webcomic community is extremely important to us too, and has been very supportive. We have received very positive support from the likes of Zoinks Magazine, Cowpunch, Digital Strips and Evil Network to name a few. As Bif alludes to though, we need to make more friends in the Webcomic industry. I certainly need to have a better idea of what's going on and who'd behind it. Zoinks magazine does provide me with a good overview, I just need to follow up on more of the leads.

I'll be much happier when I know the names of more of the key Webcomic creators and I'll be much much much happier when they know mine!

However, the key point here is that I don't see the Webcomic community as our audience I see it as a part of our audience.

Single panel cartoons are different to webcomics

In trying to find a place we belong on the internet, the Webcomic community is obviously a niche we fit into, but only just. As has come up recently on Websnark, there aren't a whole lot of single panel cartoons.

Most people go for character based narrative stuff, which is quite different to what we do. Which brings me to the point of having a 'next' and 'previous' button on your navigation. According to the article Bif pointed to, Webcomics simply shouldn't publish without next/previous buttons. Which is fair enough if you are narrative based. In our case I don't think it is quite so important.

Certainly our stats at the moment show people don't seem to have any problem navigating through our archives since we updated the site design last.

The fact that we are single panel cartoons is also what allows us to leverage on the Bloggy area so easily - people don't need any prior knowledge of characters or narrative to appreciate our cartoons. As I have mentioned before it helps when it comes to recurring characters such as Brian and Martin, but it's not a requirement.

Anyway, I 'm rambling off point a bit now - It just seemed to me at the time that it would be relatively easy to filter our cartoons out through the blogging community, but that we were slightly ill-fitted for the webcomic community. The webcomic community, for a large part, relies on regular readership and dedicated followers - which I felt might be harder to build up for single panel cartoons than for a character based narrative.

Our cartoons are rather self-contained, whereas with a narrative people are coming back to find out what the resolution to last weeks issue was, or what trouble that pesky character has gotten into now.

To sum up...

To sum up, I guess what I am saying in this overly long ramble through my thoughts is that I am happy enough with our approach to date and the success we have had. However we, or at least I, need to get more involved with the Webcomic community so as to be better informed and possibly work with others to push the whole community forward.

Maybe we could be doing more with regard to discussion and innovation (think tank anyone ;)) if we were more connected to the Webcomic community, but overall I think we're doing ok.

Any thoughts?