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[Death Ray]

I would tend to pay for content that is substantially different in form or function from what is offered for free.  In the past, I have purchased the following to support various comic artists:

T-shirts
books:
 - dead-tree versions of comics
 - related books, such as the Achewood recipe books
music CDs
video games

(snip)

And I do think that it makes very little sense to have a web site with thousands of unique visitors per day and not sell ad space.  You can always sell a "premium," ad-free subscription to those who would prefer not to see ads.  I think Penny Arcade does this? 

The advertising point is, of course, fully valid. At the same time, people are not likely to throw advertising dollars at a site that is not yet sufficiently trafficked. Getting to that point is the artist's challenge, and one that I would think the most loyal readers would want to contribute to overcoming.

[pmcd9]

And I do think that it makes very little sense to have a web site with thousands of unique visitors per day and not sell ad space.  You can always sell a "premium," ad-free subscription to those who would prefer not to see ads.  I think Penny Arcade does this?

Lots of sites do this.

[pmcd9]

The advertising point is, of course, fully valid. At the same time, people are not likely to throw advertising dollars at a site that is not yet sufficiently trafficked. Getting to that point is the artist's challenge, and one that I would think the most loyal readers would want to contribute to overcoming.

I was going to make this point earlier, but now I think it's necessary to say.

For every Achewood there are at least 1000 shit comics.  If not many folks are visiting your site and reading your comic perhaps it's just not that good.

[littlefallsmets]

Yeah, a hybrid advertising/micropayments-to-eliminate-advertising model is rad. That's the model of the blog service I use and I pay for the ad removal.

I know that some strips use micropayments or small subscription services for direct add-ons to the free strips... colourized versions, additional commentary, rough draft stuff, small animations tangental to the art of in the art, audio files of the dialogue, etc etc etc... and that's basically cool with me. I'd pay for something like that on a strip that I really dig as I do Achewood at its best.

What's galling with Achewood's subscription service is... I mean... Christ, it was an incredibly irregular strip to begin with. It didn't have a set schedule, sometimes it only had one actual comic a week, sometimes less. With Achewood in particular, the "additional material" like the character blogs and such... it wasn't really "additional material"... it was often the replacement for an incredibly erratic strip. The lunch WAS the meal, as the Buddhists wouldn't say, you know.

And so now that those other parts of Achewood that filled in for actual strips are... "premium content"... and yet the actual strips are even more erratic?

It swallows down hard to be told that the stuff that used to fulfill the continuance of a sparsely-updated strip is now paid material AND the strips are even less frequent.

Achewood may well be an extreme example of the "premium content" model, though.

Perhaps if you're talking about a strip that has always been strictly and reliably two or three times a week and has never used other forms to replace those comics, paying extra for that kind of material isn't as infuriating and crazy.

[wombat]

For every Achewood there are at least 1000 shit comics.  If not many folks are visiting your site and reading your comic perhaps it's just not that good.

This is truly not fair. There is so much stuff out there - music, books, comics, etc - and no magic way for any of it to hook up with the people who would love it. Haven't you ever read a book you loved, by an author who's been writing for years that you never heard of, and thought, "this is wonderful, how did I not know about this?"

[littlefallsmets]

As for the point of getting advertising dollars for an unestablished strip... well...

I mean, I don't think there's any model where an online comic by an unknown creator isn't going to START as an unpaid labour of love.

I don't think there's any sort of way to go about it where you don't have to build a following at your own peril at the beginning of the process.

There was no model of comic art where you stepped in without a portfolio of work and were just paid a living wage, regardless of the publishing technology used.

[wombat]

LFM: I find your attitude curious. This is why: you're a writer. Someday when you publish a book, don't you expect to get paid for it? 

I was saying earlier that if people actually knew people who did creative stuff and saw from personal experience that most don't make a living, maybe they'd realize that expecting to get everything for free on the web wasn't reasonable. I would have thought you'd be the one person here who already saw it from that angle. If even you don't see that, that seems worrisome to me.

We don't have a right to Achewood for free. After all, he could decide to do it all as print-only books, and we'd have to pay for all of it. He gave stuff away for free for years and thereby built a fan base that thinks it's worth money. So, now he charges money for some of it. That seems to me like a model that works.

I also don't see how the regularity of the strip affects the argument. Plenty of art forms don't occur on a regular schedule - do you get mad if someone doesn't release a new CD every January? Yes, it's the normal comic model to have a strip every day, but the normal comic model also doesn't include strips that vary in length, blogs, cookbooks, roasted chicken c*ck jokes, etc, so why are we expecting any part of the normal comic model here, you know?

[pmcd9]

This is truly not fair. There is so much stuff out there - music, books, comics, etc - and no magic way for any of it to hook up with the people who would love it. Haven't you ever read a book you loved, by an author who's been writing for years that you never heard of, and thought, "this is wonderful, how did I not know about this?"

Of course that's true, but eventually the cream rises to the top.

Death Ray's point seemed to be that he couldn't make any money off of advertising because his site isn't popular enough.  And the most sure-fire way to overcome that problem is to be good.  

When you're good people write about you on their blogs and the viewers come.  When you are good people talk about you on messageboards and the viewers come.  When you are good people join your group on facebook and the viewers come.  When you are good people wear your t-shirts and the viewers come.  when you are good people tattoo your characters on their body and the viewers come.  When you are good people dress up as your characters on Halloween and the viewers come.  etc... etc...

[wombat]

I just don't have your faith in the cream rising to the top. I see tons of crap on the top of the best seller list and let's not even get started talking about music. I know plenty of creators who I think are much more wonderful than stuff that is many times more popular. I just don't see the evidence that excellence is always rewarded with popularity.

[littlefallsmets]

But I'm nobody and I've done nothing, 'bat.

While I'm trying to find myself creatively... and I still am... I'm not expecting to have my scattered unorganized notes paid for by strangers on faith.

I certainly hope that I'll eventually be paid for my finished works someday but I don't expect it and certainly won't quit my dayjob the first time I make a dime on it.

I think that serialized comic strips are sort of a slightly different beast than some kinds of art because they're necessarily works-in-progress in the early stages.

But even then, the model is completely different.

I'd be getting paid not by the people who might eventually read my book or watch the movie made from my script but by some asshole in a suit who thinks he can make a lot more money off it than what he's paying me for the rights to the words. It's a lot more similar to the way Jason was getting paid for alt-weekly works, at least in theory, he had a portfolio of work, he took this portfolio to some asshole in a suit who represented so many alt-weeklies and that asshole in a suit decides if the strips will ultimately cost him less than what he felt he'd get in increased ad revenue because of the strips.

It's not that artists don't DESERVE payment and so on but I suppose Los Angeles makes a person face certain realities.

Until you clear the check, you're working on spec, y'know.

[wombat]

But with Achewood we're not talking about something in the early stages. If you think artists deserve payment why does it make you so infuriated that he is asking for payment for some of it now?

[littlefallsmets]

Because I've been paying for the final material that strips on the website are the rough cut of on a fairly regular basis already, for one.

And for two, more irrationally I'll admit, because the dude changed the social contract of the strip in mid-stream.

There's something that drives me crazy about hacking about two-thirds of the strip content, charging for it, and acting as the situation is basically the same and the "premium" stuff is all material that would not have been created beforehand... when dude's generating less both free and premium now than free before.

There is the irrational truth that when you're an early-adopter, you feel some microscopic-but-actual sweat equity in the project. Like, I hung around buying glasses and chapstick and zines from rather early on and now that the project is successful... in a manner that feels microscopically-but-actually linked into my early loyalty and the early loyalty of a lot of people like me... we're expected to pay more for less?

It's... weird. It's weird and it feels exploitive. Feels like a violation of a tacit social contract.

Maybe it is completely insane collectivist-caveman psychic background noise but there we are.

Like... put up ads instead, man, you know?

We were all there buying pins and bumper stickers to get you to the point where you had enough click traffic to make serious bread offa ads and now we have to pay extra for less?

It feels kinda fuck*ng insulting, however irrationally.

[AugustWest]

I don't think anybody is suggesting that Onstad isn't entitled to make money.  What's frustrating is that he's changing the rules midstream.

Since we're also talking about newspapers here, imagine if your newspaper changes its business model with the result that it goes from a daily to a weekly.  Also, your subscription price doubles.  Haven't you the right to complain?

Onstad was making a living before.  Obviously he thinks he'll do better this way.  It's his right to make that business decision.  As a consumer of his product (both the creative product and the T-shirt/paperback products)  I feel shortchanged.  I feel the same way I do when I notice there are only 6 Pop-Tarts in the box now for the same price 8 were before.  Or when the candy bar comes packaged in a little cardboard tray to make it look like the same size it used to be.  Giving me less funny per week and charging me more for it does not make me a happy consumer.

I like The Office.  It's on broadcast TV, supported by advertisements.  If suddenly it's only available on HBO for an additional $12/month and at only 15 minutes per (rare) episode, I'm going to be disappointed if not pissed.

[jay-ell]

The advertising point is, of course, fully valid. At the same time, people are not likely to throw advertising dollars at a site that is not yet sufficiently trafficked. Getting to that point is the artist's challenge, and one that I would think the most loyal readers would want to contribute to overcoming.

I'm talking about something at its most basic, like Google AdWords.  Pedro had a low-rent, unadvertised, Spanish-language flash-cards site that made $50 over three years just by adding Google ads to the bottom of each page.  And this is for something he put together for personal use, threw up on the web, and let rot.  All of a sudden we got a check in the mail, and he looked at his page stats and found out that every December and May, a new crop of SPA101 students would find his cards and use them to cram.  We're talking about a total of a couple thousand unique pageviews over three years?  Not high-traffic like Achewood.  

You won't be able to quit your day job, but you can at least pay your bandwidth bill.  

[pmcd9]

I just don't have your faith in the cream rising to the top. I see tons of crap on the top of the best seller list and let's not even get started talking about music. I know plenty of creators who I think are much more wonderful than stuff that is many times more popular. I just don't see the evidence that excellence is always rewarded with popularity.

Well, what's good is very subjective.  I think you're being a bit cynical.  Maybe the cream doesn't rise to the top, but it doesn't sit on the bottom either.  A good product will find an audience.

But I have to agree with you to a certain extent.

I guess that's the beauty and the curse of the internet is that it's so freely available to anyone.  You don't need King Features Syndicate anymore to become a famous cartoonist anymore.  You don't need Universal Studios to become a famous film maker anymore.  You don't need Atlantic Records to become a famous musician anymore.  You don't need NBC to become a famous television star anymore.

With all of this content available how do you sort through it to find the good stuff?  We still need critics to tell us what's good and what's not.  But then again, you don't need the Chicago Sun Times to become the next Siskel and Ebert.  There are millions of critics on the internet, how do you find one you can trust?