Arthur Morgan
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2019
Okay, I need to sperg, sorry everyone.
The webcomic business worked because at the time, there was really nothing to compete with it. In 2002 it took forever to load a video that was only half a minute long, so images had an easier time, and a comic with an archive was the best you could get. More eye catching than a blog, and this was back when most people reading these were impressed if you had photoshop. Then, video came in and killed the webcomic star, but not right away because plenty of these comics still had an audience.
By 2010, it was clear where the internet was heading, and so the old guard started circling the wagons. Gone were the days of link pages or sharing new comers. Even guest strips stopped being a way newbies could make a name for themselves, the likes of Jeph Jacques, Randy Milholland and Danielle Corsetto only inviting their friends to come in. They helped each other, but refused to let anyone else in. The worst case of this was Penny Arcades comics reality show that only took people who were established creators, including David Malki and Erika Moen.
This caused things to grow stagnant, and the rise of social media gave way to the Sarah Scribbles and Catana Comics style of generic relatable comics, but their creators still struggled to make a name for themselves because there was no ad revenue coming in from twitter, facebook or instagram. Most people from that set still need to have an alternate income in order to support themselves. Many were able to get away with commissions, or other commercial work, but most just stuck with whatever job they'd been doing at the time.
Speaking of ads, only 3 out of 1000 people would buy any merch from a webcomic, so unless you had a huge number, you were fucked. Ads, however, helped offset that. Project Wonderful was an easy way to get cash from people bidding on your space and you didn't have to lift a finger. But then adblock came in. Now those freeloaders aren't pulling their weight, so it became even harder to keep the lights on, or make the transition to full time creative.
With a lack of new content, the convenience of places like youtube having all your faves in one place, better bandwidth, and webcomics constantly missing deadlines or some shutting down, the audience dwindled and moved onto other things without any new readers to replace them. The old guard whine and moan about this, when they're the ones who helped cause it when they refused to let anyone new into the fold for fear of losing their readership.
These days, some people are able to do it, but it's a huge time and money sink in order to get started and you're competing with a lot of different factors these days compared to twenty years ago.
