Hi! I’m looking for ways to promote my webcomic, but I’m not sure if I want to start advertising. Are there any good free methods you know of?

One useful tip: When sending a message to a semi-popular blog about your comic, make sure to include a link!

I found it, though, and I’ll link it for you: Princess Bestie

Having spent $400 on a big advertising blitz for Legend of the Hare, only to see my metrics float back to normal, I’m a little suspicious of its efficacy. However, here’s some things that do:

1. Wait. You started this comic in 2016, and no matter how hard you try, you’re not gonna get popular in 2016 unless you do something unreasonable. Webcomics don’t get popular fast. The good news is that your readership will creep up over time.

2. Shill! Shill! Shill! You don’t want to be a spam bot, but you should mention your comic whenever something interesting happens (like an update). I see you post in on your tumblr. Good! Post it on your Facebook too, if you have one, and any other social media the kids today use. Post to webcomics communities! The /r/webcomics board on Reddit has 80,000 subscribers, for instance, and posting there is free! Link it as your forum signature on NeoPets or whatever you do. Again, don’t constantly post to the same place and annoy everyone, but be shameless.

Sometimes people offer to pay artists in “exposure”, but that’s doubly useless. Not only can’t you buy a burrito with exposure, it’s really easy for a dedicated young woman like yourself to get out there and expose herself online for free!

I mean….um….anyway, my biggest source of clicks is Tumblr itself. (Which isn’t surprising, as this blog gets ~600 daily pageviews and has 700 tumblr subs, itself the result of me posting nearly every day for two years).

3. If you get fans, interact with them, and try not be a jerk. Just generally good advice, but it builds support. Obviously, if a reader’s being a jerk or troll to you, you gotta take one of theirs to the morgue, but in general.

4. Depending on how seriously you take this webcomic thing and what your budget looks like, you may want to spring for a proper domain and a site you host yourself. Not only is it more professional looking, but you get more ability to do SEO, which is a big way to increase search traffic to your site.

As someone who works with SEO as his day job, I can confirm that it’s fucking boring, but it’s helpful! And free!

5. Keep growing artistically. Don’t be afraid to take risks or alienate your audience. You can spend the next five years just endlessly fucking up, and as long as you learn from it, you’ll be in a much better position that I was when I started LotH at my advanced age. And then you’ll fuck up some more, but you’ll be stronger. If you see something you like in another comic or movie or whatever, just….fucking…..rip it off. It’s fine. Add it to yourself.

6.  Writing this post made me realize that I’m starting to think of 23 year olds as “young kid starting out” instead of “peer”, and that’s kind of freaking me out here. I’m going to be thirty soon! ;_; There’s so much I wanted to do….