Comic Websites - Post Your Own Here! And a Question!

[AdrenalineShots]

Am playing around with my own at the moment as haven't touched it in a while. What are the advantages / disadvantages of having your own site? I've found having Analytics really helpful... oddly, I seem to have a lot of visitors from China (?!).

For those interested my own is

www.dannyrichard.com

[N1ghtm4r3]

one plus is that you get to post whatever you want, and it makes it a little harder to steal, the cons to it are you really have to put it on a billboard basically to get any traffic on it, i had one but as of late i have let it fade off ,not getitng any traffic on it

[AdrenalineShots]

Thanks! Maybe stupid question but what do you mean by a Billboard?

[jennula]

My comic's website's here

Biggest plus for me is that I can decide on the looks of the site with backgrounds, layouts and whatnot. And also have a section for fan art, character bioses etc

But yeah, for me, it's hard to drive traffic and engagement there, easier on Tapas and Webtoons and such...

[StopWatchers]

@dannyrichardwriter I like where you're going with your site so far. Very clean! What are you using to build it with? A template? Wordpress? Are you making it yourself in Dreamweaver or a similar site building program? Just curious.

I agree that the best part of your own site is the analytics. To actually see the traffic coming to it. Plus being able to make it however you want, and post whatever you what in a big plus as well.

The downside is because it's a new site no one knows about it so you have to spend extra time and money working to let people know it's there. Start driving people to it. Also, because it's new, it'll take Google a while to find it. Adding Keywords to pages will help, but of course that's an extra step that you don't have to worry about on an already established site like Tapas.

If you'd like to check out my site here it is!
http://swcomic.com

[Mharz]

Here's my comic websites:
http://blackwings.mharz.com
http://champs.mharz.com

One thing I love about having my own site is full customization. I really love showing off my art so I have a splash page that implies "look have a fancy looking art before you read anything!" Also helps to prevent new readers from accidentally seeing spoilers from newest page updates. Also, you can put anything you like even if it's NSFW which normally is difficult if you're in mirror sites because rules and all that.

Second: Your site and comics will still be in the internet even if the mirror sites like this went under. (remember Inkblazers?) You won't know what might happen and they might unexpectedly go down. So it's nice to have a place your readers to go and continue reading in case of such events happening.

Downside. Marketing is definitely a challenge especially when you're not really popular and have no established fanbase.

[0beah]

So I'm currently hosting my project here: http://grimmtonic.com/ and mirroring to tapas right now.

Disadvantages

• Cost. Might not be much but it ads up overtime especially when you're just strting out (in year 1) and you arent making anything from the comic.

• This might be unique to my situation but I've found formatting my comic for my website to completely different from WebToons and Tapas. So I have to do double work for each bunch of uploads, at least for now.

Advantages

• Complete control
• Analytics. So I can track my promotion efforts better

[JeanGuillet]

www.chateaugrief.com

PROS: it's there! and it looks great! (especially for reading comics on mobile)
CONS: I used wix for the wysiwyg html editor, but the consequence of doing that is the site loads slower than I want it to. so i'm migrating to my own code where I can control the preloader overhead. especially the blog is slow loading, and that's the only option I have for a blog on wix.

[bigblunder]

Here's our site: www.bigblunder.com

PROS:

• Honestly, it feels like the personalized home of the creator/creators. You create some sort of structure at the start, but, of course, it's not perfect, since it's not supposed to be. Then, after some time you improve upon it again and again through various renovations. Lastly, you can always rebuild things to your desire, since you are the one that owns it.
• As stated above, analytics.
• It can aid in adding some forms of revenue, though very small at first.
• Huge learning opportunity on how to manage all of the above as well as a site in general.
• Great place to have if you slowly start becoming popular, since you get to establish a sort of epicenter for your community.

CONS:

• Marketing is tough, and it is really ineffective to only have your webcomic on your own site without the aid of sites like Tapas and social media.
• Costs money to maintain and to advertise.
• Takes a significant amount of your time for little results at the start when compared to other strategies.