How do you feel about advertising your work?

[DokiDokiTsuna]

• So much fun! I love telling people about my work and trying to reach new fans!
• It's a job that has to be done. I see an opportunity, I make a pitch, and I get on with my life.
• It's humiliating...it feels so pointless, but I have no choice but to keep trying...

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There are a lot of topics on the forum about promotional strategies...there are a lot of topics that are literally just promotion.

But I haven't seen many about the effect it has on the promoters...being a salesman is a human job, and it's a tough one.
Not to mention, for many artists it runs contrary to their natural dispositions...as an introvert, there are few things I am less suited for than the act of asking people to pay attention to me. Even the buffer of anonymity provided by the internet can only do so much to dull the edge of that...inherent discomfort.

Anyway, this a space for expressing your feelings; feel free to rant if you want to rant. ^^

If you're interested, I am a mix of Option 2 and 3, leaning towards 3. I think I've gotten to the point where I've just been classically conditioned to hate advertising; I've been disappointed too much...even when I actually feel excited to advertise my work at the outset, shame usually takes over before I even finish copy+pasting the URL...6_6;

I have a few strategies for dealing with this...one is having a tagline that I just copy+paste under all related content: it's "required", so it takes emotions out of the equation.
Another is integrating advertisement into standalone art, which I have a much easier time talking about. All I have to do is add a link whenever I mention the source material...and on the off-chance that I don't mention it, I don't have to link or advertise anything. I just focus on the art itself.

[IndigoShirtProd]

It's less about disliking advertising for me and more about being unsure on how to do it and how to do it without coming of as rude or needy. As much as I need people to see my work, I need more the feeling that I'm not bothering anyone.

[QueenofBabyLoon]

I feel that you are so right when you say that being a salesperson is a job that requires skill. And talent. Salespeople have a very particular set of skills that in today's society seems to be disregarded. As a person who spends her life as a customer I can assure you that I do not know, 90% of the time, what my precise needs are. I go to request services with a very vague image of what I need. And the salesperson is stuck there, trying to understand what it is that he can do for me.

The same goes for advertising one's work. You do not really know what the readers wish and the readers often do not know what they would like to see and read either. How many times as readers have we stumbled across a great work without knowing that we would like it? And how many times as readers have we truly dedicated a chunk of time to write down our likes and requirements for what we consider to be good work.

It is tough to advertise. The readers are a black box. And here we are, taking wild guesses about what it is that that black box wants. Supposedly, if one were to do a multiple-choice exam without knowing anything and answering all questions my chance, the mark one would get would be about 25%. I wonder whether the same applies to advertisement. You go in there, trying something and hoping chance will be on your side.

And the result is 25%. Ouch.

[Kelheor]

there are few things I am less suited for than the act of asking people to pay attention to me

This lol.
I guess it's somewhere in between "why the fook should I should that" and "okay, I have to do that". I am really bad at this, just as I am bad at human interactions, I feel like I annoy people with all these links, and descriptions and with myself, I feel like it doesn't work... But eh, it kinda does work? Where would my comic be now without all that advertising and attention from all those great people who looked at this ad, still somewhere in 150 subs? I was lucky enough to get on the front pages later of course, but the thing that kept me going were people who came from the ads (and interactions) on this forum.

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

It interesting that "advertising" here am assumed to be the work the artist does themselves. But self-promotion am only one kind of advertising. What about paid ads?

[Kelheor]

This is just a different thing, isn't it? I mean, it doesn't feel like you're shoving your comic up someone's throat =) Well, I believe it doesn't (never tried yet), since you push the button and that's basically it, you don't interact with anything else, you don't have to write anything interesting to attract attention, etc.

[ben]

I hate things like pitch meetings and being put into situations where I have to talk about and describe my work like in an interview setting. That makes me want to die.

But as far as day to day social media posting goes, well, after looking at all my posts on Instagram I tend to be pretty casual and just try to just sound like I do when I’m chatting with my pals online even if its technically self-promotional. I think it’s probably my means of dealing with all the discomfort I have around that stuff but it’s worked out very well for me.

Even when I have to push products I say “hey y’all u can check this out if u want!!!!” As aggressively casual as possible.

[ar-ninetysix]

Low audience growth from a terrible ad is better than nothing so yeah. Being able to sell stuff is a great skill to develop so you can grow your audience. The problem comes with actually putting yourself out there. If you're not charismatic and/or confident to some degree, it'll definitely be harder to advertise to those you wanna reach. It also greatly depends on who you're trying to advertise to whether it's a few friends or a whole community of strangers on the internet.

I'm not fond of trying to put my stuff out there, it's such a chore. Quite frankly, I don't especially wanna be super well-known or anything.. A small crowd is fine with me, but small crowds don't pay the bills. I gotta get myself out there. I don't find it humiliating so much as I feel like I'm annoying people with my product. Even if I take pride in knowing that somewhere out there is potentially huuuge audience who'll be able to latch on to my work, I think it'd still feel like I'm annoying people with something that's ultimately for me.

I think my best way of getting past all the negative thoughts is to just go in wherever I can, have some solid fake confidence, and expect absolutely nothing so I won't be disappointed by the lack of a turnout.

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

Me come from commercial media background, so it interesting to see how people do things differently in new system. Doing your own promotions (and doing small-scale things like printing flyers and posting on bulletin boards) is something me would call "guerrilla marketing", and it was effective because rare. Instead of paying money for advertising, instead you paid in imagination, energy, and time.

Of course, now that the Internet allows everyone to be a guerilla marketer, now it's the paid ad that stands out.

[Iris-Grimoire]

A bit of 1 but mostly 2. I like talking about my comic, I like introducing it to people that are interested; it's the threads and opportunities where you have to mention it unprompted (or a generic promo setting) that make me want to evaporate. You can't be too samey every time you promote your comic, but I don't have the ideas and elevator pitches in my head every day, and I usually have to update the pictures to my newest pages so it reflects what I'm currently doing, and when there's no response I think I pushed that person away forever even though they just don't know how to respond... It sucks, and being an introvert with low social battery makes it worse.

[QueenofBabyLoon]

Guerilla marketing.

I love it. This how the Vietnamese would have won a marketing war with the Americans. They would have just covered every big, paid, beautiful American ad, thought up by the best advertisement departments, designed by the best designers, with tiny, colorful, hand-made flyers.

But this does raise a good point. How do you advertise on the internet where everyone is advertising? How do you make yourself stand-out in this sea of flabbergasting talent where everyone is amazing and a specialist at some form or another of art. For a reader, it is so tiring to go onto one of these "Promote your Comic/Novel" threads and scroll through the breadth of works offered. Maybe it is just me, but I really feel overwhelmed on such threads.

[TheGentleArtist]

I don't feel any particular way about it. It does help to get your comic out there and build an audience. I guess it just feels nice

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

For webcomic, guest comics am probably the best way to go. Host artist gets free update and guest artist gets exposure. Me know "exposure" can be dirty word but here it am one of the better forms of publicity.

Me wish Project Wonderful was still a thing. Pricing scheme was very nice. Only problem was, it was transparent about how cheap the ads were. That am bad idea when ad am supposed to communicate value.

[QueenofBabyLoon]

You are a genius!!!

Guest artists!!! Of course!!! For comics!!! DC does it all the time, doesn't it? They just let another artist draw a panel for one of their series to show the style of that other artist. I remember when I was reading "Injustice" (the only DC comics I could come near to without dry heaving), every few panels the art would change and there would be mentions of other works produced by the artist who made those new panels.

That is SUPER efficient for me. I hope other artists see this! This would be such a cool way to get more advertisement. But at the same time, I assume for comic artists, it would be very difficult to include a panel of another artist into their stories.

What Chinese webcomic artists do is that another artist will make a tiny short story of a few panels about the work of the artist that is hosting them for an episode. And then that tiny short story will be put at the end of the episode.

Shows that you worked in commercial media. You know your stuff.

[AmysGames]

I definitely have a hard time with advertising, where sometimes it seems like everything I try doesn't work—including paid advertisements, which just felt like a waste of money when I tried it. But I'm also constantly in a mental battle of "it can't hurt to advertise this" vs. "this isn't interesting enough for a general audience" and usually end up just quietly dropping a link on social media, so that probably doesn't help my case.

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

Must have feedback loops in place. Need way for new readers to tell you how they heard about your comic. Then it just a matter of allocating more resources to advertising methods that work better.

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

guest comics

Writers of webnovels could do something similar in the form of side stories.

[cosgo]

I am very shy to promote my work. The language barrier. My language is Russian or Polish. I pay a professional translator for translating a comic. But I have to do promotion for myself. like this.

[33rdCenturyCaveman]

As long as you're paying your way, you might want to consider renting banner space from someone with a similar comic and also their own website. Can be surprisingly affordable.

Advertising is like a race. You don't always get first prize, but you won't win anything at all if you don't participate. Word-of-mouth doesn't work so well on the Internet.

[cosgo]

1. I have not yet fully understood the American culture of conversation . (I do not mean anything bad. Each part of the world has its own traditions)
2. I don’t have so much money to pay for advertising yet. But I will gladly do it. When the opportunity arises. You are absolutely right.