On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Art of Webcomics <artofwebcomics@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Maddy,

As we said on Twitter,
We think adding some recurrent "home" artists and putting forward their webcomics on our website. We think your work fit for that. that means banner on AOW, personal creator page, five star google rating, permanent support on social, promote of your events, stream, updates, showcases, and we hope new fans and readers for you. Pledge is not a pb,  if you are motivated. 10 or 5$, its not the point. Then you even get into it with talented friends creators you know, speak around. Let us know, thank you.

Have a nice day.

Kind regards,

AoW team
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2017-03-30 18:38 GMT+02:00 Madeleine Fehlman <memoria.valde@gmail.com>:
Hello,

At this time I am not interested in pursuing a business relationship with Art of Webcomics. This may change in the future depending on my own needs and economic situation, but right now paying for your services is not feasible. I like what you're doing and I do appreciate the support you've offered up to this point. Perhaps you're trying to fill the void that the old Best Webcomics site left behind, and I would love to see you grow into that, but I get the sense that you may have rushed into this unprepared, which gives me some concerns regarding your website's ability to market what is essentially my brand.

In the interest of perhaps making it feasible in the future, I do have some feedback for you:
What you're asking is for me to hire you as a marketing firm. Don't phrase it as "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship. What you're looking for is to enter a professional relationship in which a creator is paying you to advertise their work. To phrase it as anything else is deceptive.
The tiers on your Patreon don't make it clear how much "marketing" each price point gives a creator. If I pay you $5/month, exactly how is my comic promoted on your site and where? What about $10? Every single price point needs to have all of the information laid out, including where on your site the advertising takes place, what materials you need from the creator, the duration of the advertisements, whether the space is shared with other advertisers. As you know, I currently advertise with Top Web Comics. Here is their advertising page as an example: http://topwebcomics.com/advertisinginfo
I highly recommend that you get an editor, ideally a native English speaker. Unfortunately the website and your Patreon page contain a significant number of typos, spelling, and grammar mistakes and I can only assume that English is not your first language. This level of quality actually undermines the webcomics you are trying to support.
At no point did I give you permission to publish my real name on your site. Yes, my name is published on my own site and I'm not exactly trying to conceal my identity here, but I would have vastly preferred that you had asked which name I would like published on your site. Additionally, it would be good to ask creators for the materials to feature on your site rather than going and grabbing them yourself without permission.
My decision behind advertising on Top Web Comics, which I assume is what you were referring to with your "passive website, true cash machine" message, was built on the proof that their free advertising options already drew significant traffic and therefore paying for their ad space would be a worthwhile investment. Before paying for ad space, Top Web Comics was the referral behind 15.40% of my website's traffic. This increased to 57.88% after paying for the ad space (for the month of March). By contrast, none of my referral traffic came from Art of Webcomics throughout March. 0%.

In short, what I recommend you do is scale back and slow your growth to foster quality over quantity in order to gain the trust of the people and creators you would like to support. You are literally doing too much too fast. Sit back and take some time to refine your goals and intentions as a site.

I understand that your website probably got a lot more traffic than you were expecting and your site and host were not prepared for it (thus why you had to upgrade to premium hosting). You're likely trying to recoup the costs through your Patreon now. As you know, I work in webhosting and have had to suspend hundreds of websites in similar situations, so I can understand the situation you're dealing with. In addition to the above feedback, I'd like to offer some recommendations for funding:
To fund this site outside of just Patreon, selling actual ad space on your website might be a good idea, especially if you are getting a significant amount of traffic. Most webcomic artists are familiar with Project Wonderful, so it might be a good idea to implement Project Wonderful ads on your site: https://www.projectwonderful.com/ (On the flip side, it might also be good for you to advertise on PW).
The other alternative is Google Adsense. I think what TWC does is use Google Adsense for their adspace whenever a webcomic artist hasn't reserved the space. This might be a good idea for you, at least until your Patreon is capable of funding the project. You could even set up "removal of ads from the website" as a Patreon goal.
I apologize for taking so long to respond to you, but please understand that while creating my webcomic is a hobby I love, it is still a hobby and I do have other responsibilities, such as my career, that take priority. Many other webcomic artists are in the same situation, so it would behoove you to have some modicum of patience and understanding when someone cannot respond immediately.

I would love to see you succeed as I love webcomics and you do offer a much-needed service to the community; with some polish I believe you can do great things and I hope you take this feedback into consideration.

Thank you for your time,
Respheal




On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 3:01 PM, Art of Webcomics <artofwebcomics@gmail.com> wrote:
Who talk about money ?

Good luck Madeleine.

Regards,

AoW team
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