Rainy Day Dreams

Birrrrrrrrrrthdaaaaaaay~

Technically it was yesterday, but today I’m posting about it.

 

It sure has been another whole year. It’s been sort of a weird year for me. I’ve learned a lot over the course of the year. Not just on an artistic level, but also on a personal and professional level. There’s a lot that goes into making a successful comic online. More than just creating the pages and posting them on time, though that is also really important. I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert, but based on my experience, I’ve been able to set some goals for myself for the upcoming year.

A good number of them have to do with increasing the revenue streams for the comic. I plan on increasing the number of cons I table at over the coming year (which shouldn’t be too hard since last year I only did one) and setting up a digital store front to sell the chapters as pdf downloads. There is a kind of idealized myth about webcomics(and maybe the internet in general) that you can succeed no matter what background you come from. If I’ve learned on thing, it’s that, unless you want to wait a very long time to gather any kind of following via word of mouth, paying for advertising is essential for gathering followers. Based on the stats from the site’s Google Analytics, I’d wager that at least 80% of regular readers found the comic from one of my ads. As such, I am incredibly grateful to all of my patrons. It’s because of their generous monthly donations that RDD is able to grow.

The second half of my goal has to do with creating more comics. I’d like to create more one shot comics, like the Forest (though I still do have plans on completing more chapters). As a part of this, I hope to participate in at least one anthology project this year. I’ve applied for a couple over this last summer, but haven’t been accepted to any yet.

I am incredibly thankful for all you readers out there. As always, I have to give a special shout out to all the readers who are also commenters. I can be hard to tell if anyone is actually paying attention to your work, but commenters let me know there are people out there paying attention. I’m too stubborn to ever give up on comics, but when times get tough, your comments put a smile on my face like nothing else.

Here’s to another year. Let’s make this one even better than the last!

-Mariah <3