I’m going to preface this by saying what works for me may not work for everyone the exact same way. Advertising is a tricky bitch and it takes smarter minds than mine to come up with actual solutions. I also want to make it clear that the revenues I generate from advertising are piddly poo. I can cover server costs and such, but most of the money I get from advertising I put back into the comic through buying things like business cards, ink, paper, that sort of thing. Keep those things in mind as you go through this.

Project Wonderful is an ad service that lets publishers sell ad space based on a “Cost Per Day” or CPD model. This means that advertisers bid on ad space based on how much they want to spend per day on their campaign. As a publisher, you can set a minimum bid. The default is $0.00.

Project Wonderful attracts a lot of webcomic publishers and advertisers. It’s great for advertisers who have limited budgets. Most publishers don’t bother changing the default minimum bid so for a few cents a day, you could potentially get your ad on some well trafficked webcomics.

For publishers, you get much better value from Project Wonderful ads than Google Adsense. You can deny ads that you think don’t fit your site. You can make cents per day as opposed to cents per month or in some cases, per year. You get targeted ads for other webcomics that may fit with your audience. You can withdraw any money you make any time you want regardless of amount. For sites with low to medium traffic, Project Wonderful is pretty tough to beat.

Do Not Fear the Minimum Bid

The most powerful aspect of Project Wonderful for publishers is the minimum bid. For the first few months of the comic, I didn’t bother changing the default minimums. I didn’t feel that my traffic numbers really justified any kind of minimum bid. Even at $0.00, there were many days when my ad slots were empty. Fortunately, you can display your own ad if you have no bids so I half the time, I was advertising Monster Cutie.

My traffic became more steady as I got more comics uploaded. So I decided to just play around with the ads to see what would work. I changed the minimums of the side and footer banners to $0.10 and the top banner to $0.30. After about a week of settling, I found that the spaces were regularly getting filled.

I realize that $0.50 a day isn’t all that much. The weekends are pretty bad for traffic and a lot of my advertisers don’t bother which leaves 260 work days in the year to fill those slots. So lets be optimistic and assume I can fill those slots every work day. That $130 per year just by changing the minimum bid. It’s not that much, but it’s loads more than I’ve ever made per year with Google Adsense. With the low to medium amount of traffic I get, I’d say that’s a pretty decent return.

Stacking

Last month, I decided to fiddle some more with the ads. There isn’t really a link to Puppy Cow on the site and the store links don’t exactly stand out. So I changed all my default ads to feature Puppy Cow. I kept the minimum bid of the bottom banner at $0.10, changed the side minimum to $0.30, and upped the top banner to $5.00. The way I figured it, no one would bother bidding on that top banner so I’d have a permanent ad for Puppy Cow right at the top.

My plan worked the way I imagined it would. For two days. On the third day, ads started popping up in that top slot. That means someone out there was paying me $5.00 a day to kick Puppy Cow out of my prime position!

It’s been going like this for a few weeks now and it boggles my mind. Doing some math, when all the ad spots are filled, that’s $5.40 a day. Multiply that by the working days in a year and that’s $1404 a year on a site that’s hardly a blip on Alexa.

Now the math isn’t exact. We’re talking about best case scenario. In reality, even if all the ad slots are filled, it’s likely that the actual total is less than $5.40.

Win Win

If my ads are filled, I’m making money. If they’re not, I’m sending traffic to Puppy Cow which in turn can make me more money than I could make from ads. It’s a great way to stack revenue streams.

Addendum: The Missing Piece

For now, merchandise sales completely eclipse ad revenue. But that may be because I don’t know enough about my metrics. The thing that I feel like I’m missing is a good understanding of analytics. I mean, I can read my google analytics like a fucking boss, but I have no idea what that shit means. What numbers do advertisers give a shit about? What number do I use when people ask how many readers I have?

I feel like if I can get my head around these metrics, I can be better armed when it comes to seeking out new revenue streams. This is where a business class or two instead of Art History classes would have been helpful in college.

Anyway, I hope some of this was helpful. If you’ve been using Project Wonderful for a while, fiddle around with your minimums and see what works for you. If you have yet to try Project Wonderful, I’d say give it a good couple of months before you start messing with the minimums.

A little story about how Neil Gaiman’s Sandman helped me get through a shitty time.

I missed Otakon this year so I didn’t witness this guy first hand, but all of the twitter exploded over the weekend with proclamations of ice cold water and it’s low low price. And of course, come Monday, we got the remix:

This guy is a fucking genius.

First, to buy similar bottled water in the convention center itself costs upwards of $3.

Second, he doesn’t have to pay an exhibitor or artist alley fee to the con to peddle his ice cold liquid refreshment. And since he buys his water in bulk, he’s probably raking in 70-80 cents per dollar. That’s profit like a mother fucker. Even if his parking is $20, he’s still avoiding the exhibitor fees which are hundreds of dollars.

Third, because of his stupid fucking song, now everyone in the universe knows to look for him at Otakon 2012. People will be standing in line and will be thirsty like a mother fucker because Global Fuck You is just going to make summers hotter. And where are they going to go to get their ice cold water?

Fourth, the guy has a great attitude. He knows he’s throwing a ridiculous pitch and doesn’t care if people make fun of him. There are tons of videos out there of him shaking hands of people who are making fun of him. You can tell he loves performing for people and selling his damn water. Hell, he had groups of people singing that dumb fucking song along with him.

Fifth, that stupid fucking song is just meme bait. It’s going to die down in a week or two, but I guarantee you that when Otakon 2012 comes around, you’re all going to remember the Otakon Water Man.

Otakon Water Man won the con. I wasn’t there and even I have this stupid song stuck in my head.

What lessons can we learn from the Otakon Water Man? Well, I’m pretty sure your table neighbors would beat you senseless if you came out screaming, “I got that ice cold mini! And it’s only one fifty.” But I think we can learn from his unique pitch. Your typical water chucker will hold up his bottles and yell at you “ICE COOOLD WAAAATTTAAAAAAHHHH!!” But because everyone else is doing that, the pitch becomes part of the background noise. Otakon Water Man has a jingle that accomplishes multiple tasks. The simple lyrics communicate the temperature and price of the product. The tune is only a few notes like a ring tone which makes it the perfect ear worm. The megaphone helps him cut through all the white noise of a typical Baltimore day. And he looks tasty shirtless. He stands out in a crowd of water chuckers.

To me, the lesson is simple. See what everyone else is doing. Do something epically different.

I salute you, Otakon Water Man! And I’m buying some ice cold water from you next year.

Angry Zen Minion Greg suggested I rant a little more in my vlog, so here are my thoughts on why I kinda like the new Ultimate Spider-Man.

It seems that Batgirl’s San Diego Comic Con questions did not fall on deaf ears. In a statement on DC Comic’s Blog, The Source, Dan Dideo and Jim Lee wrote:

Over the past week we’ve heard from fans about a need for more women writers, artists and characters. We want you to know, first and foremost, that we hear you and take your concerns very seriously.

We’ve been very fortunate in recent years to have fan favorite creators like Gail Simone, Amy Reeder, Felicia Henderson, Fiona Staples, Amanda Connor, G. Willow Wilson and Nicola Scott write and draw the adventures of the World’s Greatest Super Heroes.

DC Comics is the home of a pantheon of remarkable, iconic women characters like Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman and Supergirl as well as fan favorite characters like Black Canary, Katana, Mera and Starfire. We’re committed to telling diverse stories with a diverse point of view. We want these adventures to resonate in the real world, reflecting the experiences of our diverse readership. Can we improve on that? We always can—and aim to.

We’ll have exciting news about new projects with women creators in the coming months and will be making those announcements closer to publication. Many of the above creators will be working on new projects, as we continue to tell the ongoing adventures of our characters. We know there are dozens of other women creators and we welcome the opportunity to work with them.

Our recent announcements have generated much attention and discussion and we welcome that dialogue.

Best-

Jim Lee & Dan DiDio
DC Entertainment Co-Publishers

I am going to take them at their word. I’m glad they’re taking this issue seriously. This could be a real watershed moment for DC. I hope to see more diverse creator lineups from them in the near future.

Now if we could only do something about those godawful costumes. Seriously, I don’t think Starfire could wear any less. And Harley’s new costume… ugh.