No, I'm not trying to pull a Drtooth or anything, but this is something that's really irking me right now, because it's rully making my head spin...
Quite a few of you guys who are close to me, or know me somewhat personally know a lot of what I do with myself as far as creativity goes and everything, but at the same time, I don't go around crowing about what I do, I don't advertise, I don't procelate, because I learned my lesson about that the hard way years ago... any of you remember that trainwreck KGZ that I actually still have open? I probably made more enemies advertising that website than George Bush did when he sent us to war with the middle east... I mean I realized later on that advertising and self-promotion are frowned upon, and are seen as desperately shameless cries for attention, and actually turn people away, rather than garnering interest, so needless to say, when it comes to things I do, I don't go around procelating, or advertising.
So anyway, as of yesterday, the webcomic miniseries I had done over the holidays just finished its run with very, very poor results, it didn't catch on, and I don't believe anybody outside a couple of personal friends even read it; so on different occasions, where I would ask someone for input and such, I'm met with the exact same question over and over again, "Well, what are you doing to advertise?" Are you kidding me? I'm not trying to turn people away, but I mean at the same time, I am surprised that I hadn't gotten at least maybe a couple of curious readers over these past seventeen weeks... but then again, like I said in another thread, there's really no room for creativity or originality on the internet, and webcomics are no exception: case in point with myself, the site where my comic is hosted seems to have three kinds of popular comics - manga, stolen video game sprite, and gay, while almost all of the more original comics are shunned; likewise, I seem to be the only one who reads any of our own Xerus's webcomics, which I think is kind of sad, because his comics are genuinely funny, and they capture the spirit of classic Saturday Morning in a very excellent manner.
But I digress, constantly being asked, "What do you do to advertise?" has become just as annoying as the age-old, "You never asked before!" In fact, just recently someone suggested I post links on various forums I belong to and such... that's exactly how I advertised KGZ years ago, and it got me into nothing but trouble along the way, and to this day, it's like even when I don't even try to advertise the site (and I realy haven't had much to do with it in the last few years), I can't go to a Whose Line Is It Anyway? site or forum without people automatically regarding me as the village idiot. I mean as far as I'm concerned, I would rather just sit back and wait for people to discover anything I do, whether by accident, or out of curiosity; in some cases it works, like Steve's earlier days on YouTube (my own mother even recently jumped on the "You Need to Advertise" bandwagon recently when she too saw his following has dwindled to practically nothing in recent months), but in other cases it doesn't, like here.
I do see the point though, if you don't advertise, people even know these things exist anyway, but when you do advertise, people don't care? It's a frustrating and confusing debocal. At the same time, it seems like it's nowhere near as bad when someone else advertises for you; my best friend actually just recently elected herself to be my communications manager, so I'm really interested in seeing what her plans are in this department.
So anyway, that's my personal open rant... the evils of advertising, and the lackthereof.
Quite a few of you guys who are close to me, or know me somewhat personally know a lot of what I do with myself as far as creativity goes and everything, but at the same time, I don't go around crowing about what I do, I don't advertise, I don't procelate, because I learned my lesson about that the hard way years ago... any of you remember that trainwreck KGZ that I actually still have open? I probably made more enemies advertising that website than George Bush did when he sent us to war with the middle east... I mean I realized later on that advertising and self-promotion are frowned upon, and are seen as desperately shameless cries for attention, and actually turn people away, rather than garnering interest, so needless to say, when it comes to things I do, I don't go around procelating, or advertising.
So anyway, as of yesterday, the webcomic miniseries I had done over the holidays just finished its run with very, very poor results, it didn't catch on, and I don't believe anybody outside a couple of personal friends even read it; so on different occasions, where I would ask someone for input and such, I'm met with the exact same question over and over again, "Well, what are you doing to advertise?" Are you kidding me? I'm not trying to turn people away, but I mean at the same time, I am surprised that I hadn't gotten at least maybe a couple of curious readers over these past seventeen weeks... but then again, like I said in another thread, there's really no room for creativity or originality on the internet, and webcomics are no exception: case in point with myself, the site where my comic is hosted seems to have three kinds of popular comics - manga, stolen video game sprite, and gay, while almost all of the more original comics are shunned; likewise, I seem to be the only one who reads any of our own Xerus's webcomics, which I think is kind of sad, because his comics are genuinely funny, and they capture the spirit of classic Saturday Morning in a very excellent manner.
But I digress, constantly being asked, "What do you do to advertise?" has become just as annoying as the age-old, "You never asked before!" In fact, just recently someone suggested I post links on various forums I belong to and such... that's exactly how I advertised KGZ years ago, and it got me into nothing but trouble along the way, and to this day, it's like even when I don't even try to advertise the site (and I realy haven't had much to do with it in the last few years), I can't go to a Whose Line Is It Anyway? site or forum without people automatically regarding me as the village idiot. I mean as far as I'm concerned, I would rather just sit back and wait for people to discover anything I do, whether by accident, or out of curiosity; in some cases it works, like Steve's earlier days on YouTube (my own mother even recently jumped on the "You Need to Advertise" bandwagon recently when she too saw his following has dwindled to practically nothing in recent months), but in other cases it doesn't, like here.
I do see the point though, if you don't advertise, people even know these things exist anyway, but when you do advertise, people don't care? It's a frustrating and confusing debocal. At the same time, it seems like it's nowhere near as bad when someone else advertises for you; my best friend actually just recently elected herself to be my communications manager, so I'm really interested in seeing what her plans are in this department.
So anyway, that's my personal open rant... the evils of advertising, and the lackthereof.