Mo’ Mo

March 1st, 2006

Thanks, everyone, for the huge response to my last post. I’m really grateful for all your thoughtful, practical, and supportive comments. You’ve helped me to clarify my thinking about DTWOF online, and now I’m getting all excited about it.

There was a gratifying consensus that PlanetOut sucks and we’re all better off without them. There were several good examples of other comics sites that I might want to model mine on. There were lots of suggestions about how to generate income from the site. And there was a lively debate on print media vs. the web.

Much as I love newsprint, and much as I’m indebted to the LGBT press, the media landscape is changing. I see web delivery of the strip as supplementing print readership, not eroding it. I also think that hosting the strip myself, rather than trying to find another web publication to carry it, makes much more financial sense in the long run. I already have a strong community of readers, why not exploit them interact with them directly? I could make a really great site. I’d like to integrate this blog with the strip more, for example. And I’ll find a way to put up a neater, higher-res version of the artwork than PlanetGout did.

The big challenges are time and money. I made about $350 a month from PlanetOut, which I really need to find a way to recoup. Blog ads don’t sound worth the bother. People seemed pretty positive about the idea of paying for subscriptions, but I need to think about this some more. I’m less reluctant than I used to be about paying for online content—I can’t bring myself to pay for Salon, for example, but for some reason I shell out for the NY Times.

The bigger cost to me will be the time it’ll take to set up and administer the site. I’m already working constantly, and I’d rather be drawing than fiddling with a website. But I’ll figure it out. I’m definitely moving forward with this, and would love to keep getting your input.