Should you participate in a "top webcomics list" site?

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

I was surprised when I received a question about a "top webcomics list" site recently. I wrote advice against participating in those back in 2010, and ever since, the entire topic has dropped from my radar. Evidently, sites like this are still out there, and cartoonists are still trying to use them for audience building. I'll tell you why that's bad.

Top Webcomics Lists

There are a number of sites that work on the following basis:

• You register with the site and upload a banner ad for your comic

• You receive a special code to place on your site that places a button on your page

• By clicking that button, your readers can vote for your comic

• The more votes you get, the higher your banner ad rises on the "top webcomics" site

As I've said before, this is a glorified link exchange, in my opinion. And that’s not necessarily bad! But I'll argue that the only winners are the people running the "webcomics list" sites themselves. They run their own ads, and they sell advertising to cartoonists who are not able to rise high enough on the list on their own.

Wasted effort

Webcomic-list participation has many drawbacks:

• You have little chance of climbing up the list within a reasonable amount of time.

• The traffic you are getting may be "junk" traffic

• You're spending time/effort in activating the reader to a pointless task

• You're putting a lot of extra effort into generating votes — in some cases, bonus panels or other exclusive rewards

Let's talk about each of those individually