TWCL

smbhax.com · Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2011 6:41 am Post subject: Re: Who READS voting sites?

wendyw wrote:

Lance Icarus wrote:

Honestly, who here in this thread ever found a new comic and became a fan of it through a webcomic voting site?

*raises hand*

Yeah, I mean the reason people want to be on TopWebComics is that a lot of potential readers end up there. When I decided I wanted to find some new webcomics and had no clue where to go, Googling took me there.
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Clint Wolf · Joined: 15 Apr 2010 Posts: 298

smbhax.com wrote:

Yeah, I mean the reason people want to be on TopWebComics is that a lot of potential readers end up there. When I decided I wanted to find some new webcomics and had no clue where to go, Googling took me there.

Another valid point, getting on listing sites seems to help with the ol' SEO.

According to our trackers, we get a decent number of referrals off of TWC every day. Are a lot of those bounces? Yes. But 64 people currently have it on their TWC 'favorite' list, so that's strong circumstancial evidence at least some people out there found us by that route and became fans.
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Lance Icarus · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 200 Location: Washington, USA

Wow, maybe I'm not playing the whole "vote for us" game right. I've never had any real success with vote sites. Really, the best list site for gaining readership has always been Webcomic List. Maybe I should start offering more incentives?
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joeychips · Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2011 10:25 pm Post subject:

I can't remember the last time I voted for any comic. I vote to end voting.
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Joe Chiappetta - Read Silly Daddy comics at http://sillydaddy.net

iaviv · Joined: 03 Sep 2011 Posts: 252

I vote several times a year and it seems it's usually out of boredom...? Yeah, I don't get myself either.

Montanto · Joined: 10 Feb 2005 Posts: 155 Location: Seattle

I still have my vote buttons up (hell if you want to hear pathetic I used to cheat on them shamelessly whenever I was running errands getting more votes from the library computers and assorted computer stores (best I ever got was to the mid 700s)) Eventually I found them to be more trouble than they were worth and the prime real estate was better filled with an adsense banner.
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CoinOperatedGirl · Joined: 13 Oct 2011 Posts: 58

I actually had some inside information telling me that if you advertise on these voting sites (we all know which websites I mean) your stats/votes go up artificially. So, apart from the actual result from advertising. Basically, if you pay them, right away your stats/votes go up.

I'm not entirely sure if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Also, some people are very creative with voting intensives and such.

Just remember that being high on the ranks of that page has not that much to do with the actual quality of the web-comic Smile

. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it is completely unrelated, but probable 70% of getting votes it is a matter of active updating, being active in your community, use voting incentives and other smart tricks to get people to vote.

ewomack · Grand prize winner! Joined: 05 Jun 2007 Posts: 337

Votes and stats can never replace a solid readership, but how do you know you have a solid readership without votes and stats? Though rankings are often over rated and irrelevant in and of themselves, they also remain the only gauge to see who's actually checking up on your site. The grand quandary.
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Ed Womack

smbhax.com · Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 1:25 am Post subject:

Rankings, no. Direct site measurement tools such as web log analyzers, Quantcast's direct measurement, Google Analytics, etc will give you information on site visitors, and much more accurately than some ranking system. What those won't tend to do as well as ranking systems is give you a direct basis of comparison with other sites.
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Varethane · Joined: 18 Apr 2008 Posts: 542

Heh... I too have actually found comics that I am still reading to this day through voting sites! Does anyone remember, uhh.... I think it was called Buzzcomics?
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afterthedream · Joined: 24 Mar 2011 Posts: 220

wendyw wrote:

Lance Icarus wrote:

Honestly, who here in this thread ever found a new comic and became a fan of it through a webcomic voting site?

*raises hand*

I've found several comics I like through TWC. Other ranking sites... not so much. I'm listed on every voting site I could find, but TWC is the only one I actually have a vote icon for on my main page. The rest of them get substantially less web traffic than my own webcomic does.
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CoinOperatedGirl · Joined: 13 Oct 2011 Posts: 58

ewomack wrote:

Votes and stats can never replace a solid readership, but how do you know you have a solid readership without votes and stats? Though rankings are often over rated and irrelevant in and of themselves, they also remain the only gauge to see who's actually checking up on your site. The grand quandary.

http://comicrank.com/ this website is actually quite useful in that regard. It analyses your statistics and keeps track of returning visitors rather than just giving you all the rough data.

I think it's reasonable accurate too, although everything can be artificially influenced of course. It does also feature some ranks/list thingy but you can also just ignore that and use it for personal insight.
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