Friday, October 20, 2006

I'm going to use one of my LJ icons here so you people know that maybe this post is worth skipping.

Man, that looks kinda weird. If I were smarter, I'd figure out how to make a table for it has my "username" and everything under it, just to mess with people. Ah well.

So anyway, I was totally working on a big "state of the industry" post and how I keep getting courted by companies looking for a mention on the blog (yes, some reviews are forthcoming, including one I can't believe I'm doing) when Neil Kleid's totally kickass interview with Slave Labor's Dan Vado comes down the pike and ensures I really don't need to bother. Here's someone with real industry experience saying that so much of the crap hurled at people doesn't do anything.

VADO: Something cannot be both a sleeper and a hit. A comic or graphic novel either sells or it doesn�t. Critical acclaim does not translate to sales. For all the talk and hype on Street Angel, the comic hovered around 1500 copies sold and never broke out of that. Not enough for a creator with rent to pay to keep the project going. A million blog entries or message board posts mean shit when it comes to actually selling something. For all of the hype or critical acclaim for Street Angel on the Internet, that alone wasn�t enough to help make it a financial success or, for that matter, even get it nominated for a single award in any category. Snakes on a Plane, that movie was in discount houses in a couple of weeks despite all of the viral marketing hype.

And, let me say this about �viral marketing� thing that people can�t shut up about. I think I liked �Viral Marketing� better when it was called �Word-of-Mouth advertising.� You really can�t get better advertising than someone recommending something to someone else, but it needs to be a sincere recommendation from someone who has tried the product. When Hollywood or advertising types start talking about �viral marketing,� they are basically saying that they can invent the virus, plant it in the population, and suddenly everyone is going to jump in and buy their product or go to their movie. Some of these people translate a couple of entries on someone�s blog as millions of impressions and charge accordingly. YOUTUBE.COM is valuing itself at $1.5 BILLION DOLLARS, despite the fact that they have no workable revenue stream, and someone will pay it because they think that it�s this amazing advertising platform. But once people start getting wind of the fact that most of the content you are being directed to are all fake pieces of nonsense designed to dupe you into buying deodorant or watching some crappy TV show they will abandon YOUTUBE in favor of some other thing that will become the Internet�s next big �IT� site.

Same thing with MySpace. Rupert Murdoch�s Newscorp buys MySpace for $500 Million dollars. Then what happens? People discover Myspace and start using it as a marketing platform. The result, Google has now made a deal paying Newscorp almost $900 Million, nearly twice what they paid for Myspace in the first place, to serve ads on MySpace websites. Really, how many text ads on MySpace or Livejournal does someone really click?

If I tried to take credit for creating the word-of-mouth, or the viral marketing, that made Johnny a success I would be lying. I took advantage of it, I was able to capitalize on it, but I was not responsible for it. The reason that book took off the way it did was because all of the word-of-mouth, all of the �viral marketing,� was all sincere efforts on the parts of fans to spread the word to other fans, not because we planted fake messages on message boards or because some made-up hot chick on Youtube was reading Johnny.

Some of this I disagree with - Google's making money hand over fist with its advertising model, for instance, which certainly means they think that YouTube and the like can be monetized in some fashion - perhaps by inserting ads before the videos in the iFilm or Revver model. But yes, all of this viral marketing, it seems to not work at all and in one case directly related to comics, seems to have backfired.

Maybe I'm saying I'm unnecessary, to an extent, at least as far as marketing campaigns go, and I'm fairly sure I'm OK with that - this is my site and promoting other people's products is sort of not my bag. You'll note that I don't do text ads - only two affiliate links on the right for eMusic and Dreamhost, two services that I very much like. I'd like to think that this blog, along with Mike Sterling's and Chris Sims's (to name two), offers something for the readers beyond acting in some vague tastemaker role. Trust me - you people don't want to have my tastes. I try to go above and beyond the call of duty by posting old comics and occasionally writing up something that people seem to respond to, like the Weekly List and Genius Covers Sunday.

And really, I like writing for the blog a good 99% of the time. Comics fascinate and excite me and I want to share this excitement, but do I really have any sort of impact in people's reading habits? I don't provide handy links to blog entries, etc for feminists and I certainly don't make fanboys piss themselves with laughter like some Newsweek-covered bastards.

I guess what I'm asking, and there's a reason for this beyond my need for validation - really, honestly - why do you read this blog? Do you just like the words I string together? I've got a thousand unique visitors a day, which means something and doesn't count however many people are reading the RSS feed, but why are you here? Is it because you know me, are you just a comics blog junkie, you're looking for blackmail material or what? Is there something you want more of from me - reviews, commentary, etc? Is there something you don't like about the site, I mean besides my airs of superiority?

Comment, inform, help me shape this almost-5-year-old beast.