Thanks for the emails! Your eyeballs aren’t as important as you think they are.
UPDATE: Here’s what I wrote to a polite person:
I could have taken off those restrictions after I upgraded my bandwidth last month due to a Stumbleupon induced traffic spike for the same cartoon, but it just didn’t occur to me. The Stumbleupon recommender linked to the page, not just the image, so it wasn’t an issue.
While I prefer people to view my cartoons in the context I intend, I understand some folks consider my website to be an eyesore and just link to the cartoon images.
I’ll get around to it after I meet my next deadline. Also, if you know of any secret voodoo that turns website traffic into decent money, please let me and the whole publishing industry know about it.
August 15th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
You tell ‘em, Brian!
Stupid readers, who needs ‘em?
The best thing for an aspiring webcomic artist to do is alienate as many potential viewers as possible. Why, otherwise, he could end up getting popular on sites like Digg and Reddit, and suffer the dreaded “XKCD Effect,” whereby thousands of people compete to tell others about his work every week, leading to wide exposure, accolades, or worse, sales!
August 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
wide exposure? wow! awesome!
August 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
@Eyeballs
Oh noes!
Stop being little girls. You want to email the artist a ‘fuck you’ letter? This is a pretty tame response.
Boo hoooooo
August 15th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
But dear mr. Eyeballs, I am not an aspiring webcomic artist. I’m an alt-weekly cartoonist who has a website.
I get your point, really. I’m just a bit of a dick.
Matt – Did you know ancient Micronesians once used giant stone wheels and exposure as currency?
August 15th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
The thing about “aspiring web comic artist” is that you can accomplish the aspiration by uploading any crappy comic on the web.
and viola!
August 15th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
That’s an impressively polite response to heckling from the anonymous nerd gallery.
August 15th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Abell – That’s just ’cause you know what an asshole I can really be. The person I sent that long bit too was quite nice. Be careful out there. Anonymous nerds might stab you with a steampunk shiv.
Matt just sent me an email with this excellent quote:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
I can’t stand Diggers, Facebookers and Stumblers who link to the image itself instead of the relevant page. In fact, sites like digg should have an algorithm to re-direct hotlinked images to the relevant page (which is probably impossible, but still…).
You could get around it by re-directing the hotlinked image to the page itself though. Possibly.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Matt – I had something like that a few years ago, but whenever people would try to embed my cartoons on their sites by hotlinking, they got a little red x instead of a shaming image. I can’t recall why I changed it.
August 15th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
You mean to tell me those banners on your site advertising “Achmed The Dead Terrorist” ringtones (gratis op je mobiel!) aren’t raking in the millions? My faith in this “information superhighway” has been shattered.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I agree with Matt’s hatred of the internet leaches, but I still think the web has to shake out eventually… probably in the form of software protecting against download/hotlink. Flash already has this.
I know for damn sure that newspapers aren’t giving me any money. They are going supernova FAST. Saw today another major paper axed a full page of comics…
August 15th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
river – if I drew furry manga porn, I’d get some of those sweet, internet fun bucks. But for now I’ll let those ill-placed ringtone and McCain ads cover my hosting fees.
Abell – I think you’re on to something. Advertising’s going to be the big stinking gorilla that drives it.