This week a look at how creators can cultivate their following into a means of paying (some of) the bills.
Comics artist Lucy Bellwood has a pretty succesful Patreon page; it’s paying her Portland rent. Her fans appreciate her work, but often that’s not quite enough; showing your personality, making a personal connection, can get them to buy in on a deeper level. Lucy talks to Tim about what she’s done to cultivate her following of fans/patrons.
Then Tim is joined by Taryn Arnold, Community Happiness Representative at Patreon, to talk about how Patreon works, the background of the site, and what they’re doing to solve some problems that have arisen — including (as referred to on this podcast more than once) kamikaze patrons who pledge, download all the free content, and unpledge without making any payments.
Pledge at least $3.00 a month to Deconstructing Comics on Patreon and hear Lucy talk about some frustrating, and also rather amazing, experiences she had with freelancing, and on why she got stressed out when she guested on someone else’s web comic!
(If you’d like to know more about using Patreon yourself, here’s some info.)
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Tapastic is one of the many places online that you could put your comic. Why put it there? This week, Tapastic Editor-in-chief Michael Son joins Tim to explain the advantages of the site, issues they’re working to solve, what kind of audience is reading the site (and how reader demands have changed), and what new features are in the pipeline.
Jason McNamara is back with us after two years, and now his book with Greg Hinkle, The Rattler, has just been published by Image! He joins us to talk about the disturbing inspiration for the book, how the 2014 Kickstarter project for the book helped it get published, and more.
Maya Kern‘s “
Tim Across America, part 7! Gordon McAlpin has put in more than a decade on the popular Web comic