Blógünder Schlock

You can read the latest Schlock Mercenary (as well as the latest of each of the Blank Label Comics) at the new-and-improved Blank Label Comics home page.

Our initial page layout (credit: Maggie, David Willis, and Me) was pretty good, but Elizabeth Dean (espoused to Greg Dean of Real Life Comics) took one look at it and sprouted a patch of grey hairs. Then she got to work.

Less than six hours later she had a new layout mocked up. Twenty-four hours after that, Greg had made her design live.

I have never seen this woman touch a page design without turning it into gold. She is Queen WebMidas, with a golden touch. In this case the gold comes in desaturated cerulean shades highlighted with shining Blank Label Orange, but it is gold nonetheless. It is gorgeous… kind of like the tri-color Black Hills Gold, only without Indian Burial Grounds or Mount Rushmore.

So… go have a look. Read all of the Blank Label Comics in one handy place.

Now then… here are some answers to common questions:

Q: What will this do to ad revenue?
A: The same thing RSS feeds do. It will dilute ad revenue slightly, while expanding the reach of the comics and increasing page-views overall. Ultimately, it’s OUR problem, not yours. This page is for readers to enjoy. If you feel guilty enjoying it, you can buy some merchandise someday.

Q: Can I have an RSS feed for this new page?
A: Hmmm… No. The page updates every ten minutes, and updated content (especially blog entries) may appear at any time during the day. If you want to be up-to-the-minute on all that stuff, the best way is to subscribe to individual Blank Label Comics RSS feeds. This page is a once-a-day trawl spot for people who don’t want to bother with all those feeds.

Q: But Schlock Mercenary doesn’t have a feed.
A: Yet. I’m working on that. It’s a separate project.

Q: Why is Real Life on top?
A: Because for now we all wanted it there. The vertical orientation is perfect. Eventually we may auto-rotate the position of the strips, but that’s a version 2.0 task.

Q: Shouldn’t there be plugs for your merchandise, and store links, and forum links, and all that?
A: You’re absolutely right. There should be. That’s a version 1.1 task, and to hear Greg bubble enthusiastically about it, some of that may be in place before this blog entry gets posted.

Q: Do you have plans to add any other comics to the lineup here?
A: No, but the architecture is flexible enough that it would be easy to do. Six seems like the right number right now.

Q: What happened to the Blank Label Comics blog?
A: You can find it at www.blanklabelcomics.com/blog. Yes, this probably broke a lot of trackbacks and pings. Sorry! We’ll look at getting it incorporated into the main page at some future point.

Q: I have a bug to report!
A: Email it to me, or use the “contact” link at the top of the Blank Label Comics home page.

A few days ago one of my advertisers switched their image, their text, and their target page. The network through which they were advertising, BlogAds, had been a pleasure to work with, but I did not realize that such switches were allowable.

When I attempted to defer the ad it wouldn’t go away. Rather than pull the ad-code from the site and suffer contractual wrath, I pushed the ad to the bottom of the skyscraper column and hoped it would go away. In hindsight this was irresponsible. You see, the advertisement featured a picture of two romantically-lit naked people preparing for over-the-top chemically enhanced sex (or so the ad said), and this imagery was now running right alongside my blog post about the coloring book.

One of the most memorable email complaints I got was from a fellow parent. I’ve copied it here:

This is my first time visiting your site. I was looking to see if the comic would be appropriate for my three boys ages 8, 10 and 11. I was glad that did. The advertisements you have running on your side bars are appalling! I would never want my young boys to see advertisements with provocative pictures talking about sex products. ( … )I don’t think I will be visiting again. You sound like a decent person, but your advertisements are highly inappropriate.

She was right. Had I been vetting sites for my own kids, had I actually been paying attention to the drek my advertisers were paying me to display, my own site would have been un-bookmarked.

I work hard to keep my comic family-friendly. To that end I’ve spent years (seven of ‘em!) trying to build a reputation I’m proud of. I left Keenspot in part over this issue. And with one foolish act I scuffed and scarred a large measure of my credibility. I should have pulled the code the moment I saw that ad, but I didn’t. We can argue all day about how ad approval should work, but that particular bit of folly is my own. I accept 100% of that responsibility.

I’ve had a pleasant email exchange with Henry Copeland, CEO at BlogAds. He apologized, and offered to more carefully vet the advertisers he sends my way. He conceded, however, that they would not be changing their policy. Advertisers demand the ability to alter campaigns on the fly, and will pay a premium for that ability.

I can see why. The campaign in question appeared to be extremely successful. Click-throughs skyrocketed in those final hours. Sex sells. I am compelled to conclude that this kind of thing will happen again. It is a proven tactic, after all.

So… I’m no longer running BlogAds. It always hurts to surrender revenue, but as mercenary as I may eponymously appear, I know that it hurts far more to have my name sullied by activities that I’m willing to accept payment for. The ad in question paid me all of $90, which I willingly forfeit (though my prorated share of it should have been around $85) when I pulled the ad code and demanded that the campaign be terminated.

(Note: I shall not be identifying the ad campaign in question. That would generate more traffic. I will not send any more of my friends and fans in the direction of these diseased troglodytes. If you choose to post links in the comments, I will delete them. If I see questionable trackbacks, I shall delete those, too. These soggy-headed sphinctroids already got free advertising from me one time too many.)

Ahem.

My remaining ad providers have been excellent. Google rarely sends me anything offensive, and when they do it is a matter of a moment to forever block that domain. Project Wonderful has been particularly good to work with, in that I can choose how much oversight I want to have. Right now no campaign and no change to existing ads can appear on my site without explicit approval from me.

I may screw up again sometime, and accidentally let something through that I should not have. But never again will I hesitate to yank ad code if that’s what it takes to remove offensive material. To that end, if you see something that you think I shouldn’t have allowed in, email me.

In related news, I need to re-design that left-hand sidebar. I’m not happy with the current navigation widgets, and it would seem that a large chunk of commercial real-estate has been re-zoned as public lands. I have already demolished the existing skyscraper, and shall shortly put in a park, or perhaps a space elevator.

Blank Label Comics, the ground-breaking co-op of independent cartoonists, is partnering with Project Wonderful to launch an ambitious concept in advertising that will offer never-before-seen marketing possibilities.

BLC’s Summer Wonderfest is a limited-time offer through which advertisers can buy ads that will appear across the entire BLC network at the same time. That’s every single Blank Label comic and their forums.

Ads will be purchased through Project Wonderful’s innovative infinite auction model: You bid on an advertising slot, and for as long as you are the high bidder, your ad is displayed. You can bid whatever price you’d like for as long as you’d like: two days, a week, a year - it’s your choice. You can learn more here.

BLC delivers over 20 million pageviews a month. That means that you have a very good chance of buying a phenomenal amount of exposure for much less than you would spend on a traditional cost-per-view basis. Plus, you’re buying a tremendous amount of advertising saturation. Your ad will be seen simultaneously across the Web sites of some of the most popular comics on the Net.

The traditional BLC ad system will return in July, so this is your chance to make an incredible impact for your product, site, comic, or group.

Okay, Project Wonderful… I’m sold.

Nothing does this old mercenary heart quite so much good as watching a group of people bid my services up to four times what I originally thought they were worth.

Webcomics luminary Ryan North kicked off an advertising system a while back. Hurting for a good name (apparently “Adsense” was taken already) he called it “Project Wonderful.”

I’m going to try it out, because it really does look… well, wonderful. It’s pretty simple for both advertisers and publishers, and I like the concept. And in celebration of the simplicity, I’m enabling a skyscraper that you can buy into for as little as $5.00 per day. The way the system works, if your ad gets approved by me, and you’re the high bidder (or the only bidder offering $5.00 or more) your ad is the only ad that runs all day.

So… if you’ve got $5.00, something to advertise, and a skyscraper ad (160×600) that doesn’t suck, now’s your chance to grab 30,000 eyeballs. The banner is to the right… click, and bid.

Okay, y’all proved me beyond wrong. The “I got paid three times” piece is selling for well over 99 cents, which shows that there’s either no accounting for taste, or I’m not as smart as I think I am.

Likely it’s both.

The complete list of auctions is here. Six of them close Monday morning, and another six close on Tuesday evening.

If you liked this little celebration of capitalism, Kayuda and I may get together and do something like it again (only with a twist). In the meantime, please give Kayuda.com a visit, and check out their nifty, wiki-esque mindmapping tool. It’s free!

If the six auctions that opened Monday morning aren’t what you’re looking for, here are six more, again sponsored by Wotan LLC as part of their Kayuda launch. Kayuda is a web-based visual wiki, a mind-mapping tool, and a non-linear writing tool that allows you to track ideas and the relationships between them.

As I said on Monday, Wotan purchased these pieces from me, and then told me to auction them off and keep the proceeds. So there it is, I got paid twice. But wait… all of these but one (I bet you can guess which) appear in Schlock Mercenary books, so I already got paid once for the artwork.

I am SO doing the happy-dance.

I’ve been using Kayuda to help me organize some of my story notes, and I like it. I think you’ll like it too, especially since you can try it out for free. I don’t usually say “please support our sponsors,” but the Kayuda team has been very generous with this campaign, and I’d love to see them get lots of attention as a result.

Here is a list of the auctions that opened Tuesday evening:

• Haban

• Tchukk

• Tagon’s Signals

• Andy

• The Blackness Between Cover Art

• Howard’s Happy Dance

I’ll understand if the bidding on “Howard’s Happy Dance” stays down around $0.99. I drew that one just for this campaign at the express request (read that “contractual demand”) of the sponsor. The Cover Art auction is a different story: It includes all three inked pieces I used to assemble the cover, and this is the first time I’ve made something like that available.

Go check out the auctions (here’s the full list), and give Kayuda a try too.

It’s auction time again, only this time we’re doing something different. There are six auctions starting this morning, and they’re being sponsored by Wotan LLC.

How’s it work? Well… Wotan is launching their new product, Kayuda, today, and the Kayuda team wants people to start using it. Kayuda is a web-based visual wiki, a mind-mapping tool, and a non-linear writing tool. It’s free, and any number of people can collaborate simultaneously in real-time. You can have any number of “wikis” (called “workspaces”), and you can choose how private to make them.

So… how did Wotan’s Kayuda team set about “sponsoring” these auctions? It’s simple. They bought the artwork, and then told me I could auction it off and keep the proceeds myself.

Wanna know the best part? All of the pieces on the block right now were used in Schlock books. That means that after the auction closes, I will have been paid three times for each piece — once through book sales, once by Wotan LLC, and once by the winning bidder.

Isn’t mercenary work fine?

Now then, I’m not just shilling for them because I’ve got their money. I’ve been using Kayuda on and off as a scripting tool, and it’s pretty handy. In short, I wouldn’t have accepted their money if I didn’t like their product. I DO like it, and I think lots of you might, too.

My glimpses at the super-secret Kayuda Roadmap hinted at upcoming support for tags, file attachments, per-node permissions, chat, and full Entity-Relationship Diagramming. The developers are also soliciting input for what they should build next on this platform: project management, sketching, something else? Try out what they’ve got today, and send them your feedback.

Oh, and here’s a list of the auctions:

• Six-fingered DerTrihs

• Breya and Jevee

• Doctor Edward Bunnigus

• Colonel Jaksmouth

• Schlock and the Puppy

• A Tank

Go have a look, happy bidding, and even if you don’t win, you can use Kayuda for free.

Just a quick reminder this holiday season — anything you buy at Amazon.com on a visit that began with you following a link from Schlock Mercenary (like this one!) will be credited by Amazon as a “referral” from yours truly.

A referral, mind you, for which they will pay me a percentage (between 4% and 7% of the purchase price). Your price stays the same — Amazon takes a small hit in their profit margin, and I get a slice of their pie.

Mmmm… pie. Happy holiday shopping!

I’ve been remiss in my duties.

1) I got a Molon Labe (pronounced “mo-lone lah-veh”) hat and a “Peace Through Superior Firepower” patch from the folks at Life, Liberty, Etc. The hat is very comfortable, and the patch is screaming at me, insisting that it be affixed to my drawing kit. Which is fine, because if the pen is mightier than the sword, that rolling suitcase is a WMD.

2) Baen’s Universe just signed up to sponsor Schlock Mercenary for three months, and I can’t be happier. You really, REALLY need to go check them out (their ad is on the top there in the left column). Many of the people commenting on my Boundary book review had already read all or parts of it electronically through Baen.

3) Pen vs Sword round two… as a cartoonist, I’m pretty passionate about my rights to speak, write, and draw whatever strikes my fancy. The current conflict over the Mohammed cartoons points out the clash between that right and the despots and crackpots who would take it away. There are those who urge restraint in our media, saying that we should take extra care right now not to offend Islam. Our most recent BlogAds advertiser is clearly not in that group (and by extension, neither am I). Click on that ad to the left, and have a look at a t-shirt that would probably get you killed in some parts of the world.

“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire