I\u2019m putting this post up mainly as an excuse to update the \u2018blog\u2019 section of my site, which I haven\u2019t touched in (cough) a long while. But I thought it good to duly note that I\u2019ve been plugging away at this here webcomic thing for four years now! Four years, no buffer to speak of, and I only ever missed one update! That\u2019s pretty good, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n
I thought I\u2019d mark the occasion by listing a few things I\u2019ve learned over the years:<\/p>\n
Making a webcomic is fun!<\/b>
\nIt really is, and it\u2019s the readership that makes it so. Having you fine people look at and comment on my stuff is really the highlight of my week; it\u2019s the reason I happily sacrifice a big chunk of my free time to the endeavour. So thanks for giving me the motivation to keep on going! If not for you, I\u2019d probably just spend my limited free time playing video games. Badly.<\/p>\n
Making webcomics is not a viable business model.<\/b>
\nWord to the wise: on a work-to-profit ratio, making a webcomic is a terrible, terrible investment of your time. If you\u2019re ever thinking of making a webcomic, I totally encourage you to do so \u2026 for personal satisfaction only<\/i>. If you\u2019re dreaming of dollar signs, start a Let\u2019s Play channel on Youtube or something. Yes, there are a few highly successful webcomics out there that turn a decent profit (and by \u2018decent profit\u2019 I mean \u2018barely living wage\u2019) but there aren\u2019t many of them. The market is small, the competition is fierce, and expenses are high. That said, it\u2019s a fun hobby, and if we compare it to other fun hobbies like model trains, it\u2019s a little better because it at least has the chance to potentially pay for itself. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not really very good at what I do.<\/b>
\nI don\u2019t mean to be overly harsh; I just mean that the world of webcomics contains some amazing talent. There are people out there creating magnificent work, and they\u2019re real people \u2013 not abstract pseudo-celebrities like Jim Lee. (Okay, I know Jim Lee is theoretically a real person, but we\u2019re not really on the same plane.) It reinforces my own mediocrity more when someone says, \u201cHey, take a look at this seventeen year-old girl from Wyoming! She can draw circles around you and write jokes that people actually laugh at, and she\u2019s not even out of high school!\u201d Humbling, to say the least.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not really that bad at what I do.<\/b>
\nAgain, I don\u2019t mean to be overly harsh, but I\u2019ve grown increasingly aware of the sheer quantity of absolute garbage out there on the internet. And I feel strongly that, at the very least, I can sleep at night knowing that my comic is not making the internet a worse place<\/i> through its existence. I might not be making the internet much better, but at least Puck ain\u2019t no Sonichu. Hell, I\u2019ve made it to four years and I\u2019m still not in the Bad Webcomics Wiki! That\u2019s something to be proud of! Either that or it\u2019s just an administrative oversight on the part of the BWW \u2013 though if they ever need an article about Puck, I really would like the chance to write it myself. I think tearing my own work apart would be an entertaining (and easy) exercise.<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019m game for another four years (at least).<\/b> I\u2019m putting this post up mainly as an excuse to update the \u2018blog\u2019 section of my site, which I haven\u2019t touched in (cough) a long while. But I thought it good to duly note that I\u2019ve been plugging away at […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[441],"class_list":["post-1546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anniversary","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-electricgecko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1546\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puckcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCreating the comic has adversely affected my life in a number of ways; it\u2019s added a lot of stress to my plate and caused a few sleepless nights, but it\u2019s added a lot of good stuff to my life too. It\u2019s given me an artistic sense of purpose, and a more definitive sense of identity. They\u2019re intangible benefits, but they\u2019re also invaluable. When push comes to shove, I can say this: the comic has always been worth it. I think that means I\u2019m in for the long haul.<\/p>\n