I’ve held off for as long as I could, but I am declaring advertising as a means of supporting this website to be beyond saving. I can no longer rely on it, so I have to adjust the way I do things in order to hopefully keep being able to do it for another decade or two.
Starting in December, the update schedule on this website will drop to twice a week (Monday and Friday). Patrons at the $3 and above tiers on our Patreon will continue to get three pages a week (Monday. Wednesday, Friday).
The website will get all of the pages for free, just at a slower rate, while the Patreon continues at the faster pace, getting further and further ahead (along with the other additional Patreon benefits for each tier).
If you’ve enjoyed reading the 4000+ comics I’ve made these past 20+ years, and look forward to reading the ones I’ve yet to create, then supporting us on Patreon really is the best way to make sure they happen. I’ve done the math here before, but I put out about 156 regular comics a year. At the $3 tier, that’s about $0.23 a page ($0.19 a page if you sign up for a year and get 16% off). I’m hoping that this change encourages enough people to support us directly to balance out the decline in advertising viability we’ve seen over the past couple of years. 2% of our readers support us on Patreon. If we can get that to 3%, we’d be golden.
I have posted this comic three times a week for free since 2002, and I held off changing that for as long as possible. But the online landscape that made that model possible has changed a lot since then. Most of the advertising dollars go to video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, while A.I. “art” floods social media. I feel like I have to make some adjustments.
This way lets me add value to our Patreon that hopefully draws more support there, while still continuing to post pages for free (albeit a bit slower).
Only 2% holy cow. I thought it would be way higher than that. That’s so sad. People should support you and If I was financially stable, I would. I’d still want to read here though.
Two updates a week is a good flow, IMO. Lots of littler web comics do that and they do just fine, heck some only do 1 per week. There’s one I read that even does updates once every 2 weeks.
To be honest i think this is the best of all worlds.
I hope this gets you over your 3%, though it’s honestly astounding that more people aren’t subscribed.
I’m happy to become a patreon subscriber…but where’s the link to do so?
It’s under each comic…but I also had to go looking for it. Even though it’s eating up a huge amount of real estate on the page, decades of experience has made me blind to anything and everything that comes in between a comic strip and its blog/comments. The first time I remember seeing Tim mention it, I think he indicated it had been there for years. I had never seen it. At least with the way my brain works, a small, Patreon-orange banner over at the top of the right column or above the strip would be far more obvious.… Read more »
There are six different popups/banner ads loading and reloading every 10 seconds on this page. If this makes them go away, great.
I can honestly say I am able to block out (visually) the ads on the page. When I read @Kasey’s comment here, I thought, huh, there are popups and banner ads. Maybe I have a good filter or I just have tunnel vision, but either way, I just subscribed to the Patreon for a year and look forward to seeing what comes next. I’ve been enjoying the comic for free for a year – high time I paid up.
I realised I’ve been reading this comic for over 20 years, and all for free. Time to give something back – just signed up for a year on Patreon. Onwards to the 3%!
Does the CAD package include Starcaster pages or do I need to be a full voting member to see Speck’s latest snark?
Are you on a cost per click or just any ads that are shown? (IE: if I leave the page active by its self will you see revenue or only if I click on the ads)
man, I didn’t realize how long I have been reading your comics. Have a bunch of your limited prints and backed your Kickstarters for the collections. Adding a 1 year Patreon to it :), please keep up the great work.