Housepets!

So guys, I have the comic up on TWC, the Belfry, and am getting it onto ComicRank, and there's articles on TvTropes and Wikifur and we have a DeviantArt group now, etc.

So . . . does anyone else have ideas of places to promote? I would like to try and focus on places that are more about webcomics than furry stuff.

I don't know of any other notable website where it could be. Especially one about webcomics.
Edit: in fact, are there even any?

Hi love the comics! Anyway why not a whole "follow us on Facebook" spill?

Because that would require me getting Facebook

rickgriffin wrote:Because that would require me getting Facebook

Ah, well okay then. Thats my idea. Word of Mouth is really the best advertisement, its how I found the comic.

Dusty wrote:

rickgriffin wrote:Because that would require me getting Facebook

Ah, well okay then. Thats my idea. Word of Mouth is really the best advertisement, its how I found the comic.

That's how i was first told about it. Though began reading it when I clicked a signature banner on the vgcats forums. Sinder's signature.

It's kind of hard advertising a webcomic, unless you want to start paying for banner ads elsewhere. Word of mouth is how any of the big ones get big, so I think the best thing you can do is just keep making a good webcomic. You can also encourage your loving fans to spread the word, but considering the forumdwellers are about 2/3 furries, chances are most of the places that will hear from us would be places focused on furry stuff; there aren't a whole lot of general webcomic communities.

ReCreate wrote:

Dusty wrote:

rickgriffin wrote:Because that would require me getting Facebook

Ah, well okay then. Thats my idea. Word of Mouth is really the best advertisement, its how I found the comic.

That's how i was first told about it. Though began reading it when I clicked a signature banner on the vgcats forums. Sinder's signature.

Ha that sig is how I found the comic too!

I found out while browsing wikifur which i mistakenly came upon while looking up thermal expression for a paper
(i know Wikipedia is bad for research but meh. i still use it lol).

Comixpedia.

There's also other social networking stuff you can do (Stumbleupon, Digg, Livejournal feeds, etc.), but that would probably require more effort...

Sinder wrote:Comixpedia.

There's also other social networking stuff you can do (Stumbleupon, Digg, Livejournal feeds, etc.), but that would probably require more effort...

We'd get everyone on the forums to dig it at the same time! Eh. I'd say a advert on FA couldn't hurt, but it might alienate non-furry viewers.

You know Rick, between FA and DA, something like a billion people watch you. If you uploaded new strips to your accounts at the same time you update the main site, you'd get tons of exposure, not to mention the views you'd get from appearing on the front pages of those sites alone.

Then he'd have to make custom versions of each strip instead of just uploading the finished product. And teasing people just makes them angry.

Dissension wrote:The comic has a lot of appeal outside the furry fandom; if the association to furries becomes more pronounced, that appeal may diminish. Word-of-mouth may be the best bet.

Exactly what I'm afraid of. Maybe some kind of referral system to get people to invite more peeps to see it. Help speed up the Word Of Mouth angle.

As far as the word of mouth goes, some good suggestions are Libraries and schools.

As for advertising it on the web more, i would recommend google, but it seems Rick is already on the top of Google when you search up Housepets (even without the ! on it!). I would also suggest possibly trying to get into some other possible related things at the moment such as maybe AskJeeves and other search related materials, but if you got top results on google, then i think you're already at a good margin already. =)

I found this comic through an ad on the site of another comic I read (out of many many).
Are you still doing paid advertisements on other comic web pages?
I have only seen the ad once, and I went and took a look. Glad I did =P.

Word of mouth is really the best way.
It is free and readers do it often without being asked.
However, I can't think of any more to add to your list of erm... comic lists, lol.

Dissension wrote:The comic has a lot of appeal outside the furry fandom; if the association to furries becomes more pronounced, that appeal may diminish. Word-of-mouth may be the best bet.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure association with furries is a bad move in general. Obviously it'd be dumb to full-out deny the association, but the moment the comic is branded as a "furry webcomic" by the public, goodbye being taken seriously by non-furries.

I haven't done ad campaigns in quite a while (been siphoning the money off the ads for my own stuff recently) but maybe I should do some again

rickgriffin wrote:I haven't done ad campaigns in quite a while (been siphoning the money off the ads for my own stuff recently) but maybe I should do some again

The ad is how I found it (from one swoop fell, if I'm not mistaken). Either way, it's a good idea.

Sleet wrote:

Dissension wrote:The comic has a lot of appeal outside the furry fandom; if the association to furries becomes more pronounced, that appeal may diminish. Word-of-mouth may be the best bet.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure association with furries is a bad move in general. Obviously it'd be dumb to full-out deny the association, but the moment the comic is branded as a "furry webcomic" by the public, goodbye being taken seriously by non-furries.

I don't think that's a problem; being 'furry' is a matter of perception, and most people figure that as long as it's not adult, it's not really that 'furry'

Although I have written a short story that was slightly adult and pretty furry, but because I wasn't horrendously blatant like most furry fiction is, it was just a regular sci-fi even to a guy who didn't like furry fiction normally. I think it's part of a perception of being adult but also this sort of subtle jab of superiority to humans that makes people get annoyed with furry fiction.

Dissension wrote:The comic has a lot of appeal outside the furry fandom; if the association to furries becomes more pronounced, that appeal may diminish. Word-of-mouth may be the best bet.

Well part of the mental barrier for acceptance of the comic by regular people on the Internet comes from the premise and character design. The premise is, there are animals that are constructed more like humans and are slightly bigger than their real life counterparts, but they still have human masters. This can be mistaken as a secret wish fulfillment by the author with possibly sinister intent (NOT SAYING ANYTHING SO DON'T TRY ME). The character designs for the pets are some bizarre equality between human and animal that does not manifest in all sections of the character, and almost all the animals have supermodel figures, massively thick limbs, and a propensity to bend forward at the waist. The unrelated art Rick uploads to other sites doesn't exactly do anything to change that perception, as the vast majority are anthros; highly romanticized depictions of each gender, with muscular, stern-faced males (often not wearing shirts) and busty, shapely females, and a few Pokemorphs and commissions from furries sprinkled on the side. In fact, it could serve to corroborate the awkward negative perceptions.

In short, some of the difficulty comes from Rick's own decisions But he can't change any of that now. You just have to be sure to shoot that awkwardness down in the way you introduce the comic to potential readers.

I'll be sure to drop some mentions here and there when/where it doesn't feel odd to do so.

Rick, you may want to contact Bill Holbrook, the author of Kevin And Kell, to ask him if he could put Housepets! in the comics menu of his own homepage... I discovered many good comics from there, and I'm sure other K&K readers would discover yours as well.

machchunk wrote:The unrelated art Rick uploads to other sites doesn't exactly do anything to change that perception, as the vast majority are anthros; highly romanticized depictions of each gender, with muscular, stern-faced males and busty, shapely females, and a few Pokemorphs and commissions from furries sprinkled on the side. In fact, it could serve to corroborate the awkward negative perceptions.

You'd be surprised how many comments I get from readers saying they didn't know I had a deviantart or furaffinity page.

Heh, I didn't know either. I only found it when the DA group formed

I found out about Housepets via Sinders Siggy on VGcats.
the best advertisement would probably be Blind ferret
but it is probably expensive as can be, even for one week.

Just checking around now and noised that Housepets is not on http://www.onlinecomics.net
(witch I will simply now submit )
Yay, I am allowed to make up a description...

Ill go check if i can find some stuff that might expand the horizon.

===================

I also suggest you post a link to the HP group or your comic on your Da page
(at the place of wear the poll is or something)

===================

spammed some DA affiliations and adding some comics to there group from Ricks DA
that might add some attentions

Dissension wrote:The comic has a lot of appeal outside the furry fandom; if the association to furries becomes more pronounced, that appeal may diminish. Word-of-mouth may be the best bet.

Amen.

I think I first discovered this comic through word of mouth from PunkJax; I thought it was cute, but I'm so uncomfortable with 99% of furry things that I didn't really bother to follow it. Then I discovered that Rick Griffin was the type of furry I could really be comfortable around, and from having befriended him, eventually my current love affair with the comic (a love affair which includes making three Housepets!-themed logic puzzles and linking to the comic in my blog's sidebar) sprouted.

I don't know how to promote things. :/

*Cough* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKtUvzVE ... re=related *cough*

What about a vote incentive on TWC? I know it sounds silly and pointless but look at Bittersweet Candy Bowl. they have a comic as their vote incentive and require X amount of votes before there's an update.. the comic is [not great] in my opinion but they've SHOT up the ranking.

*looked at TWC* and they've overtaken twokinds.. the world is coming to an end...

Kyderra wrote:I found out about Housepets via Sinders Siggy on VGcats.

His siggy alone accounts for about 30% of all the forumites here, myself included >_>

Signature links work pretty well it would seem Hint Hint

Two_Twig wrote:

Kyderra wrote:I found out about Housepets via Sinders Siggy on VGcats.

His siggy alone accounts for about 30% of all the forumites here, myself included >_>

Signature links work pretty well it would seem Hint Hint

Hmm, doesn't really fit any of the sites I visit, but what the hell xD

FerretWithASpork wrote:What about a vote incentive on TWC? I know it sounds silly and pointless but look at Bittersweet Candy Bowl. they have a comic as their vote incentive and require X amount of votes before there's an update.. the comic is [not great] in my opinion but they've SHOT up the ranking.

*looked at TWC* and they've overtaken twokinds.. the world is coming to an end...

thats why I don't like TWC, i would even go as far as to say that I hate it.
multiple voting, Daily voting, and monthly reset just says: "give our website hits, we don't care about whats on there" to me

I really wish there wear more top rating web comics sites around (obviously there are but unknown)
im just gonan spam some of the less well known websites

Its probably kind of useless but if supplied with good images I could make .vtf files to be used as Sprays in source based games.

Example:

http://webcomicssuper100list.gotop100.com/index2.html
it's basically already in the top 100, if some of you click the link for housepets that would be great, perhaps it might give attention, see wear it will go.
currently @ 89

FerretWithASpork wrote:What about a vote incentive on TWC? I know it sounds silly and pointless but look at Bittersweet Candy Bowl. they have a comic as their vote incentive and require X amount of votes before there's an update.. the comic is [not great] in my opinion but they've SHOT up the ranking.

*looked at TWC* and they've overtaken twokinds.. the world is coming to an end...

I guess you don't know the percentage of cheating with this comic: that's the worse on TWC (since there isn't capcha)

If we're wanting a Word Of Mouth Campaign then I suggest you add a little tag about Housepets on any sort of profile you have, Signatures apparently work wonders, but stuff like Forum Profiles, STEAM Community, Twitter, Facebook, and other social network sites work too. Another good way is to just get a little media out there. For example I might use a Housepets Spray on a server in Team Fortress 2 someone might stop and ask about it. I've tested it and I can convert the pictures from the wallpaper's thread to sprays really easily. For those who don't know Sprays are a sort of graffiti, you can spray paint a picture on a wall in most Source Engine based games.

Source Engine games include: Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike:Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Garry's Mod, Left 4 Dead, and other small source mods.

Suggestions :

Wikipédia

ComicZ (icon missing)

Webcomics super 100 list

Italian version

French version (I'm on vacations, now )

Winning a new award

Comic Listing (not claimed)