First, let me say congrats to Scott Metzger on the launch of his new feature “Stewart.” His fans are rejoicing (and so am I).
Okay, here’s my dilemma regarding the Pinkerton launch. As most of you know, we’re right in the middle of a story arc that will end next week. That being said, do I want to bring new readers into the fold in mid-arc? Or would it make more sense to run some one-off gag reruns right out of the gate to let the new readers get a feel for what Pinkerton is about. Granted, I’d finish the story arc on Pinkertonpark.com. After the first week of GoComics re-runs, the two sites would sync up. Does that make sense? Hope so cause that’s question one.
Question two: Should I stagger the strips between the two sites? I know that some folks post new strips on GoComics and then post day-old strips on their own site (or visa versa). This makes sense from a traffic standpoint but it really sounds like a pain in the ass. Are there any good arguments on why to stagger the strips?
Here’s the way I feel about that second question at this point: The Pinkerton Pals, the Pinkerton Faithful, the Pinkerton Pie Holes, HOWEVER you want to put it…they deserve the best treatment I can offer. You guys are the folks that have been following my progress from the beginning. I really don’t want to change how I’ve been doing things because you guys deserve the best treatment. That being said, if anyone has a decent argument as to why I should change things up, you let me know and I promise I’ll take it into consideration.
I can’t wait for the launch on Monday. I’ll be busy doing some promotional things in regards to Pinkerton (more on that later) but I wanted to let everyone know that a Pinkerton General Store is on the way thanks to amazing David Buist. Check out his comic strip “Taking The Bi-Pass.”
Again, thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of Pinkerton. Here’s to the future!
I think doing a week of one-off reruns to get people acquainted to the strip and characters would be great. Then you can sync up the strip on both sites after that.
I guess the main argument for staggering the strips is that you could say that Pinkerton has the “newest” strips, that’s an additional hook to your own site. I remember Jarrett did that with Mandy. Fresh strips on his site, and the next day they’d be on Sherpa. It’s a not a bad idea but I think it would be a huge pain. I don’t how much of a benefit you’d get from it, maybe a lot, but I don’t know if it’s worth the inconvenience of staggering them. If it were me, I’d sync up the strips just to keep things simple.
I know I’ll view Pinkerton on your site most of the time because of the banter and other things you post. That’s just me.
Best of luck with the GoComics launch. Pinkerton is gonna take it by storm.
How can you have a store without me? I’m Head of Pinkerton Merchandising. Is this your way of firing me? Because I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got at least 10 t-shirt designs, 2 waves of action figures, and an entire line of Knuckle Tucker products. What gives?
Oh, don’t you worry. When I say “store” I just mean the place to house all your crackpot merchandising ideas. Carry on.
That’s better.
And I take “crackpot” as a compliment. Also on the rocks.
I would do a few one-offs (like a current best of) of each character for new readers to get a feel for the strip. Current Pinkerfans would probably read through as well. I don’ think a story arc would be the best way to showcase the overall feel of the strip. After a week or two I would sync the two sites just to make it easier on yourself. Good luck with the store… just make sure I get the recognition for the Knuckle Tucker beer cozies.
I was wondering how you’d handle the introductions of the characters to the GoComics crowd. In the original strips, you made an effort to drop names, and you may have to do that again, in order to get people “up to speed”. One good way to do that would be the one-shots in order to synchronize the story arc and drop a few names in the process.
My instinct is to do the one-shots in order to give people a smooth ramp rather than a sudden jolt into the middle of an existing story arc. The faithful can forgive the duplication, because lots of later followers make us look cool.
I’d be disappointed if they weren’t synchronized between the two sites. One cool part of Pinkerton is having the comments section attached directly to the comic in question. If I had to wait a day to comment, it wouldn’t be the same. You’d get much different feedback, and some of that would probably be over-analyzed.
Agree with Kevin. I would do a few one-offs (like a current best of) of each character for new readers to get a feel for the strip. I also would probably not stagger the strips myself, but you might consider it putting the new strip at GoComics first to get the best / most possible page visits at GoComics for the strips. I know that they track stats (Business side of things) Plus the strip is so freakin’ cool I believe the Pinkerton Pals would drop in on GoComics if they knew the newer material was there first. I would, and will even though I don’t like the GoComics site as it is.
I’m going through the archives here. I think I may need two weeks worth of “character introductions.” There are a lot of strips I completely forgot about.
From the word go the strip was a hit in my opinion.
The only way I wouldn’t go would be to stagger the strips so the newer ones appear on your site… and I say this only because I know your primary goal isn’t to get traffic directly to your site, but to get to print, and if web traffic figures in at all in regards to deciding who gets print deals, then why jeopardize that?
As for staggering them the other way, the only reason you’d do that is to try and make your established fans go to gocomics every day to bump your traffic numbers… but you’re going to hurt your feedback rate if you do that, and it might effect your web traffic to your site in general.
It’s a tough call… I personally think you should post the same day on both sites. You could still get your faithful to hit gocomics for traffic numbers, but you wouldn’t hurt your feedback. Let’s face it, even the gocomics decision makers have to be aware that internet audiences tend not to transfer over to print, so I can’t imagine traffic would be the primary means of deciding whether you get a print deal or not, and if you want to make money off your comic on the web, gocomics probably isn’t the primary place you’ll do that.
There seem to be benefits to both ways of staggering, so I say compromise and don’t stagger. I consider both sites’ visitors to be just as deserving of the newest comics. I wouldn’t want to punish anybody for visiting the “other” site.
As for the best-of comics at first, I’m agreeing completely with everybody else. New visitors require an introduction. As for how many “best-of” comics, that’s up to you. You mentioned that you probably need to give more introductions than would fit into the time of the ending of this storyline. You might.