Interesting Thoughts About 4th Generation Business Strategy

An interesting riff on the concept of 4th generation warfare as applied to the evolving media landscape and accompanying earthshattering changes to the existing corporate media business model comes from the uber/hep/geek blog of screenwriter John Rogers. What’s it all mean? There’s a lot to the post but here’s one except:

Personal brands are now more important than corporate brands — or at the very least, more efficient. Nobody — and I say this full-knowing the outcry from some suited friends — goes to see a movie because it’s from Paramount. Or Fox. Or Warner Brothers. Or Sony. Not a human on this planet says “Well, I wasn’t going to go, but it’s a Paramount flick.” People go to movies because the media campaign — usually integrating strong personal brands, hey, look at that — has convinced them this particular project from the studio is worth their time.

And Rogers name checks Penny Arcade in the post so it’s clear he thinks this applies to webcomics. Continue Reading

Google Ads: Pros and Cons and Click Fraud

Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary recently switched from using Google Ads to serving up his own banner ads (Howard has posted the relevant portion of his post as a comment below. Click the title of this post to read it).

If you are using it or thinking about it here’s some links on it you might want to look at: “15 Common Mistakes by Google Adsense Publishers that Violate Terms of Service”; and “Click Fraud: What It Is, How to Fight It”.

Also, this week the Register reported that Google has been sued by plaintiff Click Defense for breach of contract, negligence and unfair business practices over its Adwords ad program. Continue Reading

Melonpool Hits the Trifecta

The current storyline in Melonpool ventures into Checkerboard Nightmare territory targeting the Melonpool webcomic’s supposed “low audience numbers” and the cast trying out various tactics to bring in new readers. A little different subject than usual but Steve Troop gets a lot of mileage out of this familar trope (is this technically a trope?). And he manages to work Websnark, Comixpedia and Digital Strips into this one. And I see today that strip got mentioned by Comixpedia, Websnark, and Digital Strips.

ShamelessInnovative marketing does work sometimes… Continue Reading

Now That’s Marketing

The Living Comic blog writes today about what may or may not be an Andy Kaufmanesque marketing campaing for the decidedly lo-fi webcomic, Scribs by Greg Galcik. The use of banners and ads to mock the site hosting the banners and ads is nothing new of course (for example check out any archived page of the old bigpanda.net) but when done well is at least one way to break through the ocean of webcomics out there. Continue Reading

Dog Complex signs with AMUSE to be shopped for film and television deals.

Dog Complex has signed a deal with Andrews McMeel Universal’s (AMU) AMUSE division. Excessively long titles aside, what does this mean? Well it means that AMUSE now holds sole rights to shop Dog Complex to film and television studios for a possible series or feature film. AMUSE has already had big success in the form of “Pooch Café,” their popular comic strip that is going to be turned into an animated comedy series, as well as a feature animated film that is in the works for one of their other comic strips. Continue Reading

Real Life Looks For Part-time Online Sales Associate

It would appear that Greg and Liz Dean (Real Life) is looking at expanding their business by adding a part-time online sales associate.

This position can be done from your home and after hours since we can’t pay that much at first. Compensation will start out with a 15% commission base. Which means that if you bring in a $1000 sale, then we give you $150. If you end up staying with us long enough, and are able to bring in good sales, then we will look into hourly wages. Pretty much the deal is that you are an independant contractor and you bill us for 15% of your sales.

Continue Reading