The auditorium fell silent as the bald man approached the podium again. The spotlights dimmed until only the center cast its illumination on the man. He placed his papers on the podium and looked around the auditorium, silently glad to see that it was full again.

He cleared his throat. “Hello again. As you know, my name is John Q. Public, and I am every man, woman and child that ventures online to read your webcomic.

“On my last visit, I explained why you should really not care what the heck I think, and how you should only worry about creating the comic for the simple joy of creating it. However, we all know that this simply cannot be the case for every moment of the day. Eventually, you’re going to start checking your logs again, seeing how many times I’ve come to check up on your latest update.

“Once you start back down this road, you’re going to logically wonder; now that I have my readers, how do I keep them? How do I, the creator, keep the public’s attention and keep them coming back for more?”

He rustled his paperwork slightly. “Beyond the obvious parts of updating on schedule and keeping your actual comic entertaining, there is a lot you can do to keep my interest. And, I’m afraid to say, there are many comics out there that are severely lacking in some of these areas, and they do likely suffer a loss of readership because of it.”

The man cleared his throat before he continued. “First of all, you need to learn HTML. I don’t care if you have to make an almost carbon copy of someone else’s website a few times as practice, learn how to make the site be at least functional, damn it all. Nothing is more frustrating than getting interested in a webcomic, only to try to learn more about the comic and realize that the creator doesn’t know HTML from a hole in the ground.

“All internal links within your site should work. Any links you have leading away from the site should work… especially the links from your link page, where you’re recommending other comics for people to read. I’m not going to believe that these people are your recommendations if half of the darn things give me a 404 error right off the bat.

“Second of all, no one wants just a webcomic anymore, unless it’s of a particularly high level of comedy or story comic. Give us something else to look at, something else to explore this world within your mind.

“Artwork pages that contain pre-comic sketches of your characters. Fan art pages to display the artwork you’ve received. Alternate endings, comics that didn’t make it past the cutting room floor, anything of this nature. If you have a story-based comic, give us a deeper look into the world that your characters live in.”

He stopped and took a sip out of a glass that had been hidden inside the podium. “And finally, you need some way for the public to have contact with you. This can be with a tag board on the front of your webcomic page, or a forum, or a LiveJournal, or even a simple Yahoo Groups account. However you go about this method, however, remember this:

“You need to at least participate occasionally through your accepted method of contact. Your readers will likely have some questions, praise, criticism, or other things that they want to talk to you about. Be nice to them, though no one says you have to tolerate trolls and flame war folks.

“If you’re really working this contact form, you can offer special incentives for people to utilize this method. Bonus comics that are only in the forums, sketches that are only attached to the email notice from Yahoo Groups, anything like that.

“Use your imagination. Make the website and its contents work for you, and you’ll find that you’ll end up keeping a higher percentage of your readers than by the strength of your comic alone. Thank you, and good night.”

The man stepped back and away from the podium. He strode back into the darkness as all eyes watched him carefully. After a moment, the main spotlight flickered out and only the dim lights of the emergency exits filtered through the blackness.

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