When you put your comic online, you probably told various people you know about it, and perhaps some follow it. Are you aware of how many comic readers you brought to webcomics, and how many of them follow only your comic vs. how many follow additional titles?
Readers: Have you introduced other readers to webcomics? Can you estimate the number of people you have brought to webcomics?
Anyone who wants to post these on a forum and return with answers is welcome and encouraged.
What's the significance? Well, if new participants to comics come alone, it could be argued that they are bringing mostly more competition. If new participants tend to bring others to medium, then it would weaken the "competition" argument.
I don't expect to resolve it, but I would like to see what people report. I can easily think of four people who probably would not routinely read webcomics if they weren't following ours. I'm also pretty sure that none of them are journeying off our sites much.
We exposed others to webcomics, but did not expect them to become readers. That number keeps rising and is approaching ten. They know what webcomics are, where they didn't before, and their interest level remains set near zero.
We've kind of been a wash, then, but being older than the average webcomic creator means more of our friends are not early adaptors or are set in their ways with other vices.
I suspect adding good merchandise could attract people, but we're not at that point yet. Anecdotes on that angle are welcome.
