Hey there, guys and gals.  It’s Mat Nastos back again with another bit of marketing advice for your indie comic book publishing adventures.  Today I’m going to talk about how to keep from losing your audience while you are making it grow.

Stan Lee is a genius.  Everyone in the comic book industry knows it.  Unfortunately, most people don’t realize his true genius lies outside of having created Spider-man, the Hulk, the X-men and the Marvel Universe itself.  The real force behind the genius of Stan Lee was that he knew the reason why most businesses lose customers. 

I know what you’re saying to yourself right now.  You’re saying, What in the hell are you talking about, Mat, and what on Earth does it have to do with drawing the Wolverine?”  Truth be told, it has absolutely nothing to do with drawing the Wolverine and absolutely everything to do with why a lot of comic book publishers lose sales after their first issue and, eventually, cancel their comics.

The major reason why comic book publishers (and businesses in general) lose business is because of customer apathy.  In other words, most comic book publishers are chasing away customers by ignoring them after the initial sale.  Marketing experts estimate that over 65 percent of all business lost in the US is from apathy after the sale.  And even back at the beginning of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee knew this. (Read the rest of the article at http://comicbookmarketing.com/)

Since I started this series of articles on marketing for comic book publishers I’ve been getting email questions from my readers (and watchers of the new videos). The most common question from comic publishers and creators so far is “What is an affiliate program and how do I get one started?” I hope to answers those questions in today’s video post.

This covers and expands upon some of the material I talked about in Part IV, What the heck are affiliate programs?”. I suggest checking out that post as well.

One of the things I wanted to talk about in the video but I completely forgot (because I’m old) is the idea of allowing reviewers to use your affiliate links with their reviews of your books. This is a fantastic way to expand your sales while at the same time encouraging reviewers to cover your titles. Most reviews will already offer a link over to your website, but allowing a reviewer to make that an affiliate link allows them to make a little bit of cash for their hard work.

As always, feel free to post a comment below if you have any questions. I’ll answer any and all comments or emails, and I’ll even cover the best ones in one of my video posts. Also, check out my affiliate marketing targeted website, www.NewAffiliateHelp.com. It gives a lot of information, tips and techniques for anyone interested in getting started with affiliate marketing. Check it out.

Until next time, stay Nifty!

-Mat Nastos
http://www.niftycomics.com

A school of thought that has become prevailant in the comic book industry is the idea of “if you built it, they will come.”  In other words, the act of creating and printing a comic book will automatically result in sales.  Comic creators believe this, a lot of comic book publishers believe this and even some online comic distributors believe this.  My automatic response would be to call these people “morons,” but I’m in a good mood today and will just call them “uneducated.”

The problem with a lot of indy comics is that they are created without an iota of thought towards commercial success or a book’s target market.  The majority of comic creators and comic book publishers create a book with the ideo of selling it to comic book buyers.  They are attempting to sell their book based on its format and not its content, which is incredibly near-sighted and leads to commercial failure in almost all cases.

If you are looking for any level of commercial success then you should be thinking about your potential market and your book’s target niche from the very beginning.  Properly aiming your book at a niche is as important a part of the creative process and should be tied in to every stage of comic book creation – doing research, writing your story and even doing your artwork. 

Finding a solid niche for your comic book (or any product, really) can be the key to a commercially successful, profitable business versus an obscure failure.  Check out the above video for more info on how to do it.

-Mat Nastos
http://www.NiftyComics.com

I know a lot of comic book publishers and comic creators are already familiar with blogs, and many of them run blogs for their books.  What I also know is the majority of them are doing it completely wrong.  While it is a noble effort to run a personal journal or gallery blog, they do absolutely nothing to aid you in building either your brand presence or valid, targeted traffic that will help sell more comic books.

And, yes, I realize the top of my head is cut off in the post.  I’m using a new camera and haven’t quite got it down yet!

In the video I discuss how to format your blog postings and the how’s and why’s of writing your posts around keyword phrases aimed at your comic book’s niche.  The best way to figure out what keywords or keyword phrases to focus on in your blog is by using one of the many keyword tools out on the internet.  One of the easiest tools to use is the keyword tool in Google Adwords.  It is simple, easy and free to use.  You can check it out by going directly to the Google Keyword and dropping in what you think are good keywords for your niche.  The Keyword tool will do the rest, giving you information on alternative keywords, keyword traffic and advertising competition for each.

Start writing your articles with keyword phrases in mind and you’ll see your traffic and your sales grow.

-Mat Nastos
http://www.niftycomics.com

It doesn’t matter how they do it, what matters is they bring sales to you in exchange for a commission that can be anywhere from 5% up to 50% or more. The percentage in any given case is determined by the company recruiting the affiliates and is based on what margins the company can give up and still make a decent profit. A lot of affiliate programs pay in the 8-12% range. As a comic publisher I’d probably offer around 25% of a sale to my affiliates. But that’s me. If you go too low, you won’t get anyone to sign up…too high and you won’t make any money.

As for getting your program started, there are a number of options. I mentioned idevaffiliate.com before, which is one of the do-it-yourself options. They give you the software to track cookies and register sales to your affiliates and all that fun stuff. You have to do more work than with some of the affiliate networks but it is a great option for those of us on a budget. Another great low cost option is BlueDogAffiliate.com which costs $15 a month.

Other options are FusionQuest which has about a $300 set up fee and costs about $25 a month. ShareAsale.com has a $350 setup cost and charges a fee equal to a percentage of your affiliate commissions. There are a number of other options such as Commission Junction, but they tend to be quite a bit more expensive, costing in the thousands of dollars to get started and maintain.

Yes, I know I’m speaking blasphemy by actually suggestion you, a comic book publisher, should spend money on something. Just do it. Getting an affiliate program started for your company can give you a great boost in sales…but the programs do need to be maintained and take a bit of work to keep going. But if you can get some of the bigger affiliates attracted to your progam you will see some very nice returns from their work.

Oh, and the affiliate programs tend to work better for higher price point product such as graphic novels or trade paperbacks. It’s tough to interest an affiliate with even 25% of $3.50. My advice is to wait until you have a trade paperback or multiple trades in print. You could probably make an affiliate program work with the lower cost of comic book singles, it’ll just take a lot more work and a lot more sales to break even.

 A great alternative-thinking use of affiliate links would be to make sure to let any reviewers know they can post affiliate links for your books in any reviews they write on them.  It’ll let them make a little extra cabbage for their hard work and may result in some nice sales for you.

-Mat N.
http://www.niftycomics.com

Next Time: Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part V: Blogging for Dollars and Why your Blog Sucks

In the past I’ve said over and over again “by focusing on the comic book industry you are limiting yourself — cutting your business off at the knees — by not opening up to the mainstream.” This is also true by limiting yourself only to the internet as an advertising platform. You might be surprised to hear me say that because of how I earn my living and my own love of the internet. But it’s true. Moving your branding offline and out in to the real world can be one of the best things you do for your business.

Now, I know a lot of you are saying “I go to comic conventions” or “I go out and talk to comic shops in my area.” You’re limiting yourself because the comic industry is a dead end for the indie comic publisher. It is — no one wants your books in the comic industry outside of other creators, and even they probably don’t want your books. However, the mainstream public will buy your book, you just have to let them know it.

What follows are 5 tips for marketing your comic books offline and how to start building your business locally. Remember, in spite of it being a global economy these days, every business is a local business and that is where you can start.

1. The Local Media is your Friend.

One of the first things any small press comic book publisher should do is go out and make contact with the local media – newspapers, television and magazines. Most communities have one or more of these outlets and most larger ones have all of them. The local media loves hometown business and will often write up business profiles on local companies or organizations. You just have to let them know you are there. The good thing about a business profile is people will take notice of one where they are more than likely to just skip over an advertisement. If you get there attention then make sure to be prepared for an interview. Come up with a one sentence description of what you do and have something ready for when they ask you why they should be covering your business instead of someone else’s. This is a good place to bring up any community ties you have.

Which brings us to…

2. Go out and Sponsor your Community.

As a comic book publisher, if you’re not already involved in your community then you are missing out on some priceless free PR. You should be getting involved with teaching kids to read, getting your books out to school classrooms and even sponsoring things like little league sports teams. Having a local hockey team wearing your characters on their jerseys can be a great experience AND gives you a bunch of little billboards running around with your company’s branding. This kind of thing, along with giving out free books to schools, can build a huge amount of buzz on your business locally.

Another idea we’ve done in the past is to team up with school as a fundraiser. We’ve put together special books for local communities and split the profits with high school bands, churches and PTAs to help them raise money. We’ve also donated specially designed books to those charities to help build word of mouth for Nifty Comics.

3. The Special Offer.

Put together an offer uniquely tied to your business and what you’re doing. For example, give a discount if someone buys an issue of your book and then later decides to pick up a trade compilation. Offer exclusive covers to larger stores in exchange for them carrying your books — this works well in the comic industry but works ten times better outside of it. We’ve had multiple covers going out for each of our books and will continue to do so. This has nothing to do with the speculator market. What this does is to give your distributors something unique and something which generally includes their branding as well as your. Do you know why that is a benefit? Because they will be more likely to actively sell your books because they have a vested interest in them.

Those are just a couple of ideas…there are tons of different things you can do to help add a little special incentive to your comics if you sit down and think about it.  Oh, and this works online as well.

4. The Package Insert Program.

Advertising and marketing costs money. There is no way around that fact and, unfortunately, there is no way around the fact you absolutely have to do it. One way to save money and expand your advertising reach is to team up with other business who target the same or similar markets or demographics as your comic books. In other words, when you send out mailings you will include their materials along with yours and they will do the same. You can often just pay another company to include your brochures or info along with their mailers instead of doing a trade off.

Becoming involved in a package insert program will get your brand out to places it wouldn’t have otherwise gone on its own. We’ve teamed with skateboard shops, t-shirt companies, a variety of retailers, a small wrestling federation and about 20 other places. The opportunities are almost endless.

5. Be Recognized as an Expert

As a comic book publisher, the most important thing you can do is to build your brand and to build the public’s perception of you as an expert or leader in your field. One great way to do this is to contribute articles to your local newspapers, trade magazines or even online. Get your name out there. Get your URL out there. Get recognized. The more used to seeing your name out there, the more likely people will buy what you are selling. The branding game is all about recognition and familiarity.

They key to all of this is to get your brand out to where it isn’t currently represented…to get it out of the muck and mire that is the comic book industry and to take it out to the mainstream.

-Mat N.

http://www.niftycomics.com

Next Time: Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part IV: What the heck are affiliate programs?

Today I’m going to give you a list of 6 ways to expand your market by leveraging the Internet to its fullest extent.

1. NEWSLETTERS, Why They Rock and Why Your Relationships are Important.

Relationships are one of the biggest keys to marketing success. Make sure to run an email newsletter at least once a month to get your company in the minds of your customers. Keeping a list of past customers emails and including them in your newsletter emailing is an absolute must. Past customers are some of the easiest to convert in to new sales.

While emailed/electronic newsletters are a must, print newsletters convert at a much higher rate because of their tactile nature. Former customers are much more likely to open a print newsletter from a company they’ve ordered with in the past than an email one.

Building an email list to send your newsletter out to is easy. Setting up a “subscribe to newsletter” button is the most obvious way, but there are tons of others. Offering free content downloads (ebook versions of your comics…or the first chapter of a trade paperback or graphic nobel) or giveaways/contests are two more excellent examples. Use your imagination.

As part of relationships, try to make friends with your subscribers…to give them a degree of engagement with you. That personal connection and getting your readers to “like” you will translate to more conversions and more sales. The feeling your newsletter subscribers get — the excitement they feel — will tie them to you and your product more than almost anything else. If they feel like they are “in it together” with you, then you’ll have lifelong customers. Erik Larsen and John Byrne are two great examples of doing this in their forums (as are Brian Bendis, Warren Ellis and Kevin Smith).

2. USER Generator Content and Why Free is Good.

Take advantage of free content generated by visitors to your website. That’s the long way of saying “let your readers post reviews and comments.” User added content is how Amazon has built itself into one of the largest retailers in the world. Free content is a great thing, especially free content written by readers who will write in the same way other potential readers may be searching the internet. And positive reviews of your comic books by your readers is always a good thing.

3. SEO and the Niche Market…or, Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better.

A lot of people are going to scoff a bit at this comment, but SEO and most types of search engine marketing (including PPC) are going to be fairly worthless to a small press comic book publisher. The reason for this is because there aren’t going to be many people out on the internet actively searching for small press comic books. You might do well to market or do SEO for a few key terms (“free comics” and “online comics” being two great examples, but neither will make you much in the way of money unless you are running a PPC or landing page campaign for your books on Wowio), but in general it isn’t going to generate a huge amount of traffic or sales for you.

Unless, of course, you are targeting a specific niche market. Go after any niche your books might relate to – for Nifty Comics it is the Celtic/Scottish audience who attend Celt, Scottish and Rennaissance festivals. Our book, Fionn, is beginning to get a bit of a following in those circles because it targets a fairly large niche which is almost completely unaddressed by the comic book industry. There are tons of these very profitable little niches out there and aiming your books at them can amount to a success you will never see in the comic industry itself.

It may sound counter-intuitive but ranking #1 in Google for the phrase “comic books” probably won’t do you a lot of good as a small press publisher because people searching for that phrase are not looking for an indy black-and-white comic book. However, ranking #1 for “Scottish super hero” may help you get 20,000 in sales for your first issue.

4. BLOGS and Why Yours Sucks.

Let’s talk about Blogs for a moment or two. Blogs are one of the best ways to get your message out to your potential audience. I use Blogs successfully for all of my non-comic book business. Chances are you’ve already got a Blog and chances are you’re doing it wrong.

A Blog can just be a random collection of thoughts or an online journal. If that’s what you want to do, it’s fine for a personal Blog but just won’t cut it for a business. Sorry. For a Blog to succeed you need a few things. First off, every post or article you write needs to be built around targetted keywords that will bring in potential new customers to your website. You need to figure out what those keywords are in advance and work them in to every paragraph of your Blog posts. There are tons of articles online about keyword density, finding keywords and the like so I won’t go in to that here.

The second thing you need is follow-through and persistance. You need to post, at the very least, a few times a week on the same days…and, truthfully, you need to post every day to really get your Blog registering for those keywords. You need to have the persistance to keep posting daily for 3-6 months before you see any real return on your work. I know it’s hard because I go through it myself for every new website I put up. It sucks and it’s painful and, unfortunately, there’s no real way around it.

5. REFERRALS and Letting Word of Mouth Do Your Work For You.

If you’ve got a web page then chances are you have a “Tell-a-friend” button or form on it somewhere. Chances are also very likely most of your readers aren’t using it. The easiest way to change this, and to help generate some pre-qualified traffic to your website, is to set up a referral bonus/encouragement program. In other words, offer a freebie when someone refers a friend to your site. What this does is make your referral system into an action oriented one. You give your readers a call to action and a reward for taking that action. This is one of the best forms of advertising out there.

6. AFFILIATE Programs and Why You’re an Idiot if You Don’t Have One.

I’ve talked about this in a few of my other posts and received a few pissed off emails from failed publishers who didn’t take too kindly to my calling them idiots. To them I say “deal with it.”

The best example of an affiliate program in action is Amazon.com’s Associates program. An Amazon affiliate places a bit of code on their website and receives a percentage of any orders referred by their site within a set period of time (either 30 or 45 days, I forget). I’m sure a large number of the people reading this have even tried out the Associates program in the fast with varying degrees of success (my sites pull in over $4000 from Amazon per month).

As a publisher you should be setting up your own Affiliate program once you have your first trade paperback out — it doesn’t work as well with single comic issues because of the lower price point, but you can try it if you want. Set up the program through a manage it yourself program, such as the one from Idevaffiliate, and offer your affiliate partners between 10%-25% of each sell to entice them in to joining. The higher the affiliate commission, the more affiliates you’ll sign up.

Yes, it does take a bit of work to put together and manage, but a successful Affiliate program is a goldmine. What could be better for your business than 5, 10, 20 or even 100 freelance commission-only sales people? If you have to think about an answer to that question then you shouldn’t be involved in running any sort of business at all. The more affiliates you sign up, the more potential you have for increased sales…plus, you’re paying them a lot less than Diamond or a comic book store takes as a discount (even at 25% you’re still ahead of Diamond’s 60+% discount).

That is it for this time. Check back for more and check back often.

-Mat N.

http://www.niftycomics.com

Next time: Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part III: 5 Offline Marketing Tips for Comic Book Publishers

The truth is, 99.9% of all comic book publishers fail to become commercially successful (or even successful enough to support their creators as a fulltime business). This has nothing to do with talent or skill in putting a comic book together…that’s actually one of the least important factors involved in having a money-making comic. What it takes, and what most people in the industry lack, is the afforementioned business sense. They think “because I make it, they will come.” Not true as the hundreds (thousands?) of POD publishers can attest.

Now, I’m not saying comic book publishers are innately stupid. What I am saying is most lack the business knowledge or even the initiative to get that knowledge. Most do not run their publishing “companies” like businesses. They don’t have business plans, they don’t have business goals and they, usually, don’t have the resources to even run a business at all.

What I’m going to do over the next few articles is to detail some of what I’ve learned over the past few years of publishing my books as Nifty Comics…during that time I’ve sold well over 150,000 comics all without the benefit of Diamond as a distributor (we have the printing bills to prove it!). I’ve run our titles through bookstores, school book fairs, niche stores, various festivals (Celtic/Scottish and Art), at comic conventions, wrestling shows and more. It’s taken a lot of work and a definitely cash investment, but now we can count on around 8500 in presales for each comic book issue we produce and have been able to sell as many as 25,000 copies of a book over the course of a year. Sure, we’re not Marvel or DC, but we do pretty good and make a nice little bit of cash in the process.

What I’m not here to do is make any friends. I’m going to write things (like my opening statement) that will annoy or even piss people off. This is my website and my article, so I can write whatever I want. It’s one of the benefits of not having an editor watch over me. But, if you keep reading then you may just find some very useful information on how to keep yourself from being one of the many failures this industry produces every day.

-Mat N.

http://www.niftycomics.com

Next time: Comic Book Marketing for the Mentally Challenged, Part II: 6 Internet Marketing Tips for Comic Book Publishers

I’ve talked before about affiliate marketing and how it relates to the comic book industry.  In fact, small press comic book publishers can learn a lot from affiliate marketers and how they earn their livings. 

The first affiliate marketing technique every indy comic publisher should familiarize themselves with are the social networking tools.  The biggest of these are Digg, Facebook and Technorati.

Become familiar with these sites and become comfortable in using them to promote yourself and your comics.  Use them to make a name not only for your comic books but also for yourself.  Stories about or by you that get picked up and go viral are just as important to the development of your brand as the ones on your comics are.

Give your comics a face…YOUR face…because developing a public persona or a “character” for yourself is an immediate way to connect with your potential audience.  Kevin Smith is a great example of this technique in action.  The same can be said for the current crop of comic creators – Warren Ellis, Brian Michael Bendis and others have leveraged the power of social networking to build their careers in a way their “abilities” never could.  Neither of those guys are living on their so-called “talent” – they’re making their way on the power of the personalities they have created for themselves and their fans, as well as on their ability to build communities around those personalities.

I mentioned three sites: Digg, Technorati and Facebook.  Those are not the only social networking tools around – there are tons of them out there: Furl, Delicious, YouTuve and fifty others I could name just off the top of my head.  Use these sites to build recognition for yourself first and then for your books.  Write articles or posts that will get picked up and passed around.  Readers will then come looking for what else you’re doing.

Build a buzz about yourself and it will bleed over to your books and equate to more sales.

Mat Nastos
http://www.niftycomics.com

I get a lot of emails asking me about my thoughts on the state of the comic industry in general and about the state of the indy side of the industry in specific. It’s funny that I get this email because my actual involvement with the industry is very limited — I don’t really sell to many comic shops, I only do a couple of convention appearances a year and those are generally science fiction oriented ones (go BayCon!) and I don’t really participate in any of the thousands of comic message boards out there (sure, sometimes I get sucked in to posting a couple of responses on the Dimestore forums, but the overall attitude of comic “fans” these days really turns me off).

Now that I’ve written a few times about what I’ve done in order to get Cadre comic book sales up in nearly the 9000 copies sold per issue range the emails have changed focus to “what about comic book distribution.” The problem with emails like that is what the writer is actually saying between the lines: “Okay, now you’ve told me that selling comics on my own is hard work and I’m a lazy bastard, tell me how someone can create a new distributor because my books weren’t good enough to be picked up by Diamond.” Or “were picked up by Diamond but I don’t support my books with marketing or money to make them successful.”

Truthfully, for the industry as it is now, Diamond is great. Sure they don’t support indy books, but why should they? The majority of indy publishers think “advertising” or “marketing” means to set up an account on Myspace or ComicSpace. Sure they might be doing a couple of conventions or take their books around to some local shops so they can act like “big men on campus,” but they have no clue what it takes to run a successful business.

Note: I’m not talking about “art for art’s sake” comic book publishers. Those guys are fine. They put their books out and don’t worry or care about sales. Although I do think the mentality can be a bit of a cop out for those who don’t or can’t succeed.

If you’re a small publisher and you want to sell more books, don’t blame Diamond. As a business they are going to support the accounts which produce money for them. I’m surprised they even accept all the indy publishers they do — 99% of them are a waste of the print space. Think about it this way – if you ran a company, would you support the 5 vendors who make up 90% of your sales or would you waste your time and company resources try to administer to 300 other accounts which bring in the other 10%? One company with 1 million copies sold through you or fifty companies selling under 200 copies each? It makes good business sense that Diamond doesn’t support indy comics.

If you’re a small publisher and you want to sell more books, take a look at yourself. Are you treating your comic like a business? How much are you spending on advertising your books? Do you have enough funds to last for 2-3 years without making a profit? That’s what it takes for most real world businesses to become successful. The old addage “you have to spend money to make money” is very true.

Once you decide to publish a comic book you need to sit down and write up a business plan. Figure out a budget for yourself, lay down a series of goals/milestones, put together a marketing plan and get a new box of checks because you need to get ready to spend some cash. Free publicity is great but it won’t get you to success (unless all you’re wanting to do is get noticed by a bigger company and get work with them — that is different from building a successful comic book). You also need to put together some market research on exactly what your target demographic is. You need to know who you’re going to be selling to. If you say “18-25″ and are selling through Diamond then you don’t know your market. The average comic buyer age skews quite a bit higher than that these days. The reason you need to identify your market is because you use that information to properly target your ad and marketing campaigns. If you’re publishing a horror comic then your market is horror fans…and incredibly easy demographic to sell to.

Now that you have your potential readers identified then you move online. Buying a domain and getting a web host are just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone has a website. My 75 year old mother has a website. The trouble is, no one is going to be looking for yours. Other comic creators might stumble on to your site from a directory link somewhere or that cool banner you have in your forum signature, but comic creators visiting your website really don’t do you any good. They’re poor or cheap and are more interested in seeing what they can swipe from your site than in buying your comic. You want mainstream eyes on your website and not only do they not know your comic exists but they may not even realize comic books are still around at all.

Here are some things you should know:

• If you’re a comic book publisher and you don’t know what SEO is then you’re in trouble. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is how you format your website and its content to rank well with certain keywords in places like Google, MSN and Yahoo (there are others, but those are the big ones). What are those “certain keywords” you ask? Those are dependant upon the product you’re putting out (your comic) and are based on its content and what your target demographic are. I’m not going to get in to the nuts-and-bolts of SEO because there are tons of resources for it online. I will give you one piece of advice — “comics” and “comic books” are generally worthless search terms on their own. They are tire-kicker words for people searching for something very different than what you are selling. Trust me.
• If you’re a comic book publisher and you aren’t familiar with Google Adwords (MSN and Yahoo also have their versions, but Google is the big boy and will count for at least 50% of your starting traffic, if not more) then you’re in trouble. Adwords is one of the best places to get your name out in front of web surfers and will let you rank on page 1 of Google on those keywords you don’t rank well on with your SEO. Adwords campaigns work fabulously for higher price point items like comic trade paperbacks. Nifty Comics does really well using Adwords as a means to promote and sell our DVD feature film, “BITE ME, FANBOY.” Master the use of Adwords and you’ll be a very happy publisher.
• If you’re a comic book publisher and you aren’t familiar with internet marketing techniques like article directories, tagging, blog directories, or link campaigns then you’re in trouble. If you don’t know what the terms PR, PPC, CPA or CPC then you shouldn’t be online.
• If you’re a comic book publisher and you aren’t maintaining a mailing list (online and off) then you’re in a lot of trouble.
• Finally, if you’re a comic book publisher with a trade paperback (or other higher priced product) and you don’t have an affiliate program for it, then you’re a fool. If you don’t know what an “affiliate program” is then you’re a moron.

The whole point of this rant is to say “Diamond doesn’t need to be fixed…comic publishers do.”

Oh, and before I forget, sign up for Google Checkout. All order processing is free for 2007 and that will save you anywhere from 2%-8% per order, depending on who you are currently using to process your credit card or Paypal orders. That may not sound like much, but it adds up.

-Mat Nastos
http://www.niftycomics.com

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