Hello all, it's been a while. Thought I might pick your collective craniums.

Ever since Keenspot started muttering about the possibility of running pop-up ads on their sites, I've been nervously eyeing the door. It's not anything against Keenspot at all (it's run by some very cool people who I have no problems with whatsoever), and so far they've been very good about not forcing these decisions on individual cartoonists. Those of us who don't want pop-up ads don't get them, except for those times when banner advertisers sneak them in under the radar, and even then KS techs work hard to track those advertisers down and block them site-wide.

However, there may come a time when, in order to survive, Keenspot will require all cartoonists to use them, and use other things I will find equally annoying. When that time comes, I'm going to have to pull Help Desk and either find another way to run the comic, or to just stop doing it.

The problem is, there's no way I can afford to keep Ubersoft.net running on my own. Help Desk sucks down 31 gigs of bandwidth a month, and at present I barely have the financial wherewithall to pay all my bills and keep treading water. Getting server space with bandwidth that will handle that will run me at least $150 a month, and that's with a very good deal (or from a very sketchy company).

If it comes down to it, I'll just stop doing Help Desk until I can afford to again. The comic started out as a chance to be a smartass and make fun of certain things, but it seems to have become a bit more important than that to me. When I'm working on Help Desk I feel a lot more like a social revolutionary than anything else -- an extremely INEFFECTIVE one, mind you, but one nonetheless. And I'd rather just stop doing something I love than mix it in with something I hate.

Er, I'm jumping off track here. Let me get back to the point.

Is there a way to pay the bills on a website without resorting to idiocy? My gut instinct says "no," and that if I wind up having to leave Keenspot I'm just going to have to stop doing the comic altogether. For a while, at least. Still, I thought perhaps some of you might have come up with/experienced a 'business model' that Help Desk would work with that doesn't involve insulting a reader's intelligence.

Even if such a model existed, I can't say with any conviction I'd be able to pursue it... I have very little head for business, and I have almost no technical/programming skills when it comes to web design and maintenance. But I am trying to find out what my options are.

Fortunately, I don't see any _real_ danger signs that will require me leaving Keenspot. it's just that recent talk has sort of spooked me a bit, and I feel a need to come up with a plan b in the event the owners succumb to the pods sitting under their beds...

At any rate. Did I actually ask my question in this post? I feel like I've rambled a lot (that's definately a danger sign, when I feel like I'm rambling...)

I'd probably have to change the way I draw Help Desk to manage it, though. As it currently stands, it won't fit in a standard dead tree format, and I'd have to stop doing it color all the time.

Although perhaps I could find some other way around that, I dunno.

The other problem is, last I checked the going rate for comic strips in newspapers was $7 a week. Syndication is the main way to make money that way...

But neither problem is insolvable. I'll need to look more into it.

However, it would not go far towards financing my own site. :)

according to the breakdown in my little webalizer page, the majority of visits I get start at the home page, so I'd say the home page gets the most traffic for a single page. However, the archives _are_ used to a fair amount.

I'm not sure that I want to make the comic any more static than it already is, however. I'm actually trying to figure out how to make it a bit less static...

Are we talking the graphics format? In my experience, slowness is offset by the fact that graphic files sizes are considerably smaller than GIF.

and I'd probably go with that along with anything else I did... I'm just not sure how well it will work. It works better on some sites than others, apparently... and I think Help Desk might be well positioned, content-wise, for it to work... I just don't know much about it, other than seeing it on various websites.

Chris

Based on what I read it sounds as if they "give" you a machine to put stuff on, and you're responsible for all the software that goes on it. They handle technical problems, but I'd have to teach myself to use a web server and manage email servers and handle firewalls and security and all that junk. Yes?

It would certainly be cheap, but I have no idea how long it would take me to learn all that stuff. Not that I couldn't, but I imagine it would be somewhat painful. :)

I'll have to think on that one.

that make running servers easy for newbies? Heh. Heh heh. *breaks out into uncontrollable peals of laughter.*

Sorry. Had to ask. :)

to read a book. *sigh* :)

*goes to find "BSD for Dummies" and "Running a BSD Web Server for Complete and Utter Morons"*

I would have no clue how to use it... unless the source also comes with extensive documentation that I will be able to understand.

As soon as I figure out exactly what to say, I'll introduce myself. :)

I mentioned this in the jobs forum, but since this thread started it, I'll mention it here: I sent one of the editors, Drew Cullen (why is that name so damned familiar? Did he used to post here?) an email to see if there was any interest.

However, idiot that I am, I used my dtcweb.com account when I THOUGHT I was using my ubersoft.net account. So my entire email looks that much more like spam. :-)