Best days to publish webcomics?

[arroway78]

I've officially been publishing Eleanor for about 6 or 7 weeks now, and I'm starting to look more closely at the days of the week I've chosen to publish new pages.

Currently I'm updating on Mondays and Thursdays. Now, I haven't been publishing long enough to have a well-cultivated readership, and my numbers are low, as you'd expect from a new comic.

But I've noticed that Monday's numbers are usually about half of Thursday's. Have any of you determined what the ideal days for updates are? Seems that later in the week is drawing more attention for me right now, while Mondays are basically withering. (I've lightly tested Tuesdays as well, and the numbers are worse than Mondays.)

Thoughts?

[Toddoss]

I dont know about webcomics much but I get the most views on my Deviant profile (in order from most to last) : Sunday Friday Saturday tuesday Monday Wednesday Thursday. I have since after figuring that out will post Sundays or fridays more times than not and it has boosted my pageviews since. Dont know if its applicable but thats what I have found.

[ShadowsMyst]

Generally the most established days for webcomics is the mon/wed/fri schedule. Most readers tend to be trained on these days to check comics on those days.

You seem to be doing a serial/graphic novel form comic, which tends to have slightly different traffic patterns than a daily. Since you are only updating twice a week, what's probably happening is that people are coming on Thursday to catch both of the week's updates.

The hardcore fans will show up on both update days, but the more casual fans will wait until there is more to read. This happens with once a weeks too, but the spike hits at the end of the month when people come to catch up on the comic.

This reader behavior can somewhat be addressed with pacing, but its a challenge to make every single page a nail biting cliffhanger.

No matter what day you update on, this pattern of reader behavior will probably continue unless you update three or more times a week OR you give them some kind of incentive to come on Mondays as well as Thursday aside from the comic update.

I also notice you don't specify your update days on your site, at least not in a highly visible way. You say you update "each week", not that you update "Mondays and Thursdays". Readers do need to be trained and informed of update schedules if you want them to come back, and it should be up above the comic in the header or menu there. A lot of readers will NOT scroll down past the comic.

Try making it more clear when your updates occur, and see if that helps with the dip on Mondays.

[Inkthinker]

I had a running poll about this exact subject over on DA, and if I recall the most popular answer was Tuesday and Thursday, reason being that it gave people something to look forward to on the off days between M/W/F comics.

I think second best was Sunday and Wednesday, probably because they're somewhat traditional "comics" days, and fairly well separated.

-EDIT-

Whup, turns out second best was Monday and Friday. Sunday and Wednesday was third. Total poll respondents comes to around 500 or so.

http://inkthinker.deviantart.com/journal/poll/1034606/

[arroway78]

Excellent insights. I hadn't even considered the possibility that people were saving up the comics for a single day of ... two-page binging.

[Lord Dubu]

Excellent insights. I hadn't even considered the possibility that people were saving up the comics for a single day of ... two-page binging.

I know I do that with "Wolf and Sister" because he only adds a page a week. And I just don't like having to access my long term memory when reading a comic. So I only check him out about once a month.

[Inkthinker]

ultimately, I think it's less important which days you choose to publish on than it is to publish steadily on whichever days you choose. It's hard to account for reader habits in all scenarios.

[mattchee]

I wholeheartedly agree with what Inkthinker just said. Picking your days and sticking two them is the best thing you can do.

That said, when I ran my webcomic, I did Tuesdays and Thursdays, my logic being that, for week days, its smack dab in the middle. I've heard that weekends are less popular days because a lot of webcomics readers are doing their reading while they're either at work or at at school (y'know, in between checking facebook, lol). Anyhow, my days seemed to work out for me.

[arroway78]

Thanks, everyone! I suspect I'll stick with Mondays and Thursdays for now, and give it a nice long trial period before I shift days around.

Thanks!

[RemusWriter]

I'm updating once a week on Mondays. I've only got 2 pages up, though, so how well that's going to work remains to be seen.

[arroway78]

Remus, what's your site URL?

[RemusWriter]

http://www.remuscomic.com . I'm only 3 pages in, but that'll get you through the prologue while I build up a buffer. Can't say my art is particularly good, though...

[Ace Corona]

the ctucen

Arroway78, what is the URL for your webcomic? I'd like to take a look at it.