SwapOut/Webcomic/Twitch PSA!
Hi everyone 👋🏻 Zk here >< or Cats, for older followers
So I've been getting back into doing SwapOut again, but I would like to appeal to everyone who reads and loves the comic. Much love to all of you who's still sticking around 🙏🏻💙 But something has also always been bothering me throughout this journey.
As many of us know, we artists do these comics for free (especially fan comics), starting them out of love and taking a LOT of time and energy out of our lives to continue making them.
And it's amazing how many of you come from translations or comic dubs on Youtube, which are also very well-done and take a lot of effort to make, much love to them too. There is a difference, however.
Monetization.
And I'm not asking for pity! I'm appealing for understanding.
Because some comic dubbers on Youtube are able to earn ad revenue from the videos they upload. From the beginning, we artists have given them the permission to dub our works. But we don't receive anything from it, nor do we usually charge them for using our art (against our better judgement).
We let them use our comic pages in their monetized videos for free. And occasionally these videos receive thousands and millions of views, which I imagine gives a decent amount of ad revenue, while the artists themselves don't usually earn anything from their own artwork, nor do we ever want to put it behind a paywall of any kind. (we like reading free comics too so don't worry x|)
... But doing full-colored comic pages for free eventually gets hard to sustain without any income from it, even more so when we need to give our time and energy to other jobs to earn money for a living instead. We legitimately keep going on our comics purely out of love. Truly, we would LOVE to do our own art for a living. There's things like Patreon but it's only feasible if we're also able to produce bonus content or show BTS, and only people willing to spend money for them can help us, and not readers who aren't able to.
And we understand that not everyone can afford to support us monetarily. And that's okay!
But if you love these comics and want to really help us to keep going, there ARE ways you can easily support us for free!
For example, affiliates on Twitch (like myself) are able to earn ad revenue very early on (they must have at least 50 followers, quite a requirement, but still easier to obtain than Youtube's 1000 subscribers).
(my Youtube, btw. not much rn but drop a subscribe?)
But simply put, if the vast majority of readers from the yt numbers visit and stay for ads on the artists' Twitch streams (remember to have adblocker disabled for the site, if any), they'll be making an actual, physical contribution to the artist themselves, at no cost whatsoever. We earn up to 55% from any ads that run on our stream, so the more viewers, the better!
(this is my twitch on average 8 viewers, with a 3 hour stream. again, the more the better!)
(ofc you can also buy subs to watch ad-free and supports me directly, but i'm typing all this to share the free ways people can support their fave creators ✨)
And even if that doesn't work out, I'd be happy enough to see most of you there 🙏🏻💙 I've been treating my streams as work, so I'm striving not to break the streak.
So drop a follow on my Twitch, and catch the streams when you can! They're great if you need company or background noise, and also great for co-working~
Currently streaming WEEKLY, Mondays, Wednesdays (SwapOut) and Saturdays, 10.30AM EST
(art by @cupcakepaints)
>> twitch.tv/zkcats <<
Anyway thanks for listening to my Ted talk, please share this around for others as well >< 🙏🏻 Artists, make this a reblog chain or something! Promo your stuff!
And apologies for the essay, I wasn't expecting to type this much sdghsgh this itself is not an ad for Twitch or whatev, I'm just a little frustrated with needing to juggle all this.
I was also considering hosting SwapOut somewhere that could get ad revenue, but I wasn't sure where until I realized I can probably earn that from my Tapas now (i think?? sdfhgh up to 70% ad revenue there but i haven't seen any yet) So maybe I'll post there a day earlier than here or something? We'll see. Go subscribe there! Check it out! Reread it! Help ME help YOU!
... Much appreciated ><
