Luring Traffic With Comic Strips

Getting traffic is always an issue with any site, but especially small sites in obscure niches. You need a way to grab some attention. A lot of people lately have getting traffic by posting videos. Others post salacious images. And of course there's the obligatory linkbaiting headlines. There is no “one way” to get traffic, what works for you may not work for someone else and vice-versa. You have to try different things.

Humor is a great way to get some traffic. Yesterday I discovered a neat site called ToonDoo that lets you create your own comic strip for publication on your site or blog using simple drag-and-drop tools. There's nothing to download, the comic editor just runs in your browser (it's Flash-based) and registration for the service is free.

Anyhow, I had an idea for a one-off comic strip a while back, but not having any real artistic ability I never got around to doing anything about it. But it gave me a great excuse to try ToonDoo. Here's the result of my experiment, posted on my BlackBerry programming blog:

(OK, it's a geeky thing, but what did you expect?)

ToonDoo was very easy to use, although they could use some better help — look at the lame title I was stuck with because I didn't really know what I was doing at first. You get to choose between 1-, 2- and 3-panel comic strips and they provide you with galleries of predefined characters and objects (like those faceless people) as well as text balloons and other typical comic strip paraphernalia. You can also import your own pictures, which is how I got that RIM logo up on the meeting room wall.

When you're done with the comic, ToonDoo will generate an image tag that you can easily insert into your site or blog. The comic is actually hosted on their site and visitors can leave comments and vote for their favorite ones.

Anyhow, the point of this posting is not to prove that I'm some kind of comic genius, which should now be obvious that I'm not, but to get you thinking about another way to attract some eyeballs to your site and get people talking about it. Because that, my friends, is how you're going to make money with AdSense or whatever other monetization scheme you're using. No traffic, no money — simple as that. Since we can't all resort to displaying nude pictures of ourselves (look, you want to attract viewers, not send them running away!) then coming up with a funny comic strip, image or video is one way for your site to get some attention.

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Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

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