OIWCS was created out of a love of webcomics and a lack of sleep. I was trying to determine how to promote a new webcomic I started with a friend and it seemed that the default first step was to start buying ad space on other webcomics through Project Wonderful. It’s basically Reaganomics for comics, a few large webcomics continue to grow and get new readers while the rest of us try to get some of their readers to also read ours. We’re not really fighting for readers since many people read multiple comics each day, it’s just that us smaller and, I assume, medium sized comics don’t play as big as role in introducing potential readers to the world of webcomics.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just wanted to try and do something different. I tried to show several of my friends webcomics that I knew they’d like, which they did, but I realized that even though they enjoyed the comic, they never become actual readers of the site. I didn’t pay attention to much in my marketing classes, but basically I couldn’t get people to change their habits, to make it part of their routine to read webcomics.

I figured if I couldn’t get people to start coming to my webcomic I’d try bringing my webcomic to them. And then everything sort of came together at the same time. I put a video on Facebook of me catching a bee, which is a bigger deal that you think…cause I hate bees, and I got annoyed that more people watched that video than read my comic for like a week straight. I have no idea who sent me a link to Dr. Horrible, but I watched the whole thing like three times in a row and then looked up The Guild and watched the whole first season. And then fwatang, the OnlineInternetWebcomicShow. I figured all my friends are already on Facebook, on a daily basis, so I figured I’d make a show about webcomics and bring it to where they already are. No new habits to learn. Remove the hurdles to readership.