I warned you I was going to get sentimental, didn’t I?

So, four years ago yesterday, I started making video reviews with my very first video. Yesterday I put up the last one. It’s been a very good, very long run. It was 218 videos, according to my tags in total, which I think is plenty impressive to go out on, especially since I didn’t know I was going to make it past one.

I made the first one purely on impulse. I’d read it and I was already procrastinating on working on editing. I was on a Linkara binge at the time and I really didn’t want to keep editing, so I made it in the style of a video I’d made before, except condensing it into something that fit the visual style a bit more. It was fun and I kept going.

Then there’s the comics. I got a chance to talk about everything I picked up over the years, which is great. Letting people know about the weird crap I read is always a lot of fun, especially if it means that more people will check it out along with me. I don’t read books that have a very large fan base  generally speaking, and I’d like to see a lot of these guys do well. The more people who have at least heard about them, the better.

Without the show, I don’t think I would have checked out nearly as many comics as I have. I certainly gave a lot more books a chance since starting it. Rather than just reading books that I knew would be good, I started picking up things that might be good. Some of them definitely were better left behind. And some of them were fantastic. 

I’m happy with what I’ve done with it, though. For the last episode, I opted to use The Last of Us, which was entirely so I could go out promoting the woman who first got me into comics. Demonology 101 was what got me in and I’ve been reading webcomics for a very long time. Well before I was introduced to print comics in University¹ , I was obsessing over them. So the last one was a send off that reflected my roots and you should still check out all of Faith Erin Hicks’ work.

I know I’m going to miss this series more than anyone else. It’s been a fun ride. I’ve gotten to meet and talk to all sorts of people, from folks in the reviewer community to folks in the comics industry, because of it. Everyone’s been very supportive and it’s not like I’m going anywhere. I still have two other shows that I’m going to continue with² so you’re all still stuck with me. The Comic Minutes, though, were my first and most constant. It’s sad to see them go.

Still, it’s time. Life’s taken a turn and I am comfortable with letting them go so that I can pursue other things. If someone else wants to pick up the series and do Comic Minutes themselves, they’re welcome to it. For me, though, I’m going to remember them fondly and keep moving forward. I’ll keep you guys updated and hopefully you guys will stay with me for a little longer even without them.

So long, A Comic Minute. It’s been awesome.

1. Also before I realized print comics were still a thing [↩]
2. New episodes of both next week! [↩]

This is a thing people have been worried about lately. Blip says they’re going to trim the numbers and accounts have, apparently, already started to go. Personally, I’m pretty sure I’m doomed. My numbers are honestly not very good on Blip, they took away my cross promotion to Youtube already.

The thing is, I’ve been ready for Blip to drop me for over a year now. I’m pretty much ready for it. So here’s what I’ve learned in my preparation process.

Why are you doing this?

Presumably you’re reading this post because you’re worried about Blip dropping you and you want to know where to go afterwards. There are a ton of options, but the first thing to consider is why you are doing all of this. Why are you making your videos? Is it because it’s fun? Because you want to be famous? To make money?

Knowing this is going to help you a lot in what’s going to happen next. Everyone is going to come to a different conclusion about their goals and none of those goals are wrong or bad. Some might be unrealistic¹ but none of them are necessarily wrong. The less it’s about the money, though, the less finding a new video hosting site is going to hurt. And if it is about money, you might have to be prepared to spend a little to make some and work a little harder.

Free Options – Potential Revenue

I suspect that a lot of people liked Blip because of the payouts. On the bright side, just about all the options I’ve looked at the past year now have potential revenue options.² None of them are guaranteed in the same way Blip was, but there are options for anyone who want to try their luck. Just try not to be too disappointed if you don’t get in.

Youtube - I think everyone knows about the monetization that comes from the Partner Program, but there’s also the option of straight up monetization without the extra bells and whistles³ as well. I’ll make a case that Youtube is also a great place to build an audience, since it’s a lot easier for new people to stumble onto your videos by accident and subscribe. There is the issue of bots checking the content for copyright infringement, but they are bots. Bots can be tricked. Be creative about it, maybe do a bit more original content on your channel and you’ll be fine.

DailyMotion - There’s a new “MotionMaker” program that allows advertising that, again, you will have to apply for. Daily Motion doesn’t really have that great of a reputation and I have found quite a bit of soft core pornography and straight up copyright infringement on there. I don’t know how easy it is to get a MotionMaker account, though it seems like they are trying to focus on original content now. If anyone uses DailyMotion and has gotten one of these accounts, please tell me how it’s going.

Vimeo - They’ve introduced not an advertising service, but a tip jar and are putting in a pay to view option.⁴ This means that you would have to be putting out content and relying on your fanbase to support you rather than any sort of advertising. This is something that I know is really not going to work for a lot of you but, given that Vimeo is more of a place for video creators that make original content from scratch or the folks immersed in remix culture than content critics that use clips and media from other content creators, I’m not sure how many people would be heading here anyway.

Paid Option That Could Be Free-ish

I only looked into one, mostly because I was already familiar with the platform and I found out that there is a damn lot of customization that you can do with it and, if you have a little know how, you can do it completely free as well. But let’s break it down.

JWPlayer - This is just, straight up, a video player. You can put it on your site, set it up in the code and BAM! You have a video player. It is free, though there are people who have built extra plugins for it, such as analytics, embed codes and custom player skins, that sometimes ask for money to purchase these add ons. You can also, if you know what you’re doing, build all of these things yourself. You will also have to host the videos yourself on your own server, which you might have to pay for depending on your hosting. More on that in a bit.

Longtail Adsolution – They have an advertising branch. You can use this service for free to put ads on your video or, if you are so inclined, host your own ads. I was getting 1 cent per click, but I think you can also hook your Adsense account into it or, like I said before, run your own ads. If someone wants to sponsor your videos in exchange for running ads on them, you can do that.

Bits on the Run – Remember when I said you needed to host your own videos? For those of you who don’t realize, it costs money to host your videos on your server because you need to make sure there’s enough space for them. It also costs money for the bandwidth required to play said videos. It can get really expensive if you have a lot of videos or a lot of viewers and a hosting package that won’t compensate for that  Given this, there’s Bits on the Run, which is a video hosting service that comes with a lot of great plugins for the video player already installed and a little bit of free space. After that, you can customize your payments for only how much you use and it will probably work out to less than bumping your hosting package up to the next pricing bracket. Plus you won’t have to fiddle with any of the code to make it work.

The Other Ones

Springboard - This one is like Blip, though it was doing the application process first. Word is that it will only accept shows that already have a good audience, but it has a much wider range of ads and works better in more countries. Still, they do have quality control in effect there as well.

Viddler - Did you know you have to pay for Viddler? I only found that one out today. Aside from knowing Nanowrimo uses it, that is about the only thing I know about Viddler.

Something Things to Remember

Blip doesn’t have anything against you. This is not some personal vendetta, this getting dropped thing. It’s strictly business and there are no hard feelings from them. Keeping you just isn’t that good for their business. They have servers to pay for and not as many people advertising on their networks to maintain that many accounts. Too many accounts are resulting in a negative return on their investment⁵⁶⁷and the best thing they can do at this point is get rid of them to cut down on their cost.

They can also use the smaller number of accounts that they think they can work with to appeal to more advertisers. This is a good thing for Blip and for those who put ads on their videos because it means we might stop getting the same damn ads over and over again.

I’m sure there’s also a few people who will point out that Youtube comments are awful and horrible. You know what? Get over it. You can turn those off. You can moderate them. You’ll get bad comments and good comments everywhere you go. You’ll get genuinely nice people who like your stuff and want to have a discussion and you’ll have people who want nothing more than to harass you off the internet. If you’re a female or a minority, you’ll probably get harassed worse. Get used to it. It’s not right, but you need a thick skin if you’re going to put yourself out there and Youtube comments are as good a way as any to learn to deal with that.

But I Still Want to Make Money

You’re going to have to start being creative, then. If you’ve switched to another video service and it won’t give you the revenue you want, or any revenue at all, then you need to start thinking about making money outside of just putting out your videos. That, however, is completely up to yo to do.

What I suggest is making good content that will get you a following. If you have a following, then try the Vimeo model of putting out a tip jar for people to donate if they like it. Give them an incentive to talk about you. Give them a reason to pass your name, site and content around. Give them content. Give them swag. Give them something to make them want to give you money in return.

If that’s not good enough and you just want to make videos and get revenue back and you can’t do that with anything I’ve listed, I don’t know what to tell you. Get better at making videos so Blip or Springboard will take you? Keep looking? And if you can’t find anything, maybe stop making videos and find something else to do.

Best of luck to us all.

1. If you’re doing this to become famous, you’re probably shit outta luck, but you could do it to earn a steady income realistically. [↩]
2. When I was first looking at them, only Youtube had that. How the times change. [↩]
3. By which I mean some of the options [↩]
4. In my opinion, a paywall around your content is always a terrible idea. [↩]
5. By this I mean their bandwidth and hosting costs for the videos aren’t yielding enough ad revenue to pay for said costs. [↩]
6. At least, I assume this is what they are saying in the meetings. [↩]
7. This is also theory and speculation, but it’s the explanation I am going with for now. [↩]

So, I’ve hit 200 Comic Minute Comics! In order to celebrate a little more, I have some lovely numbers for you all about what’s happened the past nearly 4 years. Because I feel like it today.¹

Top Publishers:

Image Comics – 53 Comics
IDW Publishing – 27 Comics
Dark Horse Comics – 18 Comics
Marvel Comics – 18 Comics
Vertigo Comics – 12 Comics
DC Comics – 12 Comics

Most Popular

Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artist: Sean Phillips, Sean Murphy and Dustin Nguyen
Genre: Supernatural

This has all been great and I’m grateful for the people who have been following me, whenever they started to do so. It’s been fun and having people along for the ride makes it all that much better. For the most part, people have been supportive and made this fun to do and I do hope for another 200 in the future, provided that people continue to make things that I want to pick up every week.

Also, surprised, excited and mildly terrified at the number of writers, artists and editors that have found me over the years and have had kind words or have even sent me things to look at on my little show.² I don’t know if any of you read these things I post regularly, but thank you nonetheless.

Also the comic shops who find my videos and show them to customers. Seriously, how do you guys all keep finding me?

1. Also because I feel like having some sort of milestone/anniversary thing, but don’t know what I’d shoot and really don’t have much time to make it. [↩]
2. Yes, that is a thing that has actually happened. More than once. I can’t believe it either. [↩]

Thank you everyone! The poll is now closed and I have a book that I get to obsess over for a month. It should be fun and there will be daily excerpts posted once again this year for those of you who want to see the first draft craziness.

For those who aren’t aware, the winning story was Seniors, which I now have to give an actual antagonist and purpose to. Wish me luck! Or a theme. This is going to be interesting. This week is going to be full of posting up plans, so look forward to it.

So. No Comic Minute today. It’s been that kind of week. Instead, I am starting to focus on things that I’m actually looking forward to instead of dwelling in the present. Getting tickets for MAGFest and, of course, Nanowrimo.

And those who have been here for a little while know what that means! I’ve narrowed down my list of books I want to write for Nanowrimo this year down to these and I need someone else to pick for me. Someone like everyone on the internet. All the options are below and poll is on the side! As usual, you can choose up to three options and all voting is closed on October 25th.

The Sword Prince
Prince Sigfried, after an unfortunate encounter with a basilisk, had been cursed to be a sword at the bottom of a lake. When he was removed from the lake by his descendants, he becomes a boy again just in time for the throne to be attacked. He finds himself caught in the middle and his old curse slowly starting to take hold once more.

Arcleo
Mirabella knows she is a princess. She knows because she doesn’t want to be an innkeeper’s daughter. When a group of people come through the inn looking for the real princess of a conquered kingdom, Mirabella sneaks out to join them on their quest to fulfill the prophesy to retake the kingdom. The journey isn’t quite what she had hoped, full of danger and uncertainty, and she is not the only potential princess they’ve picked up in their travels.

Sky of Butterflies
Deciding to try their luck on their own, Mateo and Serafina venture out of their orphanage and into the wide world outside, only to be swept up in a revolution. The robots have caught their world up in a tyrannical rule while the rich remain safe behind gilded gates. The kids, however, soon learn that the resistance is not all that it seems to be… and neither are they.

Seniors
It started as a normal enough night, until Max was kidnapped from his room right after hearing gunshots downstairs. His parents dead, he follows the silent goth kids who have kidnapped him to a group of others that have similar stories and are all trying to figure out what it is these mysterious people want from them. The only ones who seem to know anything are the mute goth kids, but they are reluctant to share.

The Jabberwocky’s Book
After getting the book from Wonderland and sending the Cheshire Cat back into the now broken world, she turns her attention to problems at school. There is a creature she released on campus that she needs to try and capture once more, tracking it by the shrill screams of its victims. The screams terrify her to the core, but she must find a way to press on. After all, it’s her fault this thing is terrorizing the campus in the first place.

Simya Academy
The purpose of the Academy is to train bright young minds. Train them to take over. Dawn is amongst them, but something of their spell over her is breaking and she’s starting to see some of the cracks in the system. What’s more, she is starting to figure out the inner workings of the Academy and what they have done to the students to make them fit more neatly into their mould, as well as the potential that they had hidden away from her all these years.

So. Alan Scott.

Let’s go through my whole journey towards this.

It started by hearing that they were going to make a gay DC character. Okay, that’s nice. Why does this need to be an announcement? I guess it’s a bit of a hot button issue these da… wait, Marvel is having a gay wedding, aren’t they? Oh god, this is just a reaction to that. This is going to suuuuuck.

It’s going to be an existing DC character. A major one. Wait, how are they going to swing that? It’s not really a reboot so much as a half-boot. Large portions of their existing characters are still there. Superman has Lois already. Batman is too Catholic in my eyes to ever come out of the closet if he is gay. Barry Allen is the Flash now, I think, and he ends up with grandchildren. I guess he could come out later in life. Wonder Woman? No, they are heavily implying that it is going to be a male character.

And then there’s the lesser characters that are well known, but not really part of the major main cast. There’s the cartoon famous people. Question is a possibility. Probably not Green Arrow, what with Black Canary. Was there anyone else? Nah, they said it was a main one, so I should know the character already.

Someone in the Bat Family is going to be the gay character! Oh, well that could be interesting. I know a little about that. Cassandra I don’t think exists any longer, plus she’s female. Nightwing could very easily be bisexual, but he’s had too many female relationships for that to be a comfortable fit for me. Damien’s just too young for the writers to start playing with his sexuality too much yet. Jason? Fuck Jason.

Tim? Tim could work. He was always a pretty terrible boyfriend. Neglectful of Steph and that other girl he dated. His bromance with Connor seemed to be a lot deeper than his female relationships, so within the context of the half boot it could totally work. And he’s Robin, so that even counts as a major character. Tim Drake specifically has even shown up in the old Batman cartoons and that Batman Beyond movie that was awesome. Okay, so it’s probably going to be Tim.

Alan Scott is the new gay person in DC. Okay. Who? He’s a Lantern? Kyle Reiner, John Stewart, Hal Jordan. Is he one of the aliens? Earth has ANOTHER Lantern? But I thought this was going to be a major character I actually knew! Who the hell is this guy?

Wait, what do you mean by “Earth-2″? Isn’t it just Earth-1 and nothing else? You mean there’s a multiverse again and you couldn’t even have him in the main universe? What, Batwoman’s already a lesbian, you can’t have the main universe have a whole two gay characters? What’s so terrible about this guy? Who the hell is he anyway?

…

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE GAY MAN’S WEAKNESS IS WOOD?!

And that is how I reacted to the whole Alan Scott thing. As you can tell, I wasn’t operating with all the information, but I got pulled into the whole thing anyway. It was not a terribly rewarding experience on my part. I still have no interest in picking up the book, but it’s nice to know they have no problems with changing things around with characters I’ve never heard of so long as it gets them some publicity.

Overall, it’s great that they’re trying, but they could stand to try a little harder on this front. Like, they could put it in the main universe and treat it like it’s just another Wednesday? Just a thought.

So, since you all apparently thought this was a good idea, I’ve come up with the list of projects I could dedicate my April towards. We’ll take the Nanowrimo stance on this and close voting on the Saturday the 24th, one week before the end of the month. And so, on to the projects!

If you want to know more about any of these, I’ll make a vlog explaining anything further. Just tell me what you need more information on.

Visual Novel Engine – Build a PHP based visual novel engine. As much as can be done in a month with no images, anyway.

Twilight Plot – Plot out the first five years of story and possibly write the first six issues.

Atlantis Project Plot – Plot out the entire run and possibly write the first 6 issues.

Looking Glass Saga Plot – Plot out the 14 books of the series and write up character sheets for all of the major players and the ones with a key part in any of the secondary story lines.

Plots – Write the plots for: Arcleo, Seniors, Sky of Butterflies, Sword Prince, Sibyl, Heritage, Shift, White Mice