Well, it’s been a week and a day. I know I promised daily updates, but yeah.

Here’s the good news: the Google AdSense campaign finally kicked it. It started delivering ads on 6/25 and has been running at full tilt since. I can only assume that, since this was an image ad, the Google Robotic Brain had been holding it until a human being could review it and approve it. I didn’t see any kind of note to that effect, though, which is annoying, if that’s what happened. I didn’t do anything else, make any changes to the campaign or any of that, so I can’t imagine what else the problem could have been.

But no matter. The ads are running now. Here’s the data:

Google AdSense

Clicks:

Google count: 154
Our internal count: 232

Impressions: 425,980
Click-Through Ratio: 0.04%
Average cost-per-click: $0.39
Average CPM: $0.14
Total spent so far: $60.08

Facebook

Clicks:

Facebook’s count: 162
Our internal count: 254

Impressions: 197,729
Click-Through Ratio: 0.08%
Average Cost-Per-Click: $0.53
Average CPM: $0.43
Total spent so far: $85.76

Project Wonderful

Click-Throughs:

PW count: 225
Our internal count: 327

Impressions: 1,458,332
Click-Through Ratio: 0.02%
Effective CPM: $0.07
Total spent so far: $103.22

Note: click-through ratio and cost-per-click are based on the click numbers provided by the ad platform, not on our internally tracked numbers. Our own internal click-through count has been consistently higher than any of the ad platforms’ numbers. I have a new theory. Some of the extras are caused by the ad server itself (Google’s, or PW’s, or Facebook’s) double-checking the URL to make sure that the page it’s supposed to be linking to is still in existence. I arrive at this theory because, even before Google started showing the ads, there were exactly two “hits” a day to the tracking URL I used when I set this campaign up. That had to have been Google. Our internal tracking simply counts the number of times a particular URL is hit, and I used a different unique URL for each ad. People could also, possibly, be passing the URL’s around to their friends. This is unlikely, but would be a pleasant reason to have your stats screwed up, wouldn’t it? Either way, I am going to stop reporting our internal click-tracking numbers from now on, and just go with the ones provided by the ad networks. If our numbers had been consistently lower, or if they’d been higher for some networks, and lower for others, I would still care about them. But I don’t.

ComicSpace blog reader (and creator of Calamities of Nature) Tony Piro made some helpful suggestions in the comments of the Day Three post. In particular, he reminded me that the people commenting on the blog can be helpful resources, who may be able to point the way to improving the performance of the campaigns, but only if I share more information about the campaigns themselves. So here’s the banner we’re running through Google and PW:

And here’s the ad that’s running on Facebook:

One of Tony’s suggestions was that we might get more clicks if the ads weren’t obviously for merchandise — and that once somebody clicked, he or she might actually poke around and look at stuff and maybe buy something. We considered that before starting this campaign, but decided to be very, very upfront about the t-shirtiness of the thing you’re clicking on, not out of any benevolent goodwill or anything, but just because we wanted to only get clicks from people who were actually honestly interested in buying a t-shirt, maybe. This is a very different prospect from advertising a free webcomic, just to get people to pop over and have a free bit of entertainment. I think those kinds of clicks are a lot easier to get — but it’s also impossible to measure ROI on them, or, at least, very very difficult to.

Speaking of ROI: there is none yet. We still haven’t made any shirt sales as a direct result of these ads. We’re selling shirts here and there, mind you. But none as a direct result of these ads. Yipes.

I think somebody has hacked American Elf.

PS: April 2nd-fools!

The ComicSpace T-Shirt Store launched in beta today. Check it out.

The artists who are participating in the beta are great & wonderful & patient people: Shaenon Garrity (of Narbonic and Skin Horse), KC Green (of Rumblo), Stephanie McMillan (of Minimum Security), James Kochalka (of American Elf), and Box Brown (of Bellen!). There are two more very well-known webcomics creators whose designs will be appearing in the store very shortly but their shirts weren’t quite ready yet. We’ll be rolling out even more designs, and even more creators, as the beta matures.

So What are you waiting for?

That’s the end of the shameless plug portion of this post! Ha!

Here are some thoughts on this project for those who may have an interest in the business plans in place here at ComicSpace (and I know there are a few of you out there):

T-shirts have been, and will probably continue forever to be, a cornerstone of the webcomics economy, and a lot of other indie/arts economies, too (rock, hip-hop, etc). However, in order to make money from t-shirts, webcomic artists have generally had a small handful of choices, each choice coming with its own advantages and disadvantages:

1. Pay a lot of money up-front for a bunch of screen-printed shirts and hope they are able to sell them.

2. Depend on a POD service like Zazzle or CafePress, where there’s no upfront risk, but the quality is lower and the price per shirt is higher.

3. Have a cousin or a good friend who is a screen-printing expert.

4. Create the shirts as work for hire and/or enter a contest that pays money, like at Threadless.

Paying up-front for a bulk order of t-shirts from a screen-printer makes the most sense if you’re already sitting on top of a fantastically popular webcomic with significant cashflow. POD makes the most sense if you’re not very popular yet, and/or just starting out with t-shirts; it gives you a chance to experiment with different designs and see what might work and what might not. Having a cousin or a good friend who is a screen-printing expert makes the most sense if you have a cousin or a good friend who is a screen-printing expert. And doing work for hire or entering a contest makes the most sense if you just need some quick cash and maybe don’t care that the company who paid you for the design will generally end up owning the intellectual property of that design, and maybe the underlying characters, etc., forever.

With the launch of our t-shirt store beta, ComicSpace is trying a new way.

We’ve entered into individual relationships with a number of artists we know. We’ve consulted with them about what kinds of designs we think we can sell (generally, designs that appeal to hardcore fans of a particular webcomic but can also catch the eye of somebody who has never heard of that webcomic). We’ve licensed the right to print a limited number of designs by these creators. We’ve paid 100% of the manufacture/screen-printing costs. And now we’re selling them — at the ComicSpace store, on the creator’s websites, across our ad network (1.1 million potential customers per month and growing), at our convention booths, and sharing the revenues. It’s kind of like Threadless’ model, except there’s not really a contest, and the creators still own their intellectual property at the end of the day, and the individual pay per shirt is better.

We think this will work out well. We know it will! But we may change things up over time, and might even add some of those other business-model options listed above (like bulk printing or POD). We want to see if this model we’re trying works, first. Because we’d like very much for it to work. That’s why this is called a “beta.” So have a look, maybe order a shirt, and let us know what you think! (Ha! I lied when I said the shameless plug part of this post was over! Psyche!)

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of James Kochalka’s American Elf! Tea, James and I sat down at SPX 2008 to talk about this landmark — and about a lot of other things as well.

Download the MP3 or Subscribe to the feed!