Monetizing strategies: Subscription.

During a Twitter conversation with Leroy the subject of micropayments came up as a way to monetise webcomics.

Leroy suggested the idea of charging a nominal monthly fee for readers to have comic strips delivered direct to their email, which in principle seems workable – for most people that’s a pretty trivial amount of money, especially when it’s spread out over a month, and in return they get the convenient service of having the strip delivered to them.

Another approach is to charge a fee to view the comic’s archives, as was the case at Graphic Smash for a while (or might still be the case, I’m not sure). You get to read the daily updates for free as they happen, but once they pass a certain point each strip gets shifted into the archives, which are pay-to-access.

Alternatively you could let subscribers view updates before non-subscribers, so if you sign up for the regular fee you get to see each page as it gets updated, whereas non-subscribers have to wait a week or two weeks or a month until the page gets added to the archives.

Any other suggestions for ways to get readers to pay to read a webcomic are most welcome – these are top-of-my-head ideas, and I have no experience of putting any of them into practice.