My first suggestion for a topic was advertising. Advertising is one of the most important things you can do for your webcomic. Without it, how will people know about it? They won't, that's the bottom line. Getting your webcomic's name out there is a lot of work, and it can cost money, but if you're smart about it you'll do well.

Before you even begin to advertise, though, ask yourself - Do I have enough interesting content to advertise? If you only have one, two, or three strips up, or if your story hasn't quite picked up it's pace yet, or if you just have the site up with nothing on it, the answer to this is no. If you direct people to your webcomic and it has nothing interesting on it, or not enough to hold a reader's interest, they will leave and not bother coming back. So make sure before you really start advertising that you have enough to hook a potential reader.

The first thing to remember is to take baby steps. Worry about the big ad campaigns later on down the road. Right now you're just rolling the snowball down the hill. Once you get that started, it'll grow and pick up speed.

What do I mean by that? Well, the easiest and cheapest way of advertising is word-of-mouth. Tell your friends and family to spread the word. Place a link in your signature on forums (but remember your manners and don't annoy people about visiting your site). The intended purpose of this is that the people you reach will see your webcomic, like it, and spread the word to other people. Those other people will do the same, and so on and so on.

When you've exhausted that avenue, move on to the free webcomic resource sites. This includes listing sites like Onlinecomics.net, The Webcomic List, and Webcomicz, and top lists like buzzComix and TopWebcomics. These will put you in touch with a large number of webcomic readers. You can even branch out to non-webcomic-related networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even LiveJournal. As of right now I only know of one webcomic-related networking site, ComicSpace, but there may be more I'm unaware of.

Once you've done all that, and once you feel confident that you have a webcomic worth investing money in, it's time to move onto paid advertisements. Many webcomic sites will offer spots on their page in the form of buttons or banners. Usually you need to contact the creator to get a price and sometimes to get on a waiting list. Check some of your favorite webcomics for advertising opportunities.

Another increasingly popular option is Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful is a bit complicated to sort out at first if you aren't familiar with bid-based advertising, but once you get it figured out it's a very useful tool. You basically set up an account with money in it, and you bid on ad space. It's a pay-per-day model, so you can find advertising as cheap as a few cents a day (although you may not get a lot of visits from these ads). PW offers all sorts of options and tools for you to make the best decisions on places to advertise.

You do need to be smart about your advertising, though. Keep in mind the demographics of the sites you look at - are the people visiting that site likely to enjoy your comic? When I look for sites to advertise on I usually look for webcomics that are fantasy-related or that have a feel that my comic shares. However, if you have the money are willing to try gambling on a long shot, you may just capture some people on a non-related site. I know the webcomics I read range from one end of the spectrum to the other, and there are many others like me out there. But for the most part you want to try for the demographic that is the safest bet for you and your webcomic.

And while advertising is important, let me stress again that what you are advertising needs to be the best that you can provide. If you don't have a good webcomic, all your advertising will be worth naught.