It's a month in, and I have no contestants. Yeah. That's kinda my fault. Still kinda learning how to market this stuff.

Spent the first couple weeks of January going and manually asking random people (mostly from deviantART) if they'd like to join.

Pretty much got a whole lotta "no"s in response.

So, I decided to change my strategy. I would just mention the contest in the description of relevant posts.

I got somebody who tried to @ a friend of theirs in the comments of the post, so I figured that was progress.

My only real problem with keeping that up is the overall "BLEGH" I've been under basically the whole month. It stands to reason that if I post comics, and mention the contest in the description of the comics posts, then other people who read comics will see it, and, maybe some of those people make comics. If they don't, they probably know somebody who does.

So it's good marketing.

But

Just haven't really been feeling up to it lately.

So my next basic priority is to basically give myself an attitude adjustment, and then get to work hammering out a story that I wanna work on.

Then I'll start posting a comic regularly, and mentioning the contest on the comic, and posting it to various sites, and, yknow, all-in-all, it should work out a bit better, I think.

I did actually get one person to say they wanted to join though - a friend of mine, who I've talked to about joining Steemit, but she's way past busy right now, so there's not much to do about that just at this time.

SOOOO, STATS!

I have directly invited 4 people specifically to the contest via PM. None replied.
I have directly invited 2 other people just to Steemit via PM. One replied, but was not interested.

Literally offered to pay someone to try out Steemit. They weren't interested.

Posted a journal about my contest, and a few others, then mingled a bit to see if anybody would stumble across it. (It's a bit of a less invasive way of doing things). Nobody responded.

Concluded that I looked like a spammer, and would stop doing that.

Posted the contest to Twitter, actually got a couple RTs, but that was about it.

Joined the Steemit Comic Discord Server ([link]), mentioned the contest there.

Total people joined thus far: 0. Well, 0.5, considering I have a friend who is going to try to enter, but don't have anybody solidly planning to enter yet.

So far I have a rewards pool of 52 STEEM + 52 SBD (total worth: approx $260+$267 = $527), to be divided among 7 prizes. The rewards from this post will be added to that. (If the rewards from this post aren't a whole number divisible by 7, I'll add to the amount until it reaches a number that is.)

I've also asked a friend about the possibility of him helping me translate the original contest post to Spanish, but so far we haven't really done anything with that.

All-in-all, a very weak first start, but I feel like I'm learning to promote stuff better.

New plans:

Make lil' buttons that I can use as image links for the contest, the discord server, some other contests, and idk, various other stuff. I'll add them to the bottom of my posts from now on.

Once I get my second wind, work on more comics. Record myself drawing them, and do speedpaints. This will likely mean that I won't be doing a speedpaint every day, but maybe one or two a week.
Mention the contest and the discord server in the videos and posts where I link the video.

Get these comics in a good queue on Tumblr, so I don't have to worry about making sure they're posted. They'll be in a backlog.

Get a deviantART core membership so I can schedule posts and do the same.

Find a new site to schedule posts on Steemit because I guess Streemian doesn't work anymore ???? Might have to get the app.

Find other sites where I can schedule posts and just post whatever this comic is to like literally everywhere I can find because jeez really need to find people to enter this thing.

LINKS. Do you wanna join??

The Silent Comic Competition: [link]

The Steemit Comic Discord:

IF YOU DON'T WANNA JOIN THE CONTEST, AT LEAST CONSIDER COMIN' TO HANG OUT WITH US NERDS

SOME OF THE OTHER NERDS ALSO HAVE CONTESTS

ONES THAT ARE MUCH LESS DAUNTING THAN MINE LOL

Anyway so yeah that's it. This has been my Monthly Contest Progress Report.

SEE YOU GUYS LATER :v