Rachel Keslensky

"All this bitching about price and blood diamonds and nobody's mentioned moissanite as an alternative?! More brilliant, synthetic, flawless, and apparently you can get as ridiculous a ring as you want in the stuff and you'd STILL have a hard time making it cost more than 3k." - Rachel Keslensky

"How cute, you think the TV is the only form of advertising your children are exposed to. At least you can turn off a TV. Just wait until little Johnny gets picked on because he doesn't have Captain Plasticrap Sneakers." - Rachel Keslensky

"Well, I don't do any sort of additional work "for the exposure" either, but an RSS feed is something different entirely, if only 'cause it's not extra work so much as a different way to view my stuff. That said, I think your perceptions about the internet are skewed, and there's nothing that says your first book can't ALSO be your first webcomic too -- or that ads are the only way of supporting yourself. In my case, the work I've done on [Last Res0rt](http://www.lastres0rt.com) so far is not only making up the bulk of my first book (which I need to get back to work on like nobody's business), but it's also expanded my market far beyond what I would be able to command on my own otherwise -- including raising the funds I need to be able to take it to print! Is it giving away 90% of the book in hopes they'll pay for the last 10%? Sure. But I bet I'm getting ten times as many paying customers than I would be if I made the same book and hoped to just sell it at cons / to publishers too. As..." - Rachel Keslensky

"I'm curious as to what you think a middling comic is. I'm savvy enough to realize that I still could use the exposure either way -- and a passive reader unwilling to click through to the site and interact with me or with other fans is unlikely to pay anyway. I gain more money through tweaking my current ad spaces (and redistributing them accordingly) than I do in just boosting the raw traffic. Oh, and for those who only follow through the RSS feed, I still post plugs for stuff I'm selling (like the book, or cameos in the comic), so they're not impossible to reach -- they just don't contribute to my passive ad revenue." - Rachel Keslensky

"You're more than welcome to include mine: http://www.lastres0rt.com I abuse my RSS feed for this sort of purpose all the time on Squidoo and Ning, anyway." - Rachel Keslensky

"There's a difference between using adblock on all sites, and using adblock only on sites you need it for (Good luck visiting any of the *chans without it)! I keep a few sites I regularly visit (like reddit) and certain ad systems (like Project Wonderful) on my whitelist for this purpose." - Rachel Keslensky