Announcement
Original: Announcement on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
TITLE: HEY EVERYONE, IT'S ZACH
This is a text-only announcement comic, written as a letter from Zach to readers.
You may have noticed the site has changed a bit today. Specifically, the ads are gone, and we no longer have any professional affiliations with a company called Hiveworks.
After years of working together, we've decided to part ways. We wish them well.
In the short term, that means right the second I have no ads on the site. Please seize the opportunity to do nuts pressing the random button or just the "A" key) and enjoy your ad-free experience as it were. Some nice times :) Did on Patreon.
You may be unduly bummed because they're providing tech support, but the company that I created Hiveworks because I had no idea how to do the back-end of the site. Unfortunately, the sites was also run by Hiveworks and it'll take some time to switch over. I'm hopeful to get it operational in some form within a week or two. In the meantime, if you want help, please send a note. Email me and a guy may pop up and a guy may say a thing.
I haven't personally run the site in over a decade, and I feel a bit like I'm stepping into a racecar after having thought I was permanently retired from competition. It takes are some bugs in the next month please bear with me as we work it out.
Speaking of, which here's the fun part. My hope is to take this opportunity to make some improvements that've been needed for a long time.
You've likely noticed SMBC's ads have gotten way more annoying over time. The same as I said above. The obnoxiousness is part of a broader internet trend where companies try to make money off you, but we get paid less and less. In short, more and more, you can't make a website like SMBC pay for itself with advertising. Facebook, et cetera, where most of the ad revenue is captured by big tech.
The result is that artists (and journalists, and people-makers) and pretty much everyone with their own homepage have to run worse ads, just to tread water on revenue. While simply driving more and more people to facebook and other big media sites where the ad revenue goes. Now, simply put, my plan going forward is to do my best to make SMBC primarily reader supported. I'm slowly winding down lately. This is a major part of the future.
I'm hoping there's a better way.
As I bring the site back under my control, I may have to bring back annoying ads for a while. But we're going to experiment with ways to make the site more accessible while making sure the bummers remain profitable.
Some ideas we're moving around include: 1) trying to figure out something we can do that some look like putting more attention on patreon (2) trying some experiment with bookshop affiliate links (frankly I want to do this anyway) and (3) doing the best we can on the back end so that even the best we can on the back end so that a lot of you have requested over the years.
Meanwhile, please enjoy the site and, if you can, send a friend a comic that made you laugh or smile or think, or feel existential despair.
I've had this career for 20 years now. There has been more than one tough passage, but I've always appreciated how much we've had this audience and been willing to support a comic that has changed so much over time. There are folks who I met in college and have made for newspapers, books, or whatever along the way. So, if you've made it all the way to the end here, let me just say thanks for letting me spend my life making this sort of work.
I'm hoping I can continue this for many years.
<3
ZACH
Votey: A wordless drawing of an older man (Zach) with messy hair and stubble, smiling and giving a thumbs up. Above his head is a small speech bubble reading "THANKS".
This is a text-only announcement comic, written as a letter from Zach to readers.
You may have noticed the site has changed a bit today. Specifically, the ads are gone, and we no longer have any professional affiliations with a company called Hiveworks.
After years of working together, we've decided to part ways. We wish them well.
In the short term, that means right the second I have no ads on the site. Please seize the opportunity to do nuts pressing the random button or just the "A" key) and enjoy your ad-free experience as it were. Some nice times :) Did on Patreon.
You may be unduly bummed because they're providing tech support, but the company that I created Hiveworks because I had no idea how to do the back-end of the site. Unfortunately, the sites was also run by Hiveworks and it'll take some time to switch over. I'm hopeful to get it operational in some form within a week or two. In the meantime, if you want help, please send a note. Email me and a guy may pop up and a guy may say a thing.
I haven't personally run the site in over a decade, and I feel a bit like I'm stepping into a racecar after having thought I was permanently retired from competition. It takes are some bugs in the next month please bear with me as we work it out.
Speaking of, which here's the fun part. My hope is to take this opportunity to make some improvements that've been needed for a long time.
You've likely noticed SMBC's ads have gotten way more annoying over time. The same as I said above. The obnoxiousness is part of a broader internet trend where companies try to make money off you, but we get paid less and less. In short, more and more, you can't make a website like SMBC pay for itself with advertising. Facebook, et cetera, where most of the ad revenue is captured by big tech.
The result is that artists (and journalists, and people-makers) and pretty much everyone with their own homepage have to run worse ads, just to tread water on revenue. While simply driving more and more people to facebook and other big media sites where the ad revenue goes. Now, simply put, my plan going forward is to do my best to make SMBC primarily reader supported. I'm slowly winding down lately. This is a major part of the future.
I'm hoping there's a better way.
As I bring the site back under my control, I may have to bring back annoying ads for a while. But we're going to experiment with ways to make the site more accessible while making sure the bummers remain profitable.
Some ideas we're moving around include: 1) trying to figure out something we can do that some look like putting more attention on patreon (2) trying some experiment with bookshop affiliate links (frankly I want to do this anyway) and (3) doing the best we can on the back end so that even the best we can on the back end so that a lot of you have requested over the years.
Meanwhile, please enjoy the site and, if you can, send a friend a comic that made you laugh or smile or think, or feel existential despair.
I've had this career for 20 years now. There has been more than one tough passage, but I've always appreciated how much we've had this audience and been willing to support a comic that has changed so much over time. There are folks who I met in college and have made for newspapers, books, or whatever along the way. So, if you've made it all the way to the end here, let me just say thanks for letting me spend my life making this sort of work.
I'm hoping I can continue this for many years.
<3
ZACH
Votey: A wordless drawing of an older man (Zach) with messy hair and stubble, smiling and giving a thumbs up. Above his head is a small speech bubble reading "THANKS".
Alt text
A text-heavy announcement comic titled "HEY EVERYONE, IT'S ZACH," formatted as a long handwritten-style letter with no illustrations. Zach Weinersmith tells readers the site has changed: ads are gone and he has ended his years-long affiliation with a company called Hiveworks, parting ways amicably. He explains the site will temporarily have no ads and may have bugs while he switches everything back to his own control, since he hasn't personally run the site in over a decade and feels like he's stepping into a racecar after thinking he'd retired. He describes how online ads have become more annoying and less profitable for independent creators while big tech captures the revenue, and lays out his plan to make SMBC primarily reader-supported through Patreon, Bookshop affiliate links, and back-end improvements. He thanks the audience for supporting a comic that has changed over his 20-year career and hopes to continue for many years, signing off with a heart and "ZACH." The votey (aftercomic) shows a simple line drawing of an older man with messy hair and stubble smiling and giving a thumbs up, with a small speech bubble above reading "THANKS."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.