The service auctioned 16 small advertisements at the top of the ComicSpace website, and Roberts expected to earn $1,000 USD per month after Project Wonderful took its cut.

[3] When Joey Manley joined Roberts in 2007, he described ComicSpace as a user-generated content website, in order to contrast it with his own Modern Tales-family of curated subscription services.

The two primarily decided to reach out for investment because they needed to hire significant programming, design, and business management talent to continue to innovate at the level they wanted to.

Manley stated himself that "the merchandising element will be the single most revolutionary part of it," though Gershenfeld told Comic Book Resources that their main interest was being a service provider and facilitator rather than a publisher.

[6] ComicSpace was planned to relaunch in the second quarter 2008,[7] but Manley wrote in January 2009 that the merger with Webcomics Nation was "one of the more technically difficult projects" they had undertaken, and that it was taking longer than he had hoped.

Manley's webcomic magazine Girlamatic, for instance, had gone quiet in the second half of the 2000s, but it was relaunched in July 2009 under a new business model and with an expanded line-up of artists.

Manley's websites still functioned as online magazines, but the webcomics on these sites became freely accessible and the creators were supported by the ComicSpace ad system.