Webcomics Nation quickly became Manley's most financially successful website, and encouraged him to turn his Modern Tales sites partially free as well.

Though Joey Manley was well known for creating a family of webcomic subscription services (consisting of Modern Tales, Serializer, Girlamatic, and Graphic Smash), he stated that the main reason he focused exclusively on the subscription business model was because online advertisement rates were low and bandwidth was expensive in the early 2000s.

When online advertisement became more lucrative in the mid-2000s, and the subscriber numbers of his existing platforms remained stagnant, Manley decided to transition into a business model more similar to that of Keenspot.

"[6] Manley launched WebcomicsNation.com on July 29, 2005 after having the service beta tested by a large number of major cartoonists (including James Kochalka, Lea Hernandez, Roger Langridge, Tom Hart, Cayetano Garza, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, and Spike Trotman).

[12] In January 2009, Manley wrote that the merger was "one of the more technically difficult projects" they had undertaken, and that it was taking longer than he had hoped.