I'm a bit late to this discussion but this is something I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about, as an avid redditor and as a cartoonist who makes a living off his comic.

I don't think we should be allowed to post links directly to our work on external sites outside of linking to our comics in the comments.

No comic artist out there will produce a gold comic everytime, and there will always be an element of spam as well as some who would abuse this right. The system of "verified" users and even our flair on this and other subbreddits already gives us an unfair appeal, as it makes our post stand out, and another much more worfhy post might miss its chance because of it.

Imgur has become so integrated with reddit that they might as well be considered the same, and to post a comic here gives it a much better chance at survival+exposure overall. I don't think we can look at reddit as much more than the greatest opportunity we've ever had to gain exposure. I can certainly understand that it would be nice to recieve even a tenth of what my comic's imgur has seen on my site, but there is a reason we don't get those views. We are using the reddit/imgur platform to gain exposure, to show the world our work. People are going to seek our work out, if they are interested. Other sites will share our work, and the same will happen there, too. If we look too greedily at reddit as a money making opportunity we will lose and we will lose sight of what it means to make content for people to enjoy on the internet.

That sounds all quaint and whatever. Ads can still be looked at as a source of income, but not as the only. Donations, products, and most importantly Patreon (imo) are all key in providing a content creator a liveable income now. Adsense has decimated the ad revenue market, and adsense barely pays comics anyway. The comic crowd generally arent the people buying condos or cars off the internet. I have made about an average of 15 cents per click from adsense, and with my site gathering between 3 and 4 million pageviews per month, i wont make more than 400 from adsense. I am super fortunate to make this much, but it is not a liveable income on its own.

All this to say that reddit is a platform for exposure. Those million imgur pageviews are not for nothing, and we can't get too greedy with the remarkable tools we've been given.