Cartoonists, Moolah And Swimsuits
How DO you make money with your own free webcomic??? It’s Q&A time folks!
We don’t just read your emails, we downright devour them! Be sure to keep sending us your questions, comments and suggestions and perhaps your letter will be selected to be features right here in our brand new “Speech Bubbles” category.
Today we’re highlighting a really serious question that deserves a really serious answer. I believe that we’ve succeeded in answering the question, but failed miserably on being serious. (Sorry, Mel.)
Nevertheless, I know you’ll learn something as you read our response to our latest email…
Mel wrote:
Do you Guys know how many web cartoonist actually make a decent living?
And what are the key factors of a successful webcomic other than good content and advertisement? What else can we be doing?
Well, Mel – according to a list compiled on Wikipedia, there are at least 40 self-sufficient webcomics that are “known to produce the primary income of their artists and/or writers.”
When you take into consideration the fact that there are probably tens-of-thousands of webcomics out there, that figure might leave you a little disheartened. (Way back in January 2007, there were an estimated 38,000 webcomics being published and you can be sure that that number has skyrocketed since then.)
But all is not lost if you are an aspiring webcomic cartoonist. (Oh don’t be bashful, admit it – you’re more than a cartoonist, you’re an artist!)
The fact is that most of the webcomics out there are being produced by hobbyists and kids that are hopped up on too much Red Bull and pizza. In other words, although it’s fun for them to produce and they may enjoy the thought of being able to work as a fulltime web cartoonist, they’re not really treating it as a real business.
Now before we get too far into this response, let me tell you right at the beginning that I’m not into insipid, spineless platitudes. You can find a bunch of articles out there that read like this: http://www.ehow.com/how_6044569_make-successful-profitable-webcomic.html
Now that’s a nice article, but doesn’t tell you (the hardcore webcomic creator) anything that you probably didn’t already know or couldn’t guess on your own. (No offence to the author.)
This is where you don't want to end up as a webcomic artist.
But if you are seriously committed to making it (financially) in the world of webcomics, then there are a few things that you’re going to need to make peace with.
In no particular order, they are:
- Only a handful of cartoonists will stumble onto ideas that turn into million dollar properties. The rest will have to be content to simply earn a comfortable living from their work.
- Drawing cartoons should be your talent. Marketing cartoons should be your business.
- The free webcomics model is NOT a bad thing. (Really, it’s not.) Your best marketing material is your quality webcomic. By giving away your most valuable commodity for free, you stand the best chance of endearing your webcomic and characters to your audience. And if your audience falls in love with your characters and can’t do without them, you then have the basis for a really successful webcomic business.
One of the biggest hindrances for webcomics artists is the fact that they want to get paid for drawing the comic itself. They don’t want to become T-shirt, fridge magnet and mouse-pad sales(wo)men. (We’re all about gender equality in these here parts. We only objectify women in the comics we read.)
Artists want to be rewarded (and remunerated) for their art, not for selling trinkets. Selling merchandise instead of access to the webcomics probably seems like “selling-out” to some purists until you get everything in perspective.
Firstly, all comics books were created to sell advertising and merchandise and not the “art” in itself. (Remember the ol’ itching powder, X-ray spectacles and karate manuals?).
The point is that you’re not denigrating your artwork by giving it away instead of selling it.
Giving away your webcomic doesn't men that you can't turn a profit, bub.
The truth is that even in traditional print comic books the artists basically gave away their artwork because the wages the artist earned and cost of printing those old comic books have always been covered by the advertisers and not by the readers “paying” for their work. The cover price was mainly just window-dressing and a little extra insurance for profitability at the end of the day. (Sneaky li’l rascals, huh?)
The value of webcomics (and comics as a whole) has never been in the art itself – it’s in the characters – and specifically the way you as the cartoonist depicts those characters so as to make the readers lust for more. (ooOoOoh, kinky!)
Todd McFarlane didn’t make his fortune by being able to draw his “Spawn” character the best. He capitalized on the emotional investment that his readers had in the character and made his fortune by effectively merchandising that property.
He might (on a rare occasion) sell a piece of original artwork for $15,000 but even with all of his artistic talent, what he makes as an artist is dwarfed by the millions he makes from movies, toys and other merchandise.
Bottom-line, anyone who makes it as a cartoonist (on the web or anywhere else) has grasped the fact that the money is in the characters you breathe ‘life’ into and not strictly in the skill of drawing pretty pictures.
Whether those characters are stick figures or photo-realistic icons of our day, the job of a cartoonist is to capture the essence of the character in his/her own unique style and if the image they produce resonates with the reader they’ll gladly spend money to celebrate and “immortalize” your incarnation of their favorite character to decorate their home, clothing, ipods or anything (and everything) else.
Dollar-for-dollar, without exception, the most successful cartoonists are the ones who make the characters they draw endearing to their audience, and then merchandise those characters resourcefully.
Publish your webcomic free on the internet and monetize it with T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, action figures or anything else that fits into your present situation.
Add “hard copies” to your catalog of “merchandise for sale” by using one of the print-on-demand companies to turn your webcomic into a physical comic book/collection of stories.
If all of that is still out of your reach because of budget constraints then start off by keeping things digital and offer special edition webcomic collections for sale.
While your main webcomic may be free, there’s nothing stopping your from creating your own “Swimsuit Edition” for $19.95 or “Wallpaper Calendar Collection” for $45 or “Secret Files Edition” for $5 or “Sketchbook Edition” for $1.99…etc.
And all of this is before we even delve into the realm of selling advertising space on your website, in the pages of your webcomics and in any newsletters that you might run in conjunction with your strip.
Therein is the power of self publishing your webcomic.
Unlike working for a traditional publisher, you get to establish a direct relationship with your audience. Think about this; if you were being published in a conventional magazine and things went belly-up, you would have no way of reaching those readers ever again. But if you run your own webcomic, you have an audience that you can interact with, leverage, recommend your products to and even cross-pollinate to new webcomics that you might choose to develop over time.
When you have the audience, you control where they spend their money and people in related industries will always be willing to pay you top dollar for their eyeballs. (Think gaming companies, toy stores, booksellers…etc.)
Now if you think that everything I said today was good stuff – just wait until we get to Part II. (Yes, I’ve got even more to say on the subject that just couldn’t fit onto the page without it beginning to look like an endless roll of toilet paper unfolding on your monitor.)
In the next segment I’m going to be taking you “behind the scenes” with some of the webs most successful webcomics cartoonists so that you can get a real taste for what works right here on the good ol’ interwebs.
Keep it dialed in right here, folks.
Tweet this post, bookmark it, leave your comments and questions below and then top it with some whipped cream and spank it hard, shugah!
Peace!
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13 Responses to “Cartoonists, Moolah And Swimsuits”
Mel Rivera on August 19, 2010
Great response to my questions! I focused in on your statement “Dollar-for-dollar, without exception, the most successful cartoonists are the ones who make the characters they draw endearing to their audience, and then merchandise those characters resourcefully.”
This speaks volumes! So many are trying to sell their “toon stuff too soon” I’m about a year and a half into the webcomic business, most of my energy is spent on strip ideas and marketing, my partner handles the drawing, end product and web maintenance. We are gambling on a printed book which will go on sale Oct.-Nov. 2010.
I say “gamble” because since we do the free webcomic I don’t know how many fans will buy it. But we will roll the dice!
Thanks for the research and noggin scratching on part one looking forward to part deux!
-MR
Admin on August 19, 2010
@Mel – depending on how many readers you currently get to your website per day, you might want to consider adding a forum to your website or starting an email newsletter.
The benefits are obvious because you could do anything from taking a survey of how many people would buy a copy of your book to even taking pre-orders. (Nothing beats getting money in BEFORE your book even goes to the printers.)
Typically I’d advise establishing contact with your audience before making a sizable investment such as preparing a printed book, but if the wheels are already in motion you could still use the relationship that you build with your audience through a forum or email list to help generate some “buzz” about your book.
Either way – keep us posted and we’ve got dibs on the exclusive previews and backstage passes!
Mel Rivera on August 19, 2010
Good advice! We use our Facebook page as our forum, but didn’t think about taking a poll of how many fans would buy! (Those darn monkeys you keep caged are paying off!) I post to FB daily and get feedback as well. Also, I do the Google analitics to track all daily traffic among other sats. To keep it affordable (printed book) we’ll be doing the print on demand.
-Mel
(future toon mogel and all around good guy)
Admin on August 19, 2010
Oh, that I had the good fortune to be the one on the *outside* of the cage. Nevertheless, it sounds like you’re briskly moving in the right direction
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Lou Manglass on August 24, 2010
Compelling, but I think Bill Watterson would take issue with this line:
“Dollar-for-dollar, without exception, the most successful cartoonists are the ones who make the characters they draw endearing to their audience, and then merchandise those characters resourcefully.”
He was quite against merchandising. Still, other than the use of without exception, a well-written article. Thanks in advance for letting me pick nits.
Admin on August 25, 2010
Totally true, Lou. But remember the all-wise monkey infested purveyor of webcomic knowledge is referring to “webcomics” while good old C&H Bill Watterson was still operating (primarily) in the old-school press syndication biz.
Plus, the dollar-for-dollar reference would still hold true. For every dollar invested in producing the comic (sweat & time included as a financial value) they would still get the most financial return by leveraging the power of merchandising.
Bill might have bucked the trend, but I think we can still all agree that if he did add some merchandise to the franchise, he would’ve been even more financially successful than he was with C&H. And that was the subject of the post; i.e. how to monetize a webcomic for the best returns possible.
Lou Manglass on August 25, 2010
@Admin Oh, definitely, merchandising would have made more money. I would have bought a whole bunch of stuff. But speaking dollar-for-dollar, that’s kind of the point of business, isn’t it? To make more money than you spend? If dollar-for-dollar it wasn’t doing so, it wouldn’t be on the table (or it wouldn’t be for long).
And granted, Watterson was out of the business before the birth of webcomics, so either way he’s definitely not a model example for web businesses. Your point there is solid.
It does make me wonder, though, what (if anything) the community is missing. The syndicate model is gone, but with it went a non-merchandising revenue source. I’m not saying we come up with web-based syndicates (the idea just seems insane, anyway) but what other non-merchandising revenue sources are there?
Great discussion here, thanks for all your work! It’s nice to have a community that’s not aflame.
Mel Rivera on August 26, 2010
Hello to both WCG and Lou,
From my point of view our focus is producing a great web comic first. I’m sadden when I visit a site filled with merch of a character I barely know. I try to put myself in the reader’s spot, who visits my sites for a quick laugh or a break from boredom of the 9-5. Do they really want to be bombarded with commercials like newspaper ad’s and TV? Are they reading with a debit card in their hand ready to buy? So “We” like to offer free stuff, give-a-ways, grants and gov bailouts! Joking aside, more like mini poster’s and iron-on’s and if they want a print of that cartoon. I want them to fall in like with my toons.
I “think” Watterson is content to live with the fact that his fans will always remember C&K because of its genius and not a plushie made in Taekwondo.
We will put together a book soon and try the merchandizing waters a bit but will not lose all hope if it’s on the NY Times bestseller’s list
Admin on August 26, 2010
Totally. The key is finding the right balance. Personally, my approach is to take the reader on a journey. Lead with the webcomic, enthrall them with the characters, invite them to join a community about the webcomic (Facebook, Twitter, a forum…whatever works for you) and then use those platforms as a means of ‘pre’-selling the merchandise. (Kinda like the big boys do when preparing you for their limited edition statues and replica gadgets.)
@Lou – You asked “what other non-merchandising revenue sources are there?” Aside from selling advertising space, the options are very limited to my knowledge. (Outside of producing ‘naughty’ comics which actually sell quite well).
Actually, I’m convinced that most webcomic creators aren’t really opposed to merchandising their webcomics as much as they are to the way in which some have gone about pimping their merchandise.
After all, I think every creator would relish the thought of their own little action figure or mug to decorate their workspace. (I love my Spiderman duvet cover) It all depends on how the offer is presented. Engage me with your comics. Sell me with your merchandise. That’s the order it should be, bucko.
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Momoko on February 3, 2012
Good article, but I have one little bone to pick…
“Artists want to be rewarded (and remunerated) for their art, not for selling trinkets.”
My correction would be “Artists want to be rewarded (and remunerated) for their HARD WORK,”. There’s this idea that artists don’t work hard, that somehow pages upon pages of comics just appear out of thin air, that everyone can do it, that if you love art then working is easy, etc, etc. While yes, the final product is the art, in reality you’re paying for the over 8 hours of work that takes planning, drafting, roughing, pencilling, inking and toning a page (depending on the number of heads in said page). Which is why some artists feel really disheartened that writers get a bigger cut while their work is done in much less time.
Asking that you get paid for your art kinda sounds like ‘I want to be paid because this is pretty’, due to the subjective nature of art itself. It shouldn’t be the reason behind it.