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I've got a hefty listing of webcomics over on my site (nerdflood.com/webcomics).
And no, I wouldn't pay for them myself. I've been reading them for free for almost 10 years. =D
We didn't have enough volume for him to turn it into a full time gig though so he was forced to take a full time job and stop the freelance work he was doing for us.
Unless it is some sort of speciality situation like that though I can't see how outside of paper publishing there is a way to make money doing cartoons.
And anyway the only sustainable business from online comics itself and not from blogging-effects is Dilbert.
I have a blog on my business website. It's a niche market for hippie parents, many of whom have a great sense of humour. I'd love to get some comics included, but the hard part is finding comic artists who will appeal to my target audience.
Thanks for the idea, I'm going comic-hunting tonight.
But even this cannot really work unless there is a way to customize the text/image based on the user's need - so it has to be a set of cartoons and an application that can customize things little bit.
He has a rather unique view and history on the whole thing, but he's also not terribly caught up in a lot of the BS around it, and tends to give straight answers. People may not LIKE them, but that's their damage.
it's also a damned fine webcomic with some of the best writing around. Some of the stories will make your heart hurt.
http://space555.wordpress.com
It's a better business model for two reasons:
1) You're generating multiple revenue streams. Reproduction microfees, merchandise sales, and affiliates/advertising.
2) Your older comics have just as much of a chance of generating revenue as your newer comics do.
Maybe BitPass quit too soon?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/19/bitpass-de...
Would I pay to read a comic? Probably not. Would I pay to be able to show a comic on my blog? Absolutely. Scott Adams(Dilbert) could make a killing from this. But smaller webcomics could add a lot to their income too. Right now I have several webcomic strips printed off and taped to my wall. Every single one of them I'd be willing to pay $0.25 for to show to my friends online.
Best,
Jay Neely, Social Strategist
http://socialstrategist.com
The first thing I need to do is find out why Live Writer won't let me post my cartoons on my own blog without them looking like crap. Hmmmm....
I believe my 2.0 website, which is almost complete, could certainly get 10 million users in 3 years. The problem is that there is a Catch 22. To get that great number of users, we need topnotch cartoonists to participate. But with an advertising model only, we would need millions of users before there was enough revenue to sustain them. And most cartoonists won't support a pure advertising model, anyway.
People want everything for free on the web. Let the advertisers pay for it. But there's not an infinite number of advertisers, and when you're in bed with the advertising industry, then they have a say in what you talk about. Ask any working newspaper or magazine cartoonist how many cartoons they have had rejected because of editors' fear of offending advertisers.
It seems to me that reasonable people should be willing, even eager, to financially support independent media, the embodiment of free speech. That means independent of undue advertiser influence, as well as government influence.
Professional cartoonists get hundreds of dollars for one cartoon. All these editorial cartoonists who are getting laid off have families and mortgages. They don't have time to put months or years into starting over from scratch. So they are simply moving to something else.
So what? So it hurts our democracy to not have cartoonists who are hitting at things that need to be struck down.
Robert, Hugh is a marketer first. He's not a typical cartoonist. Cartoonists are normally artists first, with artistic sensibilites when it comes to things like selling out to advertisers. Bill Watterson wouldn't even allow Calvin and Hobbes' t-shirts and other merchandise, because he thought it was too commercial. He missed out on millions of dollars, but his own sense of artistic integrity wouldn't allow it.
Do we want more comics as good as Calvin and Hobbes, or not? We're not going to get it as newspapers continue to die if the Web won't support a business model that will support good cartoonists.
Do you know that it took Bill Amend 8 to 10 hours every day, 7 days a week, to create one Foxtrot? Well, six days a week, because Sundays take longer. No wonder he retired his dailies at such a young age. And Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed and Gary Larson... making good cartoons is a brutal job. Cartoonists deserve to be fairly paid for their good work, just like anybody else.
On our website, anybody can read all the comics they want to for free. What you have to pay for if you want to grab your own limited edition copy of your favorites, to put on your blog or MySpace or Facebook via our widgets -- to display your personality, showoff your sense of humor, attract readers, spark conversations, increase comments...
The price is dictated by demand and would never be more than pennies. The initial copies would be free. Because you own the copy, you could trade it or sell it, even at a greater price than you purchased it. People who choose early and wisely could reasonably get all the comics they wanted without ever having to make an actual payment.
Yes, I know people can just steal them if they want to. But those copies wouldn't have the artist notes attached, nor the comment maps, nor could they be displayed in our widgets.
A VC will say: no people won't pay, it has to be free and when you get enough members, then advertising will kick in. If that's the model, if that's the ONLY model, then cartooning -- the only visual art form that was created in the U.S. and could only have been created here because of the freedom we now take for granted -- is going to die as an art form, especially editorial cartooning, which is all but dead already. I for one think that would not only be very sad, but a dangerous turn for our society, because no written words can get the attention nor spark conversations, thought and insight like good cartoons can.
I don't see why it's so hard to expect a very small fraction, just 1% to 2% of the total number of readers, would be willing to pay pennies for copies to post on social media.
Sorry if it doesn't make sense, the idea just came to me, so I typed it as fast as I could without vetting it.
Leddo
I think the VC's comments on Zooomr are interesting. I'm interested in Zooomr and Smugmug's experiments with photographer-dictated pricing allowing non-pro photographers to get into stock without going as low as istockphoto and its brethren.
I'm a fan of Dan Heller's blog (http://danheller.blogspot.com/), where he has been putting forth some great analysis and predictions about the future of the photography business--predicting the commoditization of photos. I'd be interested in what your thoughts are on this...and if you could get him on the show or a photowalk, that would be sweet.
Many webcomics, like the immensely popular Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, encourage people to post their comics to their MySpace or Facebook pages. That in turn draws traffic to their site, which means more exposure, more readership, more ad revenue, and more merchandise sales.
The key to comics isn't to monetize each individual comic strip, it's to monetize the comic as a whole. Each strip in effect is advertising for the comic. That's the model webcomics figured out a long time ago, and it's working.
I also reject the entire notion that comics are dying and in dire need of saving. I'm sorry, but that's just not true. The old conventional method of publishing is dying, and has been for a long time, but people adapted, and adapted well a long time ago. Scott Kurtz, of PvP fame, a long time ago established an offer to let any newspaper run his comic for free, so long as they displayed the address back to his site. This, of course, ticked off the estalished publication comics, as discussed by Penny Arcade here
I think it's great to find new and innovative ways to help artists and specifically comics make a living from what they love, but I think this is greatly counter-productive. If you want to see someone who's actually doing good, check out Project Wonderful, the time based auction advertising system devised by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics.
Finally, Robert, I'd like to point out that Dawn is not the only one who's made a comic inspired by you, though I readily concede that her comics are much more high brow. ;)
Rolling my eyes, going blind, from all the bubble economics and artistic arrogance. Independent media has to swim in the same waters, has to have the same quality-level and fight for the same ratings as everyone else. What you are asking for is pure charity. Go hit up some rich Bleeding Heart, that wants to create a Foundation of sorts, and cry your 'starving-cartoonist' heart out there. Go and help make the world safe for your saving-grace 'artistic-communal socialized democracy'.
Advertising is the supposed cure-all for start-ups bad at math -- which includes Microsoft, paying $6 billion, to spyware-like target people with more Advertising. And advertising, like any drug, will need more and more to get the same effect, eventually it kills the host. The waters are rising so high, expectations will never be met, so new forms of fraud slash click-frauding and Enron-like economics are going to dot the Advertising landscape as never before. So many house of cards out there, digesting the Google advertising gospel, crash city.
Gonna be fun to watch, shorting trigger-fingers ready on fire...
@Nima - There is no "working" web comic industry. Even topnotch cartoonists who are "web syndicated" by major companies typically make less that $100 a month. Yes, there is a very small handful of people making a living via web cartoons, but that's the rare exception, and is pretty much limited to one type of comic and one demographic.
@Leddo - Interesting! Maybe someday. Thanks for the thoughts.
Full disclosure: I am a webcartoonist. I don't make a living off my site (not even close) - but I do bring enough revenue to offset groceries, purchase hardware / software etc. by virtue of the services I offer through my website.
Micropayments simply do not work, and here's why: http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html
That battle was fought and won at least five years ago.
Rob Edward's Drawn and Quartered http://www.drawnandquartered.com/ has been doing the satirical political comic thing for several years. He could probably tell you whether there is a business in this sort of thing.
Your cartoons are literally your business cards, just as Famous Amos's cookies were his, so of course you give them away for free. I've worked with cartoonists for 12 years, and I can tell you with all certainly that for most cartoonists "I just want to draw." The cartoons themselves are the product. Many don't have the time to do anything else. What else could Bill Amend do when he's spending 8-10 hours a day drawing?
Thinking this shouldn't be so, that everybody should be like you and use their cartoons as business cards to their REAL product or service, really is unfair. Different artists create cartoons at different rates in different amounts (your gag panels are conducive to be used over and over and over again as you brilliantly do, but people who have comic strips can't do that) and they have different skills and interests. Your talent and your love is being a hawker. What are artists who don't have that skill or desire or extra time to devote supposed to do?
1) The cartoonist is still free to show his cartoons Free Of Charge...
2) People pay to dispaly the cartoonists work on their site / blog... Now unless the cartoonist is already distributing his/her work under creative commons or some other such license people DO NOT normally have the right to use his/her work in any way (credited or not) as cartoons ARE copyright material. This would be a huge advantage and I for one would certainly pay for it (sharp eyed observers may have noticed me stealing from one comic - I do not make a habit of this and I really should rejig the post so there is a link to the original image and the image is not displayed...) I see lots of strips online that would be relevant and / or pertinent to my posts. If there was some centralised way I could have a subscription to post that would be wonderful.
3) Dome comics (Dilbert) already allow reuse on a charged basis http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/info/faq_... and obviously make good money from doing so.
Dawn - I personally think you should start by getting as many free online comic strip authors as you can to buy in to this service (They will only be gaining - not losing anything). Feature their strips on your site (and link them obviously) in a "daily strip aggregator" making yourself the first subscriber to your own service.
This will attract users (and possibly other comic authors) allowiwng you to start generating revenue from advertising. Grow organically from there (or seek further VC when you have proven your concept).
The only problem with doing this is the initial outlay of subscribing to enough artists to make your comic aggregator really attractive to comic readers (which should be less than the capital you would originally have been seeking)
All three are self-imposed limitations. Which VC's are generally unsympathetic towards...
Then that's done more with sequential comics (panel to panel storytelling), rather than the single panel format of editorial cartoons. The aforementioned "stock photo" style of licensing out cartoons sounds like a good idea.
I really don't think very highly of the editorial cartoon myself. They work best as illustrations to accompany a text piece. All to often editorial cartoons are merely a single panel of snark. Without any supporting arguement.
That's the problem with the single panel format. It expresses a sentiment well enough, but nothing deeper. Contrast that with Doonesbury and Day by Day, editorial comic strips that are frequently snarky, yet make an argument to back it up, (not always, but that's more about the creator's choice than the limits of the format)
My general dislike of the editorial cartoon is also aided by the fact that too many of the working editorial cartoonists are crappy artists, who think that scribbling is a "style".
The good news is, the standard of UK editorial cartoons today is generally very high [Steve Bell is probably the most famous one]. The bad news is, the overall market can only support a tiny handful of them.
But as a way of communicating ideas to the intended audience in the present time, it's far less useful. Most of the time the cartoons do little to inform or persuade, due to the limits of the format. The jokes work if you agree with the opinions being expressed, and rarely if you don't. Again, the single panel format puts limits on the humor, as strips can be more elaborate in setting up punchlines, as well as arguments.
It doesn't help that cartoons are lightning rods for criticism. A cartoon that misses its mark with its humor especially with serious issues, can attract much more angry responses than regular editorial pieces do.
Double it and get some personalization?
And by exclusivity I mean it doesn't show up anywhere else on the web.
But being FIRST with a cartoon is something we could probably do and are thinking about. Like maybe you could subscribe to an RSS for the categories you're interested in and if you grab it first you get a link to your post about it for a limited time. So everybody who sees the cartoon while it's on our website can click to you if they want to.
I think this is especially appropriate for editorial cartoons. Because like Shawn was saying, they were never meant to stand alone. Bloggers' text complement them and vice versa.
@Salubri -- well said. Thanks.
Frankly, I've been leaning towards taking the animation part out of it, partly because I don't like the interface they used, but also because it will spike banduse and I'm not sure animations are quite in keeping with what we're trying to do. I keep going back and forth about that.
I'd love to talk to you about it. Is this Portland OREGON? That's where I am. Please write to me:
dawn_douglass AT yahoo DOT com
We license any of our cartoons from around 14 US Dollars for these "social networking" uses... and people are willing to pay. Certainly more would pay if the fee was less, but as has already been observed here, cartoonists aren't willing to contribute their work for pitiful or no fees in the hope they'll make some money later and in the meantime devaluing their artform.
Ed Beardwell
CartoonStock Ltd
Ed Beardwell
CartoonStock Ltd
I'm Aung Min Min, cartoonist from Myanmar. I've been drawing cartoon since 1969. Comic, journals cartoon & magazine cartoon, caricature and also 2D animation for 8 yrs.
I do request you feed me back your advice. If I have a chance, I want to participate my cartoon your market. The attached is the sample of my cartoon. I shall send
again soon.
Best regards,
Aung Min Min