hmmm...lets think now...why do they live worst than comedians...hmmm...OH, I KNOW!
Maybe their not sellin' out their ideas to hell and back and mainly reling on people DONATING to them. Sure they may make t-shirts and coffee mugs, and print out there comic in book form...they (like your first said) are just tryin' to keep their need for formality down and just likin' the freedom the world of webcomics offers...honestly I really hope it won't become the industrialisted wasteland that many other industries have become...

(broken post)
The reason they don't have something like internation popularity is due to the fact that...They don't know the language of the audience...though hurrah for english's popularity, it still doesn't cover that much...it also costs money to get an article...especially for big newspapers.

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I'm coming late to the discussion but I wanted to chime in.

This bestcomic guy has some good points, and generally I think he's got the right idea:  If you want success you need to have a business plan, treat your comic professionally, do quality work consistently and (perhaps most importantly) promote the hell out of it.

Now, I went to his site and I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish there.  The one thing I did see was that bit about whoring out characters for product placement sponsorship.  I suppose that could work for some strips - it won't work for mine, unless there's someone out there hawking magic swords.   I actually would counsel against this particular means of getting revenue for two reasons:

1) It is the most insidious form of advertising there is and represents a negative trend as far as regarding art and design as merely a vehicle to sell other products, rather than art and design as a product in and of itself.

2) In my opinion, it cheapens your character design and pollutes your artwork, reducing the overall quality of your product.  That's self-defeating, because it will negatively impact your audience, and in the world of self-publishing (which is what webcomics are, essentially) you should be considering your audience as your primary customers - NOT your advertisers.

Looking for a successful business model for webcomics, I would look towards the ones who are successful already.  THey may have all come to their success by different means, but if you look closely you will find that they all maintain their success in a very similar fashion:

Sluggy Freelance
Penny-Arcade
Megatokyo
PVP
Homestar-Runner

They all use various combinations of the following means of generating revenue:

1) Advertising.  This is the poorest means of generating money, but also one of the easiest (provided you have a sizeable audience).  The most successful sites in this regard are those that only accept advertising which is of direct interest to their audience.

2) Donations.  None of the sites listed above are using this model currently, but most have used it at some point in their careers.  This is an option for an up-and-coming site that is struggling to get to the level where it can get into merchandising and other forms of revenue generation.  Pledge drives are a stop-gap measure to help keep you going while you develop other revenue streams.

3) Merchandising.  Didn't you guys see "Spaceballs"?  This is where the REAL money is made!   Books.  Shirts.  Mugs.  Figures.  Plushies.  Hoodies.  Bags. Whatever you can stick a logo on is fair game.  Again, the best thing to do in this regard is to target your merchandise towards your audience.  Sluggy Freelance partnering with Cheapass Games to produce a Sluggy card game = brilliant move.  Which brings me to:

4) Strategic partnerships.  The guys from Homestar Runner are working with "They Might Be Giants" and have just produced a video for them.  I can't think of a more perfect cross-promotion, not just in terms of business moves, but in terms of a perfect artistic combination.

5) Exclusive content for sale.  Sluggy has the "Defenders of the Nifty" and Penny arcade has their official Fan club, both with membershhip dues, and each organization gets exclusive content as well as access to special promotions.

Hmm - running out of time to talk. More later (I hope!).

Yes the thread is going somewhere. And a Akira don't be so sensitive, we carry no malice to anyone.

There are ways to make money off of swords if they are sharp enough. And whores can support swords.

Now a slight differance in opinion:

Films are an art form and they use product placement brazenly. Yet no one says "I'm not going watch the matrix because the film is cheapened by the constant use of Samsung cellphones, and Ray Band sunglasses, not to mention a few other products. TV is even worse. The truth is every major media does it. It was not always this way. But in the end the masses come to exept it. Most don't even notice it anymore. And done properly advertising is an art form.

This may fly in the face of many peoples sensibility, buts it's inevitable. And the mass comercial success of even one webcomic company will raise the general profile of all webcomics which is everyones best interest.

www.bestwebcomics.com

 

Am I the only one here who writes a comic strip to pick up chicks?

The struggling artist angle does wonders for my social life.

As for the whole 'selling out/not selling out' debate, do what works for you. Personally, if I ever choose to take my comic seriously and actually try to make something of it, I'd like to do it on my own terms. That entails not syndicating, not endorsing, and not wholesaling my comic. That doesn't mean I won't do any of those things should the right opportunities present themselves, but I'd rather avoid such avenues if I can.

Right now, my comic strip's a hobby. I do it when I have the time. I don't go out of my way to attract an audience, nor do I think I ever will. Because after all, what's an audience going to do other than lag down my already slow geocities site?

I understand you all take your comics seriously, and I would too if I put the obvious effort into mine that you do yours, but I don't, and so long as I continue to 'publish' my strip on the internet alone I'm not going to.

The way product placement works in film and television today is heavily dependent on the advertising surrounding the event.  Having Keanu wear Ray-bans in the Matrix doesn't automatically sell ray-bans... especially since you won't see the ray-ban logo anywhere in the film.  Ray ban has to take out a print  or tv ad linking it's product back to the Matrix movie: "As Seen in The Matrix" etc

You could do something similar in a comic, but what you'd need to do is have one of your characters wearing the sunglasses.  Then you'd have a banner ad off to the side saying something on the order of "Like those glasses?  You can buy them here!" etc (hopefully worded a little more adroitly).  The problem is that if you do enough of that kind of thing, then you start blurring the line between YOUR product (the comic) and your sponsor's product (Whatever the AD is for.)  When that happens, you are essentially diluting your own brand in order to promote the brands of the sponsors, to the point where (if you do it enough) your brand becomes worthless.

Ads can be artistic, and the line between art and commerce is very very blurry in any mass media in general, but I would hesitate to call Ads art.  I say this not for aesthetic reasons, but for business reasons: Art is a product.  Advertising is a service. (my definitions, ayways)  When advertising strays too far into Art, it starts to lose its effectiveness as advertising (all of those clever commercials we've seen where we can't remember what they were selling) and when art is used too liberally in the service of another product, it's value is cheapened (ever been annoyed to hear one of your favorite songs used in a commercial for something you hate?).

Anyways - the upshot of this is that I think that if you rely on product placement too much you wind up taking something away from your brand without adding anything back to it, and that's like chopping up a steamship to make fuel for the boiler when you're out of coal.  Plus, it just annoys the hell out of me.

Dammit I just had to check this thread before I went to bed.

It's called convergence and it will blur many lines... some you never would have thought of.

But at least you're 1/2 way there.

www.bestwebcomics.com

*pokes*...you forgot 8-bit...the other guy that actually "lives" off his comic. (brian of 8-bit and fred of MT)

Donation really works it's magic around semi-uber popularity. Not popular enough to get high paying banners, but enough to have a loving fan-base. I forgot what 8-bit's montly goal usually was though...$1000 a month? But now he gets all that money and more from T-shirts, Adbanners, and his sponser...

Sponser is goooooood...if you can get one of those to pay for your server, then I say you got a really easy job.

The whole blending thing (hidden advertisement) kinda requires the "I gotta be known" steps before somebody will trust you with that. Though I'd sure love to have that Piro keychain thingy...

Homestarrunner is just friggin' huge...though I'm just confused on how it all started out from a strange children's book...

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...wee?

like what do you mean to Master Fred of Megatokyo i'm not worthy to master fred and L337 Largo-sensei

...Zuh???

Brian Clevinger also owns a piece of Fuitadnet.com, so he actually makes money off of my wecomic ^_^

So that's how Fruitad's payin' him back...

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Hmm. I think he just sold it now, or so my friend says. That explains why tech support there has gone down hill. =(

and the word 'spatula' is ALWAYS funny.

fat guys with little wings and wife-beaters:
ALWAYS funny.

wow that was really in sightful and helpful

*smacks him with a pancake*

Please try to keep at least one thread here on topic..

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