Yo!
I was just wondering if anyone has been able to scratch out a living from this after getting started on Drunk Duck? If you have, or you know someone who has... I would love to pick your brain!
Cheers!
Graeme

Well....lets see :D

I've spent:

20 dollars on advertising my comic
40-60 dollars my own merchandise

I've earned:

5-8 dollars from advertising
1 dollar and 50 cents profit from merchandise other people bought.


So, I personally am still in the hole :D

Nyet.

I'm probably in the negative, too. I don't know, I have some hopes for what I want to accomplish as far as making an income from this stuff (by which I mean- enough of an income to pay for creating/ promoting the comic). But I think I'm very realistic about how long it's going to take to get to the level where that's possible.

I would be interested to hear what other folks have to say, though.

I broke even on advertising if you take into account that it gained me new readers. So far in ad revenues I've earned about $5. Most of that was actually made after I stopped updating. For some reason my ad space has become significantly more valuable since. Wonder what that says about my content. lol!

I would say I'm still way in the hole though, just because of how much time I've put into the comic.

I suspect that most comics big enough to turn an actual profit have long since moved to their own hosting- though they might keep DD as a mirror. It's likely only the comics in the Top 10 are big enough to make a profit- so Charby, Cru, maybe a few of the others have been able to cash in?

Yeah, I've spent way too much on advertising.

But in my opinion it's worth it. I feel as though I have a decent comic, but if nobody knows about it, what does it matter. It's garnered me a bunch of regular readers, so I'm fine with spending the money, as long as I have it.

Everyone has different goals for their webcomic. But if you're trying to make money, first you have to have a pretty substantial and loyal audience.

IMHO I really think people should focus most of their energy on making a good comic first. Then advertise to build an audience. And then maybe branch out into merchandising etc.

It takes money to make money.

Not yet. I'm hoping to.

The plan is to start pushing volumes while serializing them at the same time. That is, page one of volume x hits online and at about the same time I sent off the files to printing, so once I have the book available, there is a couple of pages online... and hopefully impatient people pick up the book rather than wait :D

That is... once I get everything moving forward :P

I hear adult/mature webcomics bring in a decent amount of cash, menage a 3 hasn't been around that long and it's ads are raking in dough(proving you don't have to be funny/good to have a popular webcomic)

I think if you're coming into webcomics just to make money you're most likely mentally retarded. You could get a part time job on minimum wage and make more in a week than your comic will probably make in a year. But I know making money off your hobby is a cool goal.

Made a good amount of money selling art at this month's con. Unfortunately only $5 of that was from anything webcomic related.

If you want to make money sell your talent through commissions and original art. Ads and comic book sales only get you so far.

I've made millions upon millions of pounds from my comic.
Right now I'm not actually typing, I am dictating to one of my butlers to do it for, while I float in my swimming pool full of fine wine, eating endangered animals.

And then I wake up....

I'm getting about 25 cents a day from adverts...not quite profit yet.....

Don't ever expect to make money on ads. It happens to some people, but for the most part, if you want to make money, you have to sell something tangible: merchandise. Books, shirts (it has become a joke amongst webcomickers that we are actually t-shirt salesmen), posters, etc.
Or, you can take donations and get enough money for a down payment on a house within a month if you do it right.

megan_rose
Don't ever expect to make money on ads. It happens to some people, but for the most part, if you want to make money, you have to sell something tangible: merchandise. Books, shirts (it has become a joke amongst webcomickers that we are actually t-shirt salesmen), posters, etc.

Aaaahhh yeah, that infamous "getting payed by your comic vs getting payed by your comic related merchandise" debate.

I have a classmate who actually is getting published on a newspaper here in Ecuador, and whom I got in this heated discussion about this...

Actually, Jeph Jaques, Questionable Content creator, writed a quite interesting article on the subject here.

Money spent on BffSatan: $0
Money earnt from BffSatan: $0
Balance: $0

BffSatan
Money spent on BffSatan: $0
Money earnt from BffSatan: $0
Balance: $0

lol. I like that.

I just recently started the Project Wonderful thing- I've spent about.. four bucks? so I'm $4 in the hole.
This thread is going to kill the dreams of any youngster who still thinks he/she can "make it big in the comics business!"

17 year old Hyena H_ll
Whatever. You guys don't know what you're talkin' about! I'm different! I'm special! I'll make it big in comics! Just you wait and see! By the time I'm 27...

Whatever. You guys don't know what you're talkin' about! I'm different! I'm special! I'll make it big in comics! Just you wait and see! By the time I'm 37...

I mean, another way of looking at webcomics=$$$ is thinking of your webcomic as "practice" for when you make it big some day! Not that I'm going to try this, but you have to admit, the more you write, the better you get at comicing!

I did a print run (at home) of about 40 copies of Socks around the same time that I put the entire comic online. I haven't yet sold every copy from that run, but so far, I've gotten between $60 and $80 from it.

As far as Timothy Green goes, I haven't tried making money off of it (or off of merchandise)... yet. I am considering putting out some merchandise in the future, but my main priority is getting a fully-functioning website up first. Then I can think about it again.

I am sure there's at least one or two episodes of Webcomics Weekly (a podcast run by the guy who does PvP, the guy who does Starslip, and some others) that have to do with making money. These are guys who actually do make a living off their comic, so anyone interested in that should probably check out those podcasts. (In general they're all pretty good really.)

Hah, I wish.

I make maybe one or two cents a day off Living With Insanity's ad space and I've spent $45 on advertising so far (Though I think I might have spent more). I have a shirt available, as well as an option to donate and get an extra strip for the week. As of yet, no one's buying.

I've actually written a few money making tips on webcomics.com and i've heard a lot of people use them successfully. But then again, they can afford to get to conventions and make connections.

DMH
But then again, they can afford to get to conventions and make connections.

Yeah, in any field, there's still a lot to be said for good ol' fashioned face-to-face networking. :)

I"m actually plannning on doing a con later this year, my buddy is running it and said he'd hook me up with a table for nothing. So we"ll see how that works out.

In regards to T Shirts, there was and article on http://webcomics.com/ about this. They were talking with some successful webcomickers, and they said that if you're branching out into T shirts you need to have more than something with your characters on them.

It's ok to have something that may relate to your comic, but it's more important to have something that appeals to people who don't know you're comic either.

Still working on getting MAG-ISA published.

Also I've got two other projects that are more of a collaboration with others. One might be a stage play or a movie. The other I'm more of an artist rather than the writer. If you ask me, I have more faith in one of the two other projects making it big rather than MAG-ISA.

Haven't really made a single cent yet. :(

None, not in it for the money. My income comes from other writing style areas.

I'd recommend going to this website if you want to find out more about how to make money from your comic:

http://www.psychedelictreehouse.com/

Specifically, this page:

http://www.psychedelictreehouse.com/monetizing---contents.php

It is a great site with a lot of useful tips on webcomics in general.


And just for the record Doc, I'm not in it for the money. I do my webcomic for the joy of it. However, if I could earn money on the side that would be an added bonus :)

17 year old Hyena H_ll
Whatever. You guys don't know what you're talkin' about! I'm different! I'm special! I'll make it big in comics! Just you wait and see! By the time I'm 27...

Whatever. You guys don't know what you're talking about! I'm different! I'm special! I'll make it big in comics! Just you wait and see! Thousands of years from now, anthropologists will find my comics and...

I've often thought things like "Ugh, you're such a sellout" or "You should give up trying to make a living off comics". But then I think, what would I be doing with my spare time? Making comics. I might as well get paid for them if I can. It won't buy me a Mercedes, but it bought me a used Saturn Ion. Luckily, I don't even want a Mercedes.

Well...
Not in my experience so far, Project Wonderful ads have been my only constant source of income regarding my comic (and I clustered them with my other comic UIU so I'm not even getting money for separate adspace)and that's only a slow trickle. I set up a cafepress shop solely for the readers who wanted something of mine on a shirt (we hardly see a dime of the money, it goes back into keeping the account active so we don't have only one available design) and what money I have made has gone into paying bills, usually with late fees :( I am however eternally grateful to my readers who helped bail me out when we got hit extra hard a couple months back and nearly had our electricity turned off on us in Winter, and I'm still working on some exclusive content to thank them for their help.
I rarely if ever ask for donations and feel bad making people pay for any of my art so I haven't done commissions either (I tend to just do free art when asked, but they gotta wait forever because I don't have much free time the way I work on my comics) Any money CTV has made is due to constant effort by my husband, who has had to drag me kicking and screaming into any money-making venture such as a donations button. I had a tremendous fear that people would hate me for it.

I *could* be making decent money from my comic if I wanted to, but I have some severe hangups I need to get over before I could even consider it. For one thing I don't advertise my comic, which would help considerably. (The only reason it's "popular" on this site is because: It's been on DD since 2004, it hasn't left DD since, it's got a large archive and readers refer it to their friends and family. Perhaps the fact that it's relatively work-safe helps too, haha!)
I refuse to view my readers as potential $$$, I would continue my comic even if I had to live in a refrigerator box and scrawl the art on the back of flyers. It's not about the money for me, (much to my husbands dismay!) which is of course, not very business-minded of me, even if my comic isn't just a "hobby" either. I haven't done wallpaper drives or things like that because I feel bad asking for money for my work...I don't think it's horrible, I just don't feel right accepting money for it. A stranger at a bar where I was watching a friend preform had to force me to take $5 for a drawing I had made while there, i was just as willing to give it away for free. I've also accepted way less for work than it was "worth" in the past too, I designed a logo/mascot for a guy my father worked with for $20, the standard rate for that sort of thing usually runs $200 or more. I did do some other commission work for a presentation (I'm sure I can't mention the company though) and made some decent money off of it.

I do intend to try and do commissions with my pipecleaner art someday however, I think it's got a unique potential, I just have no idea what would be considered over-charging. It took me several hours (calculating this in downtime waiting for photoshop to do something while using this spare time to "sculpt") to make the fuzzy little Deadpool in my avatar, but I don't know how to translate that into an asking price. I balk at the idea of charging $10 or more for this guy who's the size of a Barbie doll, yet I see people charge up to $50 for a 5 inch felt plushy of their own character...not that I think that's bogus or anything, I just couldn't ask for that much money.
Of course, I also just have a really low opinion of myself so it's not hard to for me to reason that my time and effort isn't worth any person's money :(


I don't know about the other oft-read comics on here, but I know a few comics offsite that make a living solely off their comic. While popularity certainly helps, I don't think that's the only factor. It's really up to the comic author and how they present their comic, and the kind of fans it has. It also depends on how willing the author is to take advantage of their readership...I know that putting it that way makes it sound negative, but it is true. You have to be willing to ask and moreover willing to deliver the goods when the money shows up. Ask and you shall receive, but you also gotta give something back otherwise you end up looking like a talented mooch rather than a businessperson offering a service worth paying for. That is, thank people, reward them with something in return for their generosity. The worst thing you can do is put up half-hearted efforts or pages on end of filler while asking for money. You should act as a professional, pretty much. If I bought a comic at the store that had 2 pages of story and 10 pages of poster art, scribbles and pin-ups peppered throughout it I don't think I'd continue buying that series.

megan_rose
I've often thought things like "Ugh, you're such a sellout" or "You should give up trying to make a living off comics". But then I think, what would I be doing with my spare time? Making comics. I might as well get paid for them if I can. It won't buy me a Mercedes, but it bought me a used Saturn Ion. Luckily, I don't even want a Mercedes.

I understand that feeling completely! Though admittedly I've never felt that I should stop no matter how bad things get, if anything I'm way too stubborn to give up even if that does mean being a starving artist. I think you provided an excellent example of what expectations to have though, it's not gonna be big money but getting the bills paid by doing what you love is a truly rewarding thing!

Wow! I ask to pick someone's brain and I end up getting to pick a couple of dozen! You guys rock! This site is so good for this stuff! I know so much more than I did last night when I posted this! That's no joke! Thanks All! I hope this discussion keeps going... I suddenly get the feeling I wasn't the only one wondering about this! I'm not alone!!!!

My sister's ex-boyfriend's Brother is Ryan North (got all that!!!!)... He does Dinosaur comics... I think he does pretty well with it. I got the chance to ask him a few questions a few years back, but that was before I really knew what questions to ask! I'm gonna try and track him down again and see if I can buy him a few beers in exchange for a little advice!

I think there are a lot of people on this site who have a lot of talent... I think a lot of you are being kinda hard on yourselves!!! But that is the artist's way!

Thanks again!

Cheers!
Graeme

skoolmunkee
I suspect that most comics big enough to turn an actual profit have long since moved to their own hosting- though they might keep DD as a mirror. It's likely only the comics in the Top 10 are big enough to make a profit- so Charby, Cru, maybe a few of the others have been able to cash in?

This.

And skoolmunkee also talked about webcomics weekly. Go listen to that podcast, they are very informative and can really help you out if you have the desire and drive to make your comic a source of income.

As for me if I could update consistently I would have a better chance at making a profit on this silly comic. If I can ever do that then I'll start thinking about how to make some cash on this.

If you're making comics for money or fame, enjoy meeting failure at every avenue. The only way to really excell at this craft is to do it simply for the love of the art. If you just want bags of cash, it will never work out. You'll be taken advantage of, your art will suffer and grow stale, and you'll be a bitter cold lifeless sellout.

The people who just make art for the sake of getting cash and fame sicken me. You faggots are the cancer that is killing the comic industry and stunting the creative growth of art in general with your ho-hum forays into mediocrity.