comics economics

[egypturnash]

Caveat: None of this is based on personal experience.

I've been doing a lot of lurking around webcomics discussion forae, trending towards the places where creators discuss the field. One thing I'm pondering is the financial aspect of it. Nick and I are doing Absinthe for its own sake, but I'd be lying if I said I don't have any hopes of making a few bucks off of Absinthe now and then, once it's on its way.

There are several income streams that can be tied into a webcomic:
* advertisements
* subscriptions
* donations
* merchandise (t-shirts, bound collections, posters, prints, mugs, figures, other tchotchkes)
* increased visibility for your other work (art, t-shirts, commissions, blah blah blah)

There are also costs:
* hosting
* advertising
* the time you don't spend on 'paying work'

The 'pro' success stories are the ones where the income outweighs that last cost enough. (There's also the successes of just carving time out to keep up with your hobby, and making and ultimately finishing a story in the first place.)

Not all comics implement all of those income streams, but I think that covers the range. Some thrive on donations. Some move mountains of merch. Some have enough ad-blockerless eyeballs to run on ads. Many more never reach a financial stability point.

I was walking home from the store pondering this a little. Along with the efforts of my various friends to do comics. And I think I see the economics of the 'webcomics collective': share hosting, free advertising on your buddies' strips mixed in with paying ads, share the cost in developing a good back-end. Spread your updates out a little and keep people coming in, because your magnum opus may only update on Fridays - but his magnum opus updates on Saturdays, and hers updates Sundays and Wednesdays, which means there's potentially something to bring the reader back that much more often - to flip through your merch and buy that clever t-shirt, to think about donating to one comic or the collective as a whole, to finally break down and read your whole archive and start reading regularly. Plus it's someone to split the cost of a table at a con with, get useful crit, and so on. And split up some of the business end of things with, so you have more time for, well, getting on with drawing your comic, which is what you want to do anyway, right?

I'm just pondering the economics on a rainy day, instead of sitting there and drawing. I'm also pondering the fact that I feel like all the comics CMSs I've seen suck, my kludge of an image gallery not excluded, and that I keep having this weird urge to learn one of the modern web-app frameworks and associated 'fun' languages by writing a new back end.

We'll see how I feel once I'm done with the first chapter of Absinthe, perhaps. Depending on what people on my friends list are doing with comics projects. I got a lot of drawing to do first, though.

Comments

[cryptodragon.livejournal.com]

I have actually floated the idea to a couple of my friends about doing a comic collective. I certainly think it could work and I could certainly do all the coding myself. I would like to talk to you more at some point about the comic stuff. I'm currently working on http://softreset.net and I've been slowly expanding the code till it would work as a collective.

[cryptodragon.livejournal.com]

As well, the model has worked for some comic artists like the Dumbrella collective, http://www.dumbrella.com/, and Blank Label Comics, http://www.blanklabelcomics.com/.

[waterotter.livejournal.com]

From what I've seen, merchandise is the only income stream that really has a chance of making real profit, instead of just taking the edge off of costs. The only artist I can think of that made a living entirely on donations was RK Milholland, and that only lasted a year or two. There might be others, though, I don't keep up with all the popular comics.:)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

There's one long-running comic I read about that gets a lot of donations. And I keep running into comics that have a 'This Month's Donation Target' in the multiple thousands that's close to being met. Rent-paying amounts at least.

[waterotter.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're right, and I can think of more examples now that I sit and think about it.

[wyatt1048.livejournal.com]

Strikes me that a collective approach would work best if you all has the same type of comic, as without that, you end up with the Comic Genisis problem:
sure, there might be something you'd like in there, but it's finding it that's the problem. Plus, it would really help if you got a big name (well, big for webcomics). Or there's the way I got money (albeit not much) out of comics, by working for others.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking small collective, not something on the scale of Comic Genesis. A handful of high-quality stuff. The content might be all over the map (aside from, given my circles, being Not Superheroes) but the words and pictures would be very good.

Of course, first I have to see if I'm in this for the long haul anyway. I know it'll be a lot easier to do Absithe on a steady schedule if it is my primary income...

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you could even do this through webcomicsnation as a group account; certainly there are plenty of people that update daily so that it would matter as far frequency goes. I can check it out if you wish. At 99 bucks a year, split 5 ways with no ceilings on pipeline, it's really cheap. Some DO place ads there though I don't know what kind of generation they provide.

I agree with the person above that a 'name' of SOME kind wouldn't hurt. The main problem I've had (though I have a really hard to get into comic) is getting anyone to review the comic. Once that does happen, readership goes up and the opportunity for merch and other things increase as well.

I do have another comic in the wings. I might not be the best choice for such a group as I tend to be rather esoteric, but I'd be interested in being a part of it if you like.

There's a lot of good points in going at it with other folks. Having to only update once a week but having new material daily on your site would be great. Let me know if there's anything I can offer.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The proposed list, in my head, of people who I'd approach about something like this is basically 'artists on my friends list'. I'm working on a comic with highly abstract colors and references to pretentious French New Wave cinema; 'esoteric' is not a bad thing in my book at all.

And yeah, having other folks involved to spur you on = GOOD.

It could well possibly be done with something like WCN. Although ultimately one would want to have more designed sites than I ever see there - everything there always feels so barebones to me!

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see comments below to Haze -- I really, really like to hope that "avant-garde almost-but-not-quite-furry comics" are an untapped market.

[nicked-metal.livejournal.com]

You might want to look in (and ask questions of) theferrett, easily the most commercially-savvy webcomics person that I know.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've ended up reading some of his theorizing and discussion in the past months. I'm not sure I agree with what he thinks (given he's stated a bias towards the daily-dose-of-funny gag strip) but it's been food for thought. Thanks, though!

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

Well, the element you've missed in your calculations, the one thing that really matters, is readers. Basically, you multiply the mumber of people who visit your site by about .5%, and that is the number of readers who will donate/buy your book/t-shirt/whatever.

Which is why I, too, would be interested in joining a collective. I would also keep maintaining my own site, but collective are a great way to generate cross-traffic.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yeah. I guess that's kind of implicit in all these calculations but I feel dumb for not really thinking about that!

Collectives are definitely also a tool for multiplying readers: the person who does this web comic I like feels enough confidence in these other 3-8 people to link their names and reputations, to share some expenses, to work under their brand name; maybe I'll like their other comics. It's an implicit promotional relationship.

My list of possible fellows of a theoretical collective is basically 'people on my LJ friends list who are doing comics'. So you're certainly on that mental list if I actually decide starting something's a good idea!

internet is serious e-business

[hazeraccoon.livejournal.com]

I've actually also been planning a sort of webcomic "collective" over the past year with some friends, though it's a bit different from what you thought up. more like being a part of a band, or something. I guess our goal is just to make a bunch of long-form comics with variety, then throw it at the wall and see what sticks.

the part that worries me most is that readers will come for one comic, but will have no interest in the rest. like even if it's by the same writer or artist, they won't want to read different genres (I see this kind of complaint on art gallery sites too, "everyone comments on my anime art but not my photorealism!"). even if everything is equally popular, it might end up being two completely different audiences averaging out the traffic. blah blah insert venn diagrams here

the Penny Arcade guy Tycho has said something to the effect of, if your webcomic has enough loyal readers, you can get any economic strategy to pay off. it might be true enough. and with long-form comics with irregular updates, the hardest part is getting people who liked your comic to remember you exist. I'd really like to see these "graphic novel" types of stories become more popular among webcomics, but it seems bleak when all the evidence points towards the low attention span of the internet...

well, good luck anyway, yeah?

Re: internet is serious e-business

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but we do have the advantage of occasional kinky sex, which studies show increases the typical netizen attention span up to 6000%. ;) Peg and I are still afraid the "adult" content is going to marginalize us and shut us out from a lot of possible avenues of income, but hey -- it's (almost) porn. It's what the Internet's for, right? :D And this is actually grown-up porn, with what I hope are authentically mature and intelligent themes. I'm probably being naive here, but I at least hope that's an untapped market...