Shameless Self-promotion

[Bustertheclown]

It could be the lack of sleep or the heat talking, but I now have it in my head to not try to get another day job, and just focus on making money from my art. I've actually worked as a professional artist in the past, to limited success in such a small and unfriendly local market, and have been maintaining a semi-pro status since returning to the droning workforce a few years back. I know firsthand that keeping one's self fed as an artist is difficult.

However, I just read this article about becoming a weblebrity, and I'm thinking that if it is a manufactured state, then maybe I want to try to parlay my talent into a money-making, attention-whoring online scheme of some sort. This is something I've been preparing to kinda try to do anyway, in a slow and deliberate manner, over the course of several months or years, and that's why I decided to somewhat re-establish a web presence with my new CG account in the first place. However, since I can't seem to keep a day job lately, I now think that maybe I should just kinda go for broke, get a YouTube account, a Facebook profile, learn what the hell Twitter and Tumblr are good for, as well as work very hard to break out of the relative obscurity I find myself in on the networking sites I already participate in, by associating my name with entertaining white noise. In essence, I'd make myself a brand, and work very hard to sell myself.

We tend to argue a lot on this forum about e-fame and comics, but has anyone around here ever really gone for it? Anyone ever achieve it to a level that they don't have to load trucks or work on an assembly line to keep themselves in Ramen? I'm weighing my options, here, and it really seems like the web networking/whoring route is the route that has the littlest up front cost. Thoughts on this?

[Linkara]

From what I've seen, such artistic ventures into e-celebrity that can actuall produce at least a little cash require two things - humor and talent. It's humor-based products that tend to create the largest fanbases, from what I've found. For example, on a smaller scale you can look at Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged series. Little Kuriboh does everything himself (with the occaional guest voice) but puts out a humorous product that, while free for copyright reasons, allows him to make some cash via T-shirt sales. On the next step up you have Dave Willis from Shortpacked. His fame is more of a medium level and it took years to cultivate it from the various webcomics he's created plus spending money on promotion that led him to produce books, T-shirts, and special Prints that have also gained him some cash. On a higher level there's Red vs. Blue and the folks at Rooster Teeth. This one's got an entire team on their side, but they've got clothing and DVD sales on their side, plus various similar projects that have allowed them to earn larger amount of cash for their work, though obviously distributed among the group.

[Fishies]

It sounds really difficult. The only people I've seen do it well have been, as Linkara said, humor sort of comics. Even then, it takes a while for them to get anywhere and I don't know how well off they're living.

As for serious stories, while I've seen some places get 100$ every once in a while for extra pages, I don't think many get close to quiting the day job.

It's always sounded too risky and out of reach for me. If you think you can do it, go a head and try, but it might be good to have a backup plan.

[Dr Neo Lao]

From the way I read your post, it seems to me that you are more interested in breaking out of "just webcomics" and move towards being famous for the sake of being famous. Or for the sake of making money from being famous.

Sometimes all it takes is something vaguely interesting and the right timing. Look at the "leave Britney alone" guy (at least I think it's a guy). He's "famous" in that many people would recognize him if he wore the same look, but if he changes shirt or cuts his hair - nobody again. And he's a one-trick pony.

There was a guy here in Australia who held a big party, it got out of hand and the cops arrived. Became a minor celebrity, was offered some cash for some interviews (must have been a slow news week) and a month later nobody cares.

If you want to be deliberate about becoming famous, you'll probably want to make sure that you have something to offer. What that is will depend on you, but if you just spend all day posting on loads of different networking sites, you'll become "well known" but not famous.

It just boils down to whether you want to be a performer or a dancing monkey...

[Jekkal]

A lot of the 'microfame' tapped into here is mostly a short-term hit for short-term gain. It's not going to be worthwhile in the end unless you:

• Provide a means for perpetuation (like a webcomic)
• Find a way to profit from it somehow (merchandise)
• can actually gain a following for what you're doing, as opposed to a 'bounce'.

Put bluntly, gaining short-term fame is easy, but to gain something with a better shelf-life, you're going to have to learn a little something about marketing, or at least have enough talent that you can get away with less-than-perfect marketing.

[McDuffies]

If this article made you get an impression that there's a fool-proof recipe for becaming an internet celebrity, then that's the wrong impression. Article is just a bunch of generalizations about so-far internet selebrities, made for entertainment and not as some sort of guide. Becoming a celebrity on internet is not different from becoming a celebrity in real life, in that you need a tiny bit of talent, tiny bit of charm, and a great deal of pure dumb luck. Online fame usually happens accidentally, while simply expressing yourself in some way without pretense, two Chinese boys headbanging in front of camera hardly ever thought they'd be making a living that way one day. Hell, many of internet celebrities are being laughed at, and not laughed with - attrociously bad comics practically have more chance at fame than really good ones.
Whether it pays up is really another matter. From what I've heard, most of them get nothing but piles of fan letters that they have to sort out, and a number of them are rather displeased with consequences of their fame. The article mentioned a few most succesful examples that aren't very representative.
Not that I'd want to discourage you, it's just that giving up on a day job for pursuing something that has about 0.01% chance of happening, is silly. Still if you go for it, let us know what happened, scientific curiousity.

[Bustertheclown]

Valid points, all. Gets me to thinking, but bear with me, because I'm finding it hard to wrap cohesive sentences around these thoughts:

The points laid out in the article are actually pretty standard marketing techniques, which, through the "democracy of the the internet" have now come into play much more for individuals who wish to market themselves effectively in some way. No, these points are not to be followed as gospel, and no, I don't really want to become an internet celebrity, per se. However, I do think that this concept is important enough to bear out further attention from creative types, and I'm willing to be a guinea pig in this experiment.

While fumbling your way to fame may be an exercise in dumb luck, I don't believe that luck really has to do with marketing. Marketing is a science, even when that science is applied to personalities. The mantra that keeps droning through my head over the last week has become, "engineer notoriety through hype." Yeah, it's a bonus to actually have a quality product, but is it really essential? To be perceived as important, you don't actually have to do important things; all you have to do is tell enough people enough times that you ARE important. Tell lies like you believe them, throw in a few nice photos as "proof," and rarely will others find cause to disagree.

My focus will be on my creative output, to be sure, but I don't know if I'm actually going to really get anywhere in this by relying on the merit of my work. I'm currently quite obscure due to the focus on the merit of my work. No, this is going to take a Warholian turnaround on my part. My rise to fame can't be powered by any one product. I'm not going to be selling my cartooning to the world. Rather, I will be selling a concept to the world. That concept will be of Robert Jones: Artist! If I'm successful at selling the concept of me to people, then they will want to own artifacts of that concept, in the form of comic books, prints, t-shirts, etc.

I don't think it's going to be hard for me to build up a persona, or fall on a concept. Honestly, I'm not too worried about the "product" end of this endeavor. I've amassed quite a catalog, and have plenty of very cool ideas still to run with. My biggest worry is about the actual marketing. I was actually trained pretty extensively in marketing techniques in college. Until now, though, I've had very little cause to put that training to use. Despite myself, I do have a fair idea of what I'm getting into. I know that this is going to mean some actual work on my part.

I dunno. We'll see how it goes. I'll keep you posted.

[Jekkal]

Marketing, like art, takes time and practice. Sometimes you can short-circuit this by finding the right supports, but until your theory meets reality, it's only just a theory. You need to experiment, and experimentation implies practice.

Granted, I've probably had far less marketing education than you -- just a college course so far -- but unlike you I've been working on this with my comic while I do it all. My success so far is questionable, yes, but at least it's a start.

[Bustertheclown]

Marketing, like art, takes time and practice. Sometimes you can short-circuit this by finding the right supports, but until your theory meets reality, it's only just a theory. You need to experiment, and experimentation implies practice.

Granted, I've probably had far less marketing education than you -- just a college course so far -- but unlike you I've been working on this with my comic while I do it all. My success so far is questionable, yes, but at least it's a start.

Yeah, and that's why I'm doing this, to practice at self-promotion. Just, instead of wading in from the shallow end, I think I'd rather dive into the deep end and see how well I do. Right now is the concept phase; getting my ducks in a row, doing research on who I can and should reach out to, finding ways to reach out, and figuring out what I should offer.

[Paul Escobar]

I think that as the first point on the agenda you need to have a sellable product - in your case comics or other visual art - that you can deliver on a frequent and regular basis. Product first, then marketing/attention-whoring. Otherwise any internet fame won't bring in money.

This interview with Gregg Spiridellis about JibJab may interest you. JibJab makes animation, but Spiridellis' ideas on effective online marketing may provide inspiration.

Anyway, the idea is cool - good luck!

[Sorcery101]

DO you want to by efamous or do you just want your webcomic to just make a stead amount of profit?

Because I wouldn't say I'm the former (I never see anyone online talk about my comic or me), but I'm only a few hunred per year short of being able to live off my comic.

I go to cons and hand out flyers/business cards to anyone who seems remotely interested and I BOUGHT advertising on nearly every site I can (and not just on webcomic sites). I have also donated art to stuff like Girl Wonder's art auction and I've done several guest stirps for other comics. Sorcery 101 was in the red the first year, it did okay the second year, and I'm very VERY close to being able to live off of it. And my comic doesn't have much merch to sell and it's not one of those supposedly easier to sell gag a day webcomics. Someone comes to my comic they got to read the whole thing.

Edit: Oh and I'm probably the person with a serious comic that gets $100 every once and awhile for an extra page. Which I'd only suggested you do if you really can manage an extra update on the day you say it will go up. Otherwise, it might make readers feel ripped off.

[Bustertheclown]

Alright, so I keep getting a recurring theme in the responses, about the need for content. So, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that content is a given. For argument's sake, let's just say that I've got months worth of back content, just waiting to go up at a fairly steady rate. Also, for argument's sake, let's say that a lot of that content is salable through merchandising or collected publication, or whatever.

So, then the question isn't WHAT to sell, but HOW do I sell it?

It's been fairly established in this thread that my intent isn't so much to become a working webcartoonist, but rather a cartoonist and artist who wants to try to use the web's networking powers to their much lauded potential for networking and entrepreneurial enterprise. So, allow me to open this discussion in a different direction. What steps does everyone take to get the word out about their work? Why? How well have they worked? What steps have been considered, and then dropped? Why did you drop them? Promoting your webcomic is one thing, but what would you do if you were promoting yourself first, and the things you did second?

I'm trying to conceptualize a strategy to make a webcartoonist bigger than the mere comics he produces, sort of a Stan Lee or Charles Schultz of the internet age, and I invite you all to do the same. You have a product, you have big ideas in the works to continue down the content path. You also have communication and networking technology that allows you to contact fashionistas in Singapore, economists in Poland, and diamond miners in South Africa. What do you do to reach them?

Ideas? Anecdotes?

EDIT:
Also, links! Provide links! Where do you go to get the word out? Standard spots are fine, less standard spots are even better, especially if you can say whether or not they're working for you. Read any articles or see any interviews lately about the subject of self promotion or networking, and want to share? Post them! Let's not dog this down into a discussions of "why you shouldn't," or "what you need to do." Instead, let this be a resource on how to you can, and paths you can take to get where you want.

[Bustertheclown]

So, I would really like to keep this thread alive, as a resource for all, in the way of promotion. Let's start local, and come up with a list of all the webcomic and comic related hosts, forums, search engines, review sites, toplists, and other resource sites that people might contribute to, in order to get their name and stuff out there to a potential audience. I'll kick it off with a sampling from my own list of bookmarks, links which I actually go to periodically. It looks like you can only list ten URLs per post, plus I'm going to have to slog through about four years of comic resource bookmarks to really get comprehensive, so I'll be back later with more. In the meantime, add to the list!

COMIXtalk
The Comics Reporter
Websnark
Oh No Robot
Dimestore Productions and the SPA forum
The Comics Journal
CBR
Talk About Comics Blog and forums