How to Blog for Money by Learning from Comics (SXSW)
After a morning thinking about the Cluetrain Manifesto and microformats, and an afternoon spent having an intense discussion / pseudo-interview over coffee with an industry thought-leader about the future of Yahoo!, I couldn’t have picked a better session to help wind down the day than one on how online comic book cartoonists make money online. For one, comic book writers are funny. That’s why they are called comics, I suppose. And it was a pretty entertaining session full of people who can appreciate the humor in the details and side notes of life. I found that their basic business models were fairly similar to most blogs: try a contextual ad network, sell your own ads, have a subscription for premium services, request tips, sell merchandise, etc. There seemed to be a number of comic artists in the audience who were on the beginner blogging track, so the session appeared to go over very well for them. And, again, the stories were funny. And the best part about it is that I now have a number of great new online comics and services to read, and to share:
- Unshelved, a comic about life in the library by Bill Barnes
- OK/Cancel, a comic about user interface design and useability by Kevin Cheng
- Sheldon, a comic that is currently distributed via United Media / United Features Syndicate by Dave Kellett
- Daring Fireball, not a comic but rather a widely read witty blog on design, Macs and other fun stuff by John Gruber
- Neekole.com, also not a comic but rather a personal blog on pop culture by Nicole Lee
And I didn’t muster up any questions to ask, but I wish I would have as they were giving out nicely bound comic books to the brave souls who did.
Ok, it is nearly 10pm and I am at SXSW…so I’m out. Ciao.
Technorati tags: SXSW, SXSWi, SXSWi06, SXSW06, comics
