page_title: Business of webcomics
section_title: Feasibility and economic intent
hierarchical_section_title: Business of webcomics / Feasibility and economic intent
caption_attribution_description: English: Jeph Jacques, author of the webcomic Questionable Content, at a fan meetup at the rotunda in Albert Park in Auckland, New Zealand.
context_page_description: The business of webcomics involves creators earning a living through their webcomic, often using a variety of revenue channels. Those channels may include selling merchandise such as t-shirts, jackets, sweatpants, hats, pins, stickers, and toys, based on their work. Some also choose to sell print versions or compilations of their webcomics. Many webcomic creators make use of online advertisements on their websites, and possibly even product placement deals with larger companies. Crowdfunding through websites such as Kickstarter and Patreon are also popular choices for sources of potential income.
  Webcomics have been used by some cartoonists as a path towards syndication in newspapers, but few are chosen each year. Since the early 2000s, some webcartoonists have advocated for micropayments as a source of income, but this system has seen little success.
  Some artists start their webcomics without an intention to directly profit from it, instead publishing through the Internet for other reasons, such as getting feedback on their skills.
context_section_description: Spike Trotman (Templar, Arizona) has said that while many people start a webcomic with the expectation of being able to make a living through it within a year, this is almost never the case. Competition on the World Wide Web is enormous, and most professional webcomic creators were growing their fanbase for years before they became able to become self-sustaining. Jeff Moss, director of Blind Ferret Entertainment, has said that many young artist fall in the trap of "expecting too much too soon." Some webcomic creators try to sell merchandise of their webcomic after only a few months, sometimes "[putting] the business before the art" and neglecting the webcomic itself. Jeff Schuetze (Jeffbot) said that he knows many people who were trying to sell a large amount of merchandise before having even started their webcomic. According to a 2015 survey by David Harper, over 80 percent of webcomic creators he questioned are unable to make a living off their work, as the majority of his respondents made less than $12,000 USD a year off their work.
  Very few professional webcomic creators set out to earn a living from their work initially. Jeph Jacques, for instance, decided to sell Questionable Content T-shirts for a few weeks in order to "make ends meet" after he was fired from his job, but suddenly found that he made enough money to live from and "never looked back."
  Many notable webcomic creators are actively diversifying their income streams in order to not be dependent on one source of income, many even deemphasizing webcomics. Brady Dale of The New York Observer noticed while calling out to professional webcomic artists that though almost all of his respondents believed that their webcomic created a "base of notoriety" for them, they also all believed that the "less [they] relied on [the] original source for financial support, the better off they would all be over time." For instance, the creators of Cyanide and Happiness went on to create animation in the form of The Cyanide & Happiness Show, and their webcomic is no longer their primary source of income. Dorothy Gambrell (Cat and Girl) explained that "the business of webcomics rolled along smoothly until the great T-shirt crash of 2008," and that the 2010s offers creators more opportunities than the 2000s did. Many creators such as Gambrell, Drew Fairweather (Toothpaste for Dinner), and Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) all do work unrelated to their webcomics.
caption: Jeph Jacques never intended to create his webcomic Questionable Content for a living.
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