Article:

On the way to heaven!

- Strategy and thoughts on how to make a living of your talent as a cartoon artist.
PART I

Here is fact one: You have your cartoons!

Here is fact two: That’s your unused capital!

My point is that if you already made your drawings you already have a great asset sitting there and just waiting to be used and by that I do not mean waiting to be picked up by a publishing agency and turned out in a magazine – of course that is the overall goal, but while you working on getting there, do not just let those drawings sit in a drawer.

WHERE CAN YOU USE THOSE DRAWINGS WITHOUT MUCH EFFORT, AND AT THE SAME TIME HAVE THEM WORK AS A BILLBOARD FOR YOU?

• Your Own Free Online Store: Yes, you can set up a completely free online store, and have: posters, greeting cards, mugs, and t-shirts up in the store in less then 30 min all without costing you a dime. You can even make books in cartoon magazine format and sell them as well. This is the single most genius thing I ever came across on the web, and you should set it up NOW! Then start nagging friends and family to shop there.
• Electronic Greeting cards: A great way to have possible millions of people watch your artwork is by letting greeting card sites use some of the artwork as cards. This way your art will be sent and admired by people again and again. Make sure that the sites you grant permission do NOT ask for: exclusive rights to your work. And if they want to use it for free make sure they DO provide full exposure of your URL or a given contact e-mail address.
• Online magazines and portals: Of course size and traffic matters, but you should ratter try finding those who are willing to give you great exposure on their pages, and if possible be somewhat related to comics or writing though any arts or entertainment portal magazine will do. As I mentioned earlier do not be narrow minded, maybe a style site or a sport site would be the right thing for your series – remember someone interested inn boards might also have a thing for cartoons, and as manga grow people at styles sites are sure to want to catch the latest hot trend. Same OBS! As on the cards though.
• Local newspapers: Many local or national newspapers will be happy to have guest strips running from time to time if you can offer it for free for a limited time. You can later negotiate a small fee. Again same apply as for the portal and greeting cards.
• Your friend’s homepages: Your friend’s friends is maybe not your friend and your friends homepage might not attract the same people as your cartoon related site, but it still a great place to “advertise your cartoons”. And remember you friend’s friends are more likely to tell their friends about you and/or visit your site or even buy your products as they feel more related being that you’re a friend of their friend.

 one place to start looking dopesearch.com

Now these free options I mentioned above might not alone get you much money, a publishing deal, or even many hits alone, but all put together they might bring you a little extra, and again remember it  sure beat what the drawer will do for your drawings!

But I need cash and I need it now!

If you have your own web site: where you run your cartoons and regular updates on life and things you care about it’s good chance you could earn a few bucks – not from your cartoons, but from endorsing a few products.

For this you need traffic! Read Jobs article on traffic promoting

# use the forum to for thoughts and feedback on this article please, tell me if its been useful to you! #

In part II of this article mini series we’ll be looking at how you can directly earn a leaving working with the thing you love the most drawing.