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I already know this for a fact, and I’ve encouraged other web cartoonists to deliver content for specific sites, for a fee.

I just found a webcomic called “SPUN” by John Moore, and it’s a sports based webcomic which is now featured on CBS’s Sportsline site. - You can see John posting the news over in the Toontalk forum. — This isn’t a knock on John Moore’s cartooning ability, but his strip isn’t the most polished work around, and will show some of you out there that you don’t have to be the Rembrandt of Cartoonists to be paid for your work. Man, that really seems like a slam on John, but it’s not meant to be at all. I meant, put his comic next to something like Penny Arcade or Atland and you can see varying qualities.

So what does it pay? What do you charge? Well, it’s all negotiations, and there are no real set rates. You have to make your work WORTH paying for, pitch the idea that a regular feature WILL keep people coming back to their page. They already know why that’s good for them. Play TO THEM. While I don’t find the sport strip that compelling personally because I don’t follow sports much, I’m sure the editors of that site were totally thrilled by the humor.

Here’s my suggestion for approaching bigger websites with a pitch:

- Find a topic you can do well. Maybe it’s something you like like or follow like sports, politics, music, etc.

- Make a small list of sites in that category that you’d pitch an idea to. Since we’re already talking about the sports comic, let’s use sports themes as an example, so you’ve collected several sports websites. Collect at least 8 or 9 with webmaster’s e-mails or contact informations for the site owners.

- Before you contact them, draw up three samples of theme you’d like to pitch. Make them as awesome as you possibly can, but follow the simple rules you should already know by now. “Keep it simple, stupid” is almost a golden rule. Don’t be like me and over-write your comics.

- KNow who you’re pitching to. If you’re going to pitch to Sports editors, they KNOW their sports. Same with any other theme or genre. You don’t want to send them a boring e-mail about how you’re a cartoonist and all the cartoony things you’ve done.

- Write a form letter that you can use and insert the different names of the companies, keep it brief and be sure to triple check that you’re sending it to the right people. If it’s addressed to ESPN-ZONE and you’ve sent it to CBS, uh.. you’re doomed.

here’s a sample note:

“Hi guys, I’m a webcartoonist who loves sports and I thought maybe your site could use a regular sports themed webcomic. I’ve went ahead and done up a few samples (insert links here or attach to e-mail) for you to check out. I’d really love to work with you guys and have my work featured on the site. If something like this sparks your interest contact me at (insert email or contact info) and we can talk over details.”

Notice, there is no mention of money. They may offer you the spot for free, which would suck, but bring your work extra exposure. If you’re a smart businessman, you might ask them friendly in a follow up e-mail or phonecall about what kind of budget they could work out for such a thing and what you could do for them. If they don’t have a budget, NO WORRIES! You can most likely easily get them to agree to some adlinks under your strip that you can patch in remotely through an iframe code or javascript. Check out my comic on Crapville.com, look under the strip and you’ll see my googlead code, which helps me pay for bandwidth, etc.

If there’s absolutely NO money in it, consider how big their site is, and get them to link back to you prominantly. Then, keep pitching the same feature to other sports sites for a price or negotiation, saying you’re also featured on that big site already and they could have your feature exclusively for a negotiated price. Pretty nifty, huh?

OR…. if you’re super creative, you could maybe convince the website to sell advertising right on that days comic, and you split the revenues. They likely already have an ad salesman, and they’d see the value in that. Imagine if DICK’s SPORTING GOODS put a little ad saying “Brought to you by DICK’s SPORTING GOODS” under your comic. You could be talking about splitting up a nice $5000-10,000.

If you’re a mastermind… you can work several of those deals into one plan. Ads sold to sponsor that day’s comic feature, your own affilate ads, an a flat rate for having your work on the site, or larger money to make it exclusive.

The sky really is the limit. You can’t sit around and have these offers drop in your lap. You gotta go out there and get em yourself.
And now…

Sponsored Links:

I just discovered this new online software called FILM LOOP– It’s the premiere photocasting tool , allowing you to either setup your own photostreams, or have shared photostreams allowing your readers to add their own images–

Download it now and subscribe to my Yirmumah Comic Loop, it’s free and safe:

This sort of thing could be pretty big for webcomic or independent comics– especially for users who don’t have much knowledge of web design, this pretty much does it for you– when you want to add a new image or page to your stream, you just drag and drop it over. It automatically gets delivered to subcribers desktop browsers– also, when they click the thumbnails in the stream, it opens in it’s own browser windo that becomes it’s own archive of next and previous buttons, which allow users to comment on the entries, etc.

A creator without much web experience could create his sample feed and enourage people to subscribe to new issues– Right now, it’s for non-commercial use, but you could possibly charge access to a new issue feed, and add the persons e-mail to the invite tab of a private feed.

I’m thinking about having a CLUB feed for my club members, they get to see the newest strips I do in my buffer in my forum currently, but it would be even cooler just to have a drag and drop action that would allow readers to open up the loop browser and check for new content remotely.

There are also several other types of feeds available, and I guess you can add RSS photo feeds to the service as well.

The program itself is pretty broad, with lots of possibilites for the creative. There’s also little neat options enclosed, that allow users to have the streams play as their screensavers, etc. Pretty neat stuff. I expect many other webcomics to use this sort of technology in the future. I have seen other small groups attempt this same sort of thing to no avail– but this service seems like it’ll be used ALL Over the internet soon, so get in and learn about it while it’s hot.