On Income Models
Sep. 9th, 2005 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythSo, one of the questions that's always come up in regards to webcomics is "can you make a living off them?" Usually, no. But there's a lot of different ways people have found to get some money off them, in a few cases, enough to survive. There was Randy Milholland's famous donation drive, which led to several imitations, and there's hardly a webcomic without a "donate now!" button these days. Others have sold dead tree versions (or as one of my friends put it, "treeware"). And, of course, there's swag. Plushies, T-Shirts, and whatever CafePress will let you slap an icon on.
And I'm gonna focus on swag, specifically T-Shirts. And even more specifically, Questionable Content's T-Shirts.
Plenty of comics sell T-Shirts. ( I have to get me one of the TPU T-Shirts from Girl Genius.) But what I find interesting about QC's T-Shirts is most of them are shirts that the characters in the strip are wearing or have worn. I imagine it started out as "Hey, this would be a neat shirt," so Jeph Jaques decided to draw it on one of the characters. And people saw it, said "Hey! That's a neat shirt! Where can I buy it?" "Uh, nowhere, I made it up." "Aww, I want one!." [Insert Light Bulb Here]
Which is cool. Especially since they're nifty shirts. One of these days, I have to get a TEH shirt. But I do have to wonder what the future holds in the realms of product placement for webcomics. Some webcomics have done ads involving their characters, but they're almost always separate from normal continuity. Most of the examples I can think of are for games, like PvP's Star City comics, or some ads that Graveyard Greg and Webtroll did for a couple of RPGs (here, here, and here. We're probably a long way from anything like real product placement happening, but I wonder. I don't think it'll really matter, as long as it's all disclosed and on the up and up. Maybe we'll see the return of the old radio model, where every ten minutes, Orson Wells will stop and threaten your tires.
And I'm gonna focus on swag, specifically T-Shirts. And even more specifically, Questionable Content's T-Shirts.
Plenty of comics sell T-Shirts. ( I have to get me one of the TPU T-Shirts from Girl Genius.) But what I find interesting about QC's T-Shirts is most of them are shirts that the characters in the strip are wearing or have worn. I imagine it started out as "Hey, this would be a neat shirt," so Jeph Jaques decided to draw it on one of the characters. And people saw it, said "Hey! That's a neat shirt! Where can I buy it?" "Uh, nowhere, I made it up." "Aww, I want one!." [Insert Light Bulb Here]
Which is cool. Especially since they're nifty shirts. One of these days, I have to get a TEH shirt. But I do have to wonder what the future holds in the realms of product placement for webcomics. Some webcomics have done ads involving their characters, but they're almost always separate from normal continuity. Most of the examples I can think of are for games, like PvP's Star City comics, or some ads that Graveyard Greg and Webtroll did for a couple of RPGs (here, here, and here. We're probably a long way from anything like real product placement happening, but I wonder. I don't think it'll really matter, as long as it's all disclosed and on the up and up. Maybe we'll see the return of the old radio model, where every ten minutes, Orson Wells will stop and threaten your tires.
