1 / 26
Sep 2023

Can you share how much you got? I don’t wanna waste my time if it’s not sustainable. :open_mouth::dash::smoking:

  • created

    Sep '23
  • last reply

    Sep '23
  • 25

    replies

  • 1.2k

    views

  • 1

    user

  • 68

    likes

It takes time to build an audience that will translate to ad rev and ink donations.
But I've been around since 2015 and yes I have made some rainy day money from this site itself. It's not enough to pay bills but enough to treat myself to stuff.

It's a lot harder now with ad revenue being less that it used to be. Plus there are a lot more series on the site than there used to be so readers may have to choose between many more creators to give ink to.

There is no hard number to reach for. You might find a die-hard fan that will support anything you do in a double digit pool of subs, or it might take you thousands of subs to get a steady readership to contribute to ad impressions and support.

But definitely don't focus on the money in the webseries game. You will come out disappointed. Do it for the love of creating and storytelling.

I don’t wanna waste my time if it’s not sustainable. :open_mouth::dash::smoking:

Real talk: That's not to right way to look at it. If you're solely doing it for money, people can tell the lack on integrity in the work. There is no easy 'get rich quick' answer and if that's how you view it, you're not creating art for the right reasons.

Be genuine, work to improve your craft, build communities, market it with social media and hopefully you'll get noticed.
But you have to keep on working with a long term goal, not short term monetization.


I celebrated my first comic's 5th anniversary last month and I currently have 5.9K followers here
At the same time, I earned slightly more by selling the same comics on itch and... around 15 times that on patreon...
If you're in just for the money - don't bother, your chance of living off your webcomic is very slim

Well yeah, as people up there said, "I don't want to waste time if it's not sustainable" is not a good approach. You can have this mindset if you're a popular creator with a fanbase already. If you are a beginning creator - it's not sustainable. You have a chance if you have amazing comic with fantastic art in a popular genre that will get the big banners and all the promotion immediately. Otherwise, well 🤷‍♀️

Oh no I’m looking to see if I could make a career out of doing comics full time because I really love it but I also wants to make a living as well. Sorry I worded it wrong!

Ohhhhh nice! Thanks for sharing that! I see that it’s not enough to pay rent, but can get chu groceries /gas. 🥰🥰🥰

I'm glad you clarified it! Freelance artists can have a very hard time living only off of their art. I work a full time career and sell art commissions when I just need something extra and my webcomic is for free because I just want to tell a story I've had in my head for almost 10 years.

If its something that you want to do full time, its a lot of hard work and I really wish you the best with it! :slight_smile:

$30 since I joined in 2020 (and I love every reader who donated ink to me very much! It means a lot!).

If you want to make money, throwing things up for free online ain't gonna cut it. You have to think more seriously about what you do as a business, and approach it from that perspective. That doesn't necessarily mean not being truthful to your artistic vision, but you have to do market research, then figure out marketing strategies, where your audiences is, how you work and how that would benefit/detract from your business, etc. For example for some people it might make more sense to devote all of your energy to getting traditionally published, for other people, throwing their work up on Amazon/D2D, for yet others it's crowdfunding and conventions. It's a lot of "not very fun business research" you're going to need to do besides make your thing and post it.

If that's your mindset, then don't. It takes a lot of time to get a fanbase. For me, I made most of money from patreon and ko-fi, which came from my followers on twitter.

Being an artist who's beginner, you'll probably won't get any money for months or maybe years. So don't do webcomic for money. That's why a lot of people did it for hobby, until they get a lot of money doing it, then it became a full time job. That's how it works usually

I am not an expert in tax and financial law by any means, but to me (a Canadian) an LLC-type arrangement is only necessary when your business has assets and liabilities, as a way to protect your personal life from your business ventures. I actually chose the "get traditionally published" route as my choice of professional growth (my webcomic is just something I do for fun for myself, but my writing and art style are better suited for kid comics and the trad publishing side of that is what's making all of the money) so I will probably never even need that sort of arrangement. Most of the published comic creators I know never bother. It might be worth it if you're serious about your self-publishing aspirations though.

Not as a creator myself, but I make a good income by drawing for other people's webcomics, be it as lead / promo art / concept artist / patreon exclusive artist or assistant.

Then webcomic making isn't for you, if you want to live solely of what you do or create, then... What do you have that is worth spending time looking at, paying for? Sadly when you want to make a living out of something you gotta think more like a business.

Is the quality of the art good, does it attract people? Is the quality of the story or writing good enough to keep them hooked and interested? Do you have a steady posting schedule with consistent quality of previous aspects to creeate loyalty and long term interest? Do you have a loyal fanbase that will not only read what you make but will be willing to support you financially with the smallest donation or higher numbers? From all the artists, writers, independent authors or by editorial that are out there making new content daily, why would someone pick you? That's some of the things you need to think about before trying to bet everything in a comic.

If you want to make a comic because you want to, then those aspects shouldn't matter as much, time is going to be wasted one way or another and you'll only care if you put a goal that has more chances of not being fullfilled.

I think its important to state that most comic creators do not just stick with a platform and then it suddenly fulfills all of their monetary needs. Doing comics for a living full time tends to look very different than posting a free webcomic on a free platform.

When I went into comics I knew I was going into it full time and I posted my comics everywhere, self published physical copies, took them to conventions, set up meetings with publishers and agents, etc etc. Even when I started talking to webtoon about working with them I had an irl meeting with an editor at a comic convention first. Lots of legwork in real life that’s almost comparable to job interviews.

It took me dozens of concepts and attempts before I was able to develop something good enough to make it work financially. Its extremely rare for anybody in comics to have only one comic they do for years and years and then eventually it hits. There is a lot of trial and error and you need to be willing to not put all of your eggs in one basket.

I’ve been doing this professionally for nearly a decade and it was only the past couple of years where I felt financially stable. I make most of my income from traditional publishing in the form of advances and royalties but I also have a Patreon that pays my rent and bills (which also took YEARS of trial and error before I figured out what it was that I could do to get people to pay me money month to month).

There are very few jobs where you can just casually post your content online and a significant amount of money will come and that’s extremely true for webcomics. But its still worth doing if you want to do it and it brings you personal satisfaction.

Oh yeah that sounds tough! Thanks for sharing your journey with comics, bro.

For patreon and ko-fi, back then, I just focused on my comic 100%. I hardly done any commission. But the again, it depends on your genre. My genre is BL and it's supposed to be nsfw. I made it locked behind patreon and ppl willing to pay for it.

I'm currently trying to revamp everything back to 0 cuz I wanna take drawing webcomic seriously starting this year.