DJ Coffman has a post today on SPUN, a webcomic on the CBS Sportsline website. The new comic by John Moore is apparently a paying gig with CBS.
This point has been pushed a lot this year by multiple folks - if you want to get paid as a cartoonist one avenue would be to tailor a comic very tightly to a specific subject matter and then approach companies and communitys relevant to the subject matter with it.
It would be interesting to get more examples of success with this approach - post 'em in the comments here if you know of any...
Comments
I suspect that quite a few
I suspect that quite a few existing webcomics could find a natural community audience without extra tailoring. I've got fantasy and science-fiction particularly in mind: those genres have strong fan communities, and there are a lot of very good stories in webcomic form.
Let's not forget Frank: The
Let's not forget Frank: The Comic, for LiveJournal!
http://community.livejournal.com/frankthecomic/
Yirmumah itself is a good example
Don't forget that Coffman's placed Yirmumah itself on Cracked and other, quality websites run by stalwart men who have wallets.
Kernel Panic
Kernel Panic was originally started as a monthly comic appearing on an IBM Website covering various Unix platforms. I was hired by an IBM contractor who was maintaining the site, and it remained that way right up until the dot-com bubble burst, the company was let go, and the website was left to die.
I got paid a pretty good chunk of change for that gig. Never got the last check, though.
I remember that! I think...
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Xaviar Xerexes
I am a Modern Major Generality.
No, that's Help Desk.
No, Help Desk featured OS/2 from time to time. Kernel Panic focused pretty exclusively on Unix and Unix-like operating systems (like Linux) and is still updated (though somewhat sporadically) on my site (http://ubersoft.net/kpanic.)
I know who signs my
I know who signs my checks.
The big syndicates seem to be doing a lousy job of web-syndication, instead trying to run their own content site of just... comics.
Need to get more webcomics piggybacking on content sites. Self-syndicating. It was the design of such bite-sized entertainment.