This is, specifically, a business model for single-panel cartoonists. Strippers may be able to use it, graphic novelists like me definitely won't be able to.
gk, you might get some useful ideas from looking at http://www.cagle.com - it started as Daryl Cagle's personal site but it's morphed into pretty much a political cartoon destination site, complete with a similar licensing thing.
Also worth looking at: Brad Guigar's webcomics.com, or just grab his two books on making a living from comics. He's tried a lot of things over the years doing a strip.
There's also the subscription model. Usually this is the domain of porn, as "being able to buy stuff on the net" currently tends to overlap with "is old enough to look at drawings of sexytimes". Slipshine (http://orgymania.net) is a good example of this; it's got a constant stream of work from a lot of cartoonists.
Hiveworks http://thehiveworks.com/index.php is also interesting; they have an ever-growing network of longform comics. There's a lot of cross-promotion, and a few people whose jobs are solely to deal with maintaining sites, buying external ads, and whatnot. They claim to be able to get a new artist up to making a living off their comic in about a year now.
Personally I'm doing a mixture of Kickstarter and Patreon right now; I'm a graphic novelist, and my work is best read in chunks at least the size of a chapter, if not a whole story. So I use Kickstarter to fund printing a pile of books for existing fans, and to sell to new fans at cons and online, and I'm starting to experiment with using Patreon to get paid by the page.
..I didn't mean for this to be a long post talking about other successful business models I've seen in cartooning, but here we are! Good luck with your gag cartoon syndicate, gk.
You should totally link to your work. HN encourages self-promotion and damn.. I went to your profile, found a single link to a .. well .. graphic novel(?) and was blown away.
Amazing work, I'll see if I can get my hands on the previous release somehow.
Yeah, graphic novel is the right word. Thanks! It's at http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/ to save other people who may be curious from going through those multiple steps; it's about a robot lady who's dragged outside of reality by her ex-boyfriend.
You can order a copy of volume 1 (of 3) from my online store, 2 is at the printers after a lot of delays, mostly on my end, mostly because seasonal depression.
Thanks for the kind words and all the references. Looking at cagle.com is a great idea -- it's very similar to what I have in mind, just with political cartoons.
It's certainly interesting to see how other artists are monetizing their creative work... Especially how different types of artists do it (graphic novelists, political cartoonists, single panel cartoonists, strip cartoonists, etc.).
gk, you might get some useful ideas from looking at http://www.cagle.com - it started as Daryl Cagle's personal site but it's morphed into pretty much a political cartoon destination site, complete with a similar licensing thing.
Also worth looking at: Brad Guigar's webcomics.com, or just grab his two books on making a living from comics. He's tried a lot of things over the years doing a strip.
There's also the subscription model. Usually this is the domain of porn, as "being able to buy stuff on the net" currently tends to overlap with "is old enough to look at drawings of sexytimes". Slipshine (http://orgymania.net) is a good example of this; it's got a constant stream of work from a lot of cartoonists.
Hiveworks http://thehiveworks.com/index.php is also interesting; they have an ever-growing network of longform comics. There's a lot of cross-promotion, and a few people whose jobs are solely to deal with maintaining sites, buying external ads, and whatnot. They claim to be able to get a new artist up to making a living off their comic in about a year now.
Personally I'm doing a mixture of Kickstarter and Patreon right now; I'm a graphic novelist, and my work is best read in chunks at least the size of a chapter, if not a whole story. So I use Kickstarter to fund printing a pile of books for existing fans, and to sell to new fans at cons and online, and I'm starting to experiment with using Patreon to get paid by the page.
..I didn't mean for this to be a long post talking about other successful business models I've seen in cartooning, but here we are! Good luck with your gag cartoon syndicate, gk.