Saffron and Sage

A reader asks

Greetings! I hope this isn’t a very personal or rude question to ask, but I am looking to make my own webcomic in the near future and would like to know from someone with firsthand experience in the webcomic field how much money can be made in making and running a webcomic, provided that I am the only artist and writer working on it? I simply wish to know how feasible the task would be before I fully attempt it.

I had half a mind to just reply “None! Lol!” and a reaction face and have that be that but let me give you a slightly more detailed answer.

I’ve been making comics on and off for about five years, and running a webcomics blog on the side that I advertise the comic on. They’re sort of hand in hand in Daniel Kelly as a Brand Experience™. And I’ve achieved some measure of success! I have 3,200 tumblr followers and pick up one or two a day on average. I get ~1,000 unique monthly visitors to my site with some regularity, and hundreds of pageviews a day, a number which has spiked dramatically in the last month

(I’ve been posting here a bit less lately, but I have been doing stuff. Mostly Final Fantasy XIV, but some productive stuff too!).

I’ve achieved some measure of critical success as well. My current comic, Saffron and Sage, has been accepted into the SpiderForest webcomic collective, a short story I wrote was accepted into SpiderForest’s latest anthology, coming next month, I fixed the Dumbing of Age website one time, and I even got a critic quote on the back of Order of the Stick Volume 6. I’m not a famous celebrity or anything like that, even within the small and insular world of webcomics I’m still just a normal dude with a weird hobby, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m doing better than like 99% of webcomics, most of which burn out after ten pages.

Here’s how the cash works out

Monthly Expenses

ART FEES: $280

WEBSITE HOSTING: $16

DOMAIN HOSTING: ~$2 domains are cheap.

Monthly Income

Someone please help me budget my family is starving.

If I were a good artist, I could avoid spending all that money and art and spend my Saturdays instead (and I’d be posting this from my own house instead of an apartment an hour bus from town), but I’d still only be making enough to to go on a date once a year on my Saturdays that I wouldn’t have. My great dream for comics isn’t to make a killing, or even to make a living, I just want to break even. Please help me break even I’ll let you see comics before anyone else.

There’s maybe a couple of dozen people in the whole entire world who make reasonable money off webcomics directly. If you’re really good and willing to bust your ass you might be one of them, but if you’re looking at webcomics as a profitable venture, buddy, I’ve got some bad news.