A journal documenting a process of creating and launching a webcomic business...

Monday, November 14, 2005

Do I need a business manager for a webcomic?

As I trudge through all of the work needed to be done to create my webcomic, I have run into the issue of time. Apparently there are only 24 hours in a day to make the comic AND create/run the business. This is a dilemma every start up business has but in the case of a webcomic and intellectual properties can be quite a patch of quick sand.

There are so many things I need to do for the actual webcomic, I barely have enough time to get any of the business end together. Or, is it the other way around? It depends on the week. The dangerous part is that a lot can be lost if any of this is ignored. Check out Penny-Arcade's debacle. So, what can I do? Some would say get a business manager. However, this may not be as easy as one would assume.

A few webcomic sites have successfully found solutions to business management. Penny-Arcade got lucky and ran into a guy in happenstance. CTRL-ALT-DEL, VGCats and NuklearPower have their guy Pierre that happened to run ZeStuff and PVP has his wife as a business manager. Other solutions like collectives such as BlankLabel comics splits this work between them. However, they all got lucky or had it sitting right in front of them. Regrettably I do not have any of these options available to me. So, where do you find a business manager A) Likes and works with webcomics, B) Start working for no money, C) I can trust?

I am afraid so far my research has found that luck is 90% of that webcomics game. The other 10% is recognizing it when it comes along. What surprises me is that no one has tried making a business out of being a business manager for webcomics. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I know I would bite on that.

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