When most people start out in webcomics, they're quietly thinking about the piles of cash they're going to make off of their cheap cartoons through ad revenue and merchandise sales. Little do they know that most webcomics are a money-hole; with the author either making just enough money to pay for the comic itself, or not making any at all. But if the cost is cheap, then there's really no loss anyway. Only the cream of the crop can dare to say that they "live" off of their comics, and not only do these creators employ quality art and/or writing, they make sure to update more than once a week without breaking their schedule. Most small-time guys have to take on commissions or beg for money like tramps, which could mean that they put new pages of their comic on hold, which means loss of fans, which means loss of money anyway. Regardless, the lifeblood of the webcomics world has always been and will continue to be advertising.
But something has happened on the Internet in the last few years. A development that could shatter what has been built up so delicately in the last few decades: crowd-funding. In 2008, both the popular Kickstarter and IndieGoGo were launched, and the first and so far only project I ever backed was the Boxer Hockey and Diesel Print Project. I, like many fans, was excited to support such a project, and the 6-thousand dollar goal was exceeded by over 20-thousand dollars in less than a week. I had never seen that much money raised in so little time, and for such a less-than-noble cause. Of course, problems arose with the printing of both the books and the t-shirts, and not only were the surplus funds exhausted, shipments would be late. I received my package last week, and I pledged my support last September. Tyson Hesse, the author, ended up breaking even after the ordeal and taking up freelance work instead, which cost him the time to ship the packages and to update the comic. This event, and witnessing countless other, more insipid causes reaching out for funding, made me callous towards crowd-funding in general, and I pledged instead to never support a Kickstarter project ever again, no matter what the cause.
And then Penny Arcade proposed the idea of abandoning their ads in favor of crowd-funding. As Mike describes here, PA has launched their own Kickstarter to run their site for one year without advertising, which was apparently a burden on their fans. I wouldn't know, I've been running psychological-warfare-free for a while now. What strikes me as odd is that Penny Arcade would even need a Kickstarter for such a goal. They are the only webcomic-business that I am aware of, complete with their own convention, children's charity, tie-in video games, and over a dozen employees that make it all happen. And yet, over 250,000 dollars were raised over the last week, so now the site will run exclusively on fan support instead of the advertising middle-man. Unless, of course, the whole project fails like it did with Boxer Hockey and they come crawling back to the safe-zone of ads. Mike and Jerry are no strangers to financial trouble, as early in the comic's history they had to fight for the rights to their own work and ended up begging for donations to keep the site running. However, considering their string of success in recent years that no other webcomic can compare to, I like to think that this experiment will work out in the end. I just wouldn't be surprised if it explodes in their face like it has for others.
Jamie Noguchi from Yellow Peril has his own criticisms here. Not only would I agree with him that only webcomics that are already a big deal could possibly benefit from crowd-funding, the cause itself and the prizes offered to backers should be serious. Regardless, many of my friends are excited about crowd-funding and think it's preferable to fund creative works online through the support of fans than through the support of extrinsic marketing. I on the other hand will continue to ignore all these witty and charming Kickstarter projects while I browse my favorite sites with Ad-Block turned on. Newgrounds seems to be the only site that hates me for that.
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