I'm not sure if there's anything new in this article from AOL's Small Business page, but I can never read enough about how creators make their money. The article features Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal, Brad Guiger of Evil Inc., and Chris Onstad of Achewood.

A warning, though, to aspiring creators who see visions of dollar signs after reading Inman's portion of the interview:

"The first month, [The Oatmeal] got around 200,000 people, and from 200,000 people, I thought I could make a living," says Inman. However, after only 50 people bought his self-published book. "I decided I was either gonna go back to my old job, making websites for people, or I was gonna go crazy with The Oatmeal and produce more comics. I started churning out comics like mad. Traffic went up, and sales went way up."

The Oatmeal is one of the more nakedly commercial webcomics endeavors out there. There's nothing wrong with that, but folks looking to write narrative comics aren't going to see traffic numbers like that, at least not for a long while. For most comics, the comic comes first and the business comes second. The Oatmeal is primarily a business that happens to use comics to sell merch and win freelance gigs.

Webcomic Artists Making a Living with Their Creativity [AOL Small Business via Evil Inc.]