Chewing Pencils

Tip #6:- Look for the niche markets.

I’ll say this just once - if you want to make some money from your cartoons, forget about the newspapers!! Yes, the papers are a potential market, perhaps the most obvious market, but the chances of you ending up there are slim.

Sorry to be so blunt, but they are!

So while you aim for fame and fortune in the papers, remember you still have to eat. There’s plenty of money in other areas, which is what this post is all about…

Since first writing this post, one of the niche markets that I’ve seen cartoonists trying to break into is the mobile phone market. Now that screens have such high resolution and the phones can do everything but change your underwear, there is potential for your work to not only be displayed on a person’s fridge, but on their phone as well. I’ve never got around to exploring it at much depth, so I’d be interested to hear if anyone has had any success.

Anyway, here’s what I had to say about looking for your niche in the cartoon world:

When I am introduced as a cartoonist to new people, often they will ask what newspaper I work for. Despite the rapid expansion of markets for cartoons to appear in, it seems that the newspapers are still “the place” where people most expect to see your work. If you’re in the paper, then you must be a real cartoonist. I did work for one of the local papers for about a year early on in my career. They weren’t great to work for as a freelance artist and the pay was terrible. But at the time, I thought that this should be my ultimate goal.

The newspaper is, without doubt, the most obvious and well known of all the cartoon markets. Spot gags, editorial cartoons and comic strips have featured in the paper for as long as we can all remember, and most of the famous cartoonists are all newspaper based. It’s an honourable goal to aim for this type of work. But if you’re wanting to make some money from drawing cartoons, holding out for that newspaper job will see you and your family go hungry.

The reality is that full-time positions with newspapers are rare and only become available when the present cartoonist is head-hunted, retires or dies. One noted US cartoonist suggested that a person has more chance of becoming a top NBA basketballer than becoming an editorial cartoonist in America. Ouch! There is some good news though. There are plenty of cartoonists, who make a decent living, that never have their work published in a newspaper. They have realised that to achieve and maintain high levels of income means looking for niche markets and exploiting them (in a nice way) to their full potential.

Amongst other things, the dictionary defines a niche as a special area of demand for a product or service. For a cartoonist, that means an area of special interest or need in our community that could benefit from the addition of cartoons. A niche could be a particular type of sport, religious belief, occupation, environmental concern, health issue, hobby, craft, finance option and so on. All of them could use cartoons and many of them will pay well to do so. Like I mentioned before, I’ve only worked for a newspaper once. In terms of income, they were the worst paying customer I’ve ever had. I’ve had far more success targetting journals, corporate training departments, consulting businesses and educational institutions. To put it in dollar terms, the amount of money I received from one cartoon for a journal, for instance, was the equivalent of nearly a dozen cartoons for the paper.

In my experience as a freelancer, it has simply been a waste of time and money spending all my energy targetting the newspapers. But with so many niche markets out there, where do you start? Here’s a few tips for helping you identify and target some niche cartoon markets:

1. While the newspaper might be limited in terms of making money from your cartoons, it is a great source for identifying niche markets. Turn to the classified section and you’ll see listed hundreds of small business - many of them could use a cartoon or two in their classified advertising. Why not contact them and suggest it?

2. Your local newsagent is a good source of information on niche markets. Take an hour or two to browse the magazine section to see what people are writing about and, by extension, what people are reading about. If there are lots of magazines on, say, horses then there is a good chance that an opportunity exists for some decent horse related cartoons to be published. Ask the owner of the newspagent if it is ok for you to write down the contact details of the publisher and editor or, if money allows, purchase a few magazines and study them at home.

3. The local library is a similar wealth of niche market information, as is your university or college library. These tend to hold more technical journals designed for a much smaller market, but you would be surprised how many journals there are.

4. It goes without saying, but the internet is perhaps the best source for identifying markets. The disadvantage it has over the newsagent or library is that you need to know what you\’re looking for in the first place. But, if you know your niche, you may be able to find a market for your horse cartoons in Brazil, New Zealand and Zambia by some well thought out searches on Google. However, you will find advertisements appearing on many sites - like Chewing Pencils. As competition for advertising space increases, these text based ads will soon move to image based ads aswell. The advertising company may be a niche market. The advertisers displaying their ads may be too. Options are everywhere on the internet!

5. The best clients in terms of dollar value are corporate businesses. Particularly big corporate business like oil and finance companies. These companies are so big that they have there own, in-house publications that are distributed to employees and customers. Take a trip into town with your folio one day, visit some of the corporate giants, and ask to see the editor of the in-house magazine. Also ask if you can speak to the manager of the training department as their training manuals will need illustrating too. The annual report could probably use a cartoon or two, and some upcoming marketing brochures might need some artwork. These types of jobs are gold to the freelancer, and much more readily available than newspaper work. The government is also a potential niche market, but I’ve always run into copyright and ownershp arguments with them - tread carefully.

6. Diversify. Just like putting all of your cartooning eggs into the newspaper basket is a bad move, so too is relying on just one niche. While one niche might supply you with a steady stream of work and income for a little while, chances are that it will only last a short time. So make sure you continually look for new and different places to get your work published.

7. Be selective. Your local knitting group is a niche market, and they might really, really want a cartoon for their newsletter that has a distribution list of twenty people. Don’t bother with clients like this - let one of their grandkids do it as a school project! Remember, that cartooning is a serious business, and while it is ok to do some charitable work from time to time, you will want to focus your efforts on clients that have the capacity to pay and pay well. Not all of them will be able to pay recommended rates, but $5 and a wooly jumper won’t pay the gas bill.

If you’ve got stories (good and bad) of unique niche markets that you’ve drawn for over the years, tell us about it by leaving a comment.