In my ten years of cartooning, people often want to talk about the money. They say things like, “You must be rich with all those newspapers you are in.” In the first place, I’m not in that many newspapers and not even syndicated. Even if I was in syndication, that is not where the money is in cartooning. Speaking of syndication, the lottery has better odds.

So how does the cartoonist make his or her money? The most lucrative part of cartooning is a little-known but huge business called “image licensing”. Image licensing has been around a long time. It is known to be about an 80 billion dollar a year business, yet so few people know about it. That could be because, though the end user is the general retail buying public, this demographic of our population rarely sees or cares to see what goes on behind the scenes.

Art licensing can work in a variety of ways. It can be an individual artist approaching a manufacturer with an image that the artist feels will make the manufacturer’s products sell better. Sometimes a deal is made, more often not. When it is, the artist receives a negotiated royalty, a percentage of each sale. There are other types of licensing that work with sponsorships, such as an oil company sponsoring Nascar and they get to put their logo on an actual race car.

LIMA is the industry association. One does not have to be a member to be in the art licensing game but it doesn’t hurt. Such associations are a great way to make contacts.

But what if the artist is not traditional. Maybe he/she is a cartoonist. Sometimes deals are done the opposite way in this situation. A manufacturer of, say collectible clocks or lunch boxes will approach Disney and ask for the exclusive licensing deal on that product for a certain image or series of images.

In my case, I started as an unknown writer and cartoonist I was having no luck becoming syndicated yet my naivity kept me from becoming pessimistic. So I approached a number of trade magazines that desperately needed good cartoons with their articles and sold them for what I could. I slowly built a portfolio and finally was able to take it to a manufacturer/drop-shipper who was willing to take a chance and make the products with a royalty split. I did not have a licensing agent so my attorney handled the contract for me. It is always a good idea, if your strength is in art and not numbers to have a professional in another area (like an attorney or agent) do that part of the job.

Within a few years, I found other manufacturers who made different products than the once I was currently licensing, and was able to negotiate with them using a similar contract.

My work has appeared frequently in publications worldwide, I am yet to be syndicated, yet the traditional old way (before the Internet) was to become syndicated first, then manufactured for licensing. Syndication companies are even utilizing the Internet to lure good cartoonists and publish them often in online newspapers. The days of hard copy print may be a thing of the past.

I highly recommend for any artist, writer or cartoonist to explore the Internet for options beyond newspaper syndication. There are so many opportunties, one can almost pick and choose. Will fortune and fame happen overnight? It could, but I sort of doubt it. In most cases, mine, at least, it took ten years just to really get started.

Ten years ago I was working and living in a metal warehouse and had less than a hundred cartoons up on a free domain (I couldn’t afford a www domain). Now I have eight domains, seven stores with almost 80,000 products in about 100 different categories , and the most visited offbeat cartoon site on the Internet, Londons Times Cartoons with over 8500 original images and almost 9 million visitors. That’s not so bad for ten year’s work, at least not for me.

One has to pay their dues, it is said. But it is worth paying those dues. Believe me.

About the Author:

Cartoonist Rick London and his artists has created over 8000 original offbeat cartoon, Londons Times Cartoons Cartooning: Where Is The Money?