Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Guardian profiles The Oatmeal

The Guardian profiles The Oatmeal:
Dig a little deeper, and you discover quite why Inman is protective of his online comics. He says that the three-year-old business makes him about $500,000 (£318,000) annually, of which 25% is from advertising, and the remainder from merchandising. Inman monetises his content via mugs, T-shirts, posters and bumper stickers. Family members work for him, dutifully shipping his wares to dolphin haters across the globe.

(Is that revenue figure feasible? The product prices range from $5 to $45; the average is about $20. To get $375,000, or 75% of the total, in merchandise revenues requires selling 18,750 products (375,000/20) each year. That's 1,530 products per month, or 51 products every day. Given a reader base of about 7m, he only needs convert 0.02% of visitors to buy a product. The advertising revenues, of $175,000 per year, are reasonable given the visitor numbers.)