Comic Creator Illustrates His Way to $30,000

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, what's up? This is Chris Guillebeau. I am excited to bring you another episode of Side Hustle School today. I hope your day is going well wherever you are. Now listen, I've had some requests for fiction writers or novelists or anybody doing that kind of creative work.

Can you actually make money doing that? Well, a lot of people don't, but some people do. So what do those people do differently? How do they follow their passion? Well, I hate that phrase, but how do they do something they enjoy and believe in, but yet also make money?

Today, we'll look at a science fiction comic book author who makes something like $30,000 a year on the side through his comic books. That story's coming up in a moment, but first let's hear from a listener with a shout out for someone who's helped you along the way. Who has helped you on your Sadasil journey? - Hi Chris, this is Diana Lennon from Lasset, Louisiana. And I wanna give a shout out to you for having the Side Hustle School and my friend Angie, who told me about Side Hustle School.

I listen, I have a Sadasil book. It's gonna be coming and I'm following all the tips on the different aspects of promoting and selling the book from all the different episodes you have. So thanks, have a great week, bye-bye. [Music]

The science fiction world Travis Van Graaf has created is an elaborate one. Set on the colony of Atreus, it describes inhabitants who have been cut off from humanity and endured generations of civil war.

A gleaming city remains and beyond its walls sprawls a lawless expanse. But as the story goes, the government may be hiding something worse. This world called Liberty is now Travis's side hustle portrayed through a graphic novel and a new podcast. It's the fruition of his long love affair with sci-fi. He remembers seeing Terminator 2 at the theater when he was just four years old and spending hours playing with Star Wars toys.

In high school, he graduated to playing lots of Dungeons and Dragons, which is where he first got the idea to create his own world. In college, he started documenting the stories for this alternative world. He was interested in alternative moralities, the idea that there is no universal good or bad, and that social constructs are largely subjective. And he decided the best way to portray this world, Liberty, would be through comics. Over the following decade, his side hustle gradually took shape as he did other things for money.

Travis chose the pen name, John Dawsonshire Publishing, and two years ago, in preparation for the release of his first comic book, he incorporated the business. Now, Liberty, which is brought to life by artists and writers who collaborate with Travis from all over the world, has been made into its first comic book volume and a podcast. That podcast is an audio drama, meaning it's scripted with voice actors and sound effects, sort of like listening to a movie. Travis says he started the hustle because he thought it would be easy, as well as inexpensive, to make a comic and produce a podcast. Well, he began by selling his book at a convention called New York Comic-Con last October, and things began extremely well.

The first weekend he got a sale was also the weekend he broke a record for sales at a convention with 304 copies of his graphic novel sold. He effectively made a new sale every six and a half minutes, eight hours a day for four days straight, without any established brand recognition or fan base. He remembers dancing with the last customer to celebrate the surprising success. Still, it was a lot more work than he expected. He had to learn about advertising, marketing, convention booth rental, ISBN numbers, and more, and he also had to take some financial risk.

His ongoing expenses are almost entirely based on print costs, which were $12,000 for that first graphic novel. Currently, more than 90% of the side hustle's income comes from book sales. Travis has recently begun a donation page, as well as an advertising campaign for the podcast, which is released every two weeks. He says these conventions and social media, especially Reddit, have been the best way to market his Liberty series. He also says becoming part of these online communities and adding value to them is crucial to organically growing a fan base while making friends and continuing to learn about the genre.

He says gaining this profit has been a game of attrition and one that he looks forward to winning even more someday. His work is entirely self-published and self-distributed, which comes with both benefits and challenges, and Travis runs this empire from his home in Sarasota, Florida, in addition to his full-time job managing properties. He and his wife also have to manage a 75-pound dog named Enzo, who may or may not be getting his own comic series soon. It definitely hasn't been easy, the way that he first hoped and predicted, but with volume two of Liberty almost ready to print, Travis's hard work seems to be paying off. He says he loves seeing the new art produced, getting parts from his voice actors for the podcast, and he describes everyday working on the hustle feeling like Christmas, or at least a Christmas where you do a lot of work.

[Music]

While the Liberty series is definitely not a get-rich-quick plan, but that's why it's a side hustle. He's not depending on it for his primary income. He is doing it first and foremost because he enjoys it. He loves building this world, telling the character stories through the graphic novels and now the podcast, but the key point is he's also making money, $30,000 a year since he started. Now, I believe you should pursue a creative project because you want to pursue it, not for some other motivation.

But what I hope to do with the show, at least one of my goals for people who are artists or writers or musicians or something else, is to help them go from doing creative projects only for the love of doing them to doing them for love and money. In other words, I think you don't have to choose, at least if you get a few things right. The side hustle book coming out in September shows a step-by-step plan for doing this. And I also want to give a shout out to a friend of mine, Jeff Goins, who has a book out called "Real Artists Don't Starve," which as soon as I heard that title, I thought, what a brilliant title. And it's also a great resource for anyone who identifies with that title or perhaps who knows someone who's an artist.

You might want to make more money from their work. Once again, that's Jeff Goins and "Real Artists Don't Starve." I hope you enjoyed this episode. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/199. As always, remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. I'll be back tomorrow with episode 200.

I'm Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]