This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Even though Comic Con couldn't happen this year, sadly, and by that I mean the main San Diego Comic Con with hundreds of thousands of attendees, and then also all the other Comic Cons, there's one in Seattle, one in New York, probably a whole bunch of others as well, millions of people will look forward to its return. And of course, comics and anime and fantasy culture continue in lots of other forms as well. It's something that has really blown up in the past, I don't know, a couple of decades, I guess, but it feels like year after year, it just becomes more and more mainstream. I have almost finished reading a new trilogy, at least it was new to me, that I have really enjoyed. I almost said it's a trilogy of three books, but you know, that's kind of redundant.
It is a trilogy, let's just call it that. This is the series called "Broken Earth," the "Broken Earth" novels by N.K. Jemisin. And I don't know N.K. Jemisin, but I think she's amazing.
And I really, really enjoyed the first two novels, so I'm excited to get, I'm about halfway through the third one. So I recommend those to you, the "Broken Earth" novels by N.K. Jemisin. Now, in today's episode, this all connects, a listener wants to build a fan site showcasing black superheroes from DC and Marvel Comics. And of course, he wants to know how to monetize it.
So I love the concept. Let's talk about what that looks like. How do you monetize a site for fans of black superheroes? That's coming up after this message from our sponsor. Thanks, sponsor.
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Hi, Chris. This is Kendrick from Dallas, Texas. And I've been listening to the show for about a year now. The stories are very inspirational and give me the extra motivation I need to keep working on my side hustle. So I'm thinking about building a website that showcases all of the black superheroes in the DC and Marvel universes.
It would feature profiles of the characters, the latest news and updates, as well as where they can be found on TV shows or movies. So my question is, what's the best way to monetize a fan site like this? Preferably without plastering a lot of ads on the site, which I think takes away from the overall user experience. Thanks again. And I look forward to your response.
Kendrick, what's up, man? Thank you so much for listening in Dallas. And I'm so glad to know that you're moving forward with different ideas and such. Now, as I mentioned in the introduction, I really liked the idea of focusing on black superheroes, but I had to think a lot about the question because business-wise it's tricky because you can't really do merchandise for something like this. When you're thinking about the DC and Marvel universes, it's a lot like Disney.
They're very protective of their intellectual property and anything being commercialized with it. So obviously there's a ton of fan sites, but they keep a pretty close eye on that stuff to make sure that people aren't profiting from it in different ways. So merchandise is tough. I also agree that plastering ads everywhere does take away from the user experience, like Kendrick said, but I also think it just doesn't, it's probably not gonna bring in a lot of money. So it's not really a question of user experience versus money.
I think if you had a bunch of ads everywhere, you wouldn't make a lot of money and it would be a poor user experience. So two good reasons to not have a bunch of ads. So what do you do instead? And here my first thought is, maybe this isn't your moneymaker, right? 'Cause not everything that we do has to be for money.
Like obviously here on this podcast, I'm talking a lot about creating financial stability and I tend to focus people away from hobbies and more towards something that can be something you enjoy, but also make money for you. But from time to time, I also wanna make the disclaimer that not everything has to connect to money. And maybe there's something else that you do for your moneymaking side hustle and this is just the thing that you do for fun. Okay, so it's not that this couldn't be monetized somehow, I just wanna encourage you and say, maybe my first thought is that it doesn't have to necessarily be your moneymaker. My second thought is, if you're like, but I really want it to, well, if it takes off, it could become a forum or an online community supported by like a Patreon like donation system.
And I think that's probably the best bet, like that's probably the best outcome. But I also wanna note that Patreon really doesn't work well without an established audience. So that's something that kind of happens after the fact. I don't think you can launch with Patreon. I think you have to build up a lot of content and community first.
And so if you're really committed to this project, then perhaps you can do that. But otherwise, I would just kind of keep my expectations reasonable on the monetization side for this project and maybe just ask myself, why else do I want to do it? And if I am motivated to keep doing it with or without the monetization, then that's great. And if you're not, that's okay too. So there's all kinds of things that we can do in life.
I think life is constantly about choice and what's important to me now and what are my values and what is the best work that reflects those values, et cetera. And I'm trying to figure that out myself. So a few thoughts from me there. Listeners, if you have any thoughts for Kendrick, speak up, let us know. Perhaps we can revisit this topic at some point, find out what he does.
So thank you, Kendrick. And to anybody out there, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're gonna keep featuring them, delving into different ideas and projects, seeing what might have the most potential, navigating challenges, and hopefully helping everyone move forward positively. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Sodasoleschool. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
