Though the jury is still out whether I am funny, I know for a fact that I cannot draw a straight line. So I felt certainly given the advice I was given, no matter how many funny concepts and concepts I'd written, I would probably never be a contender. Then I met the late Marc Cohen online, a close friend of Peanut's creator Charles Schulz who advised me that many cartoons were done by teams of artists and writers. As I researched this even further, this was confirmed by top single-panel syndicated cartoonists Dave Coverly (Speed Bump), Leigh Rubin (Rubes) and John McPherson (Close To Home). Oddly enough, it was the bigger cartoonists, the one's who were "superstars" who spent their generous time talking to me about the business. By the time I finished learning from them, my confidence was up. That was April of 1997.



I won't bore you with too many of the details of my beginnings. Let's just say it was not a piece of cake.

The secret is simply to learn, research, and act. Keep working. If you draw, draw your cartoons. Send them out. Post them on the net. Let trade magazines know you exist. Blog. Do article marketing. Do everything you can. You will succeed if you don't give up. You will be one of the 1% or so who does.

It was not easy finding good artists. Some would stay a week. Some a few months, but they always left for bigger and better things. I thought, "who can blame them"? But I kept recruiting new ones. Finally the better ones were approaching me for a chance.

Being funny is enough. Find someone else to draw if you can't and split the profits.

Not all cartoons are meant to be funny. However, if you are billing your cartoon as a funny one, I might suggest you either be funny, or have a funny ghost writer.

One does not have to stop with a cartoon site. There are ways to produce revenue from them, such as making Ecards, creating a membership site, or selling the cartoons to magazines and newspapers, but the big money is in merchandising and licensing, that is, creating products, or letting others do it, with permission to use your cartoon images.

So what do you have to do to become a cartoonist? First get organized. Have a plan. If you are like me, a writer, and not an artist, you *must* believe in your humor. If you don't, it will suffer and so will those who have to view it.

Rejection is a part of the game. This is not for the weak of heart. But remember, some of the greatest writers of our times experienced rejection, a lot of it; such as Margaret Mitchell, Isaac Asimov, John Grisham and many others. Even Charles Schulz and Gary Larson (and of course yours truly, me)

When I started Londons Times Cartoons I could not afford a private domain so I put it up on a free web host with more pop-up ads than images. I was ridiculed in my community incessantly. It was brutal. I persisted. I learned that was the key as much as talent if not more so.

Be prepared to succeed. It may just happen when you aren't even aware. Suddenly I was getting calls, and emails to donate to private celebrity auctions, and autographs and requests from magazine publishers and such. I thought I was still receiving 100 visitors on a good day. I discovered I was receiving about 4000 per hour or 4.5 million per year, and still am

Charles Schultz and the other early pre-Internet pioneers are the true heroes. They had to work 1000 times harder than we do.

The English language is gold to a cartoonist. If you know what to do with words and phrases, you've jumped the highest hoop. If you don't, you can learn. Info is all over the Internet.

The Internet has virtually (no pun intended) leveled the playing field for anyone with the least bit of creativity who wants to express it.

Our founding fathers probably had cartooning in mind when they expanded upon Freedom Of Expression. There can be no purer form, in my humble opinion. And for those of us who truly love to express ourselves in a very different way, this forum was built for us. Good luck to you all!