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Great example of making money doing what you love. Great example of making money doing what you love.
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Old 03-14-2010, 11:20 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Default Great example of making money doing what you love.
Awhile back I read this and felt like it was another example similar to Steve's making money solely by blogging and recommending products he likes.

The Oatmeal is a website that some not-too-old guy started 8 months ago to share his (quite funny) comics with the world.

According to him, in only 8 months he's gone from 0 to 4.6 million visitors per month, and is making enough money from selling comic books/posters of comics to be able to draw his comics full time and not work at a regular job again. He also just recently got a book deal, or something.

I just thought this guy exemplifies Steve's lessons about his blog perfectly: Create and deliver value.

The Oatmeal creates great comics that give people value (laughter/good feelings) for free, and he's also done a great job of marketing his website on social media websites like Digg and Reddit to get tons of fans and followers.
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Old 03-15-2010, 01:01 AM   #2 (permalink)
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Funny stuff.

His artwork and humor is very similar to the tv show Invader Zim, which was also funny.
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Old 03-15-2010, 03:51 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Woah, this fella is awesome!!

Thanks for sharing.
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Old 03-15-2010, 04:00 AM   #4 (permalink)
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Thanks for posting!
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Old 03-15-2010, 07:57 AM   #5 (permalink)
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Funny stuff.

His artwork and humor is very similar to the tv show Invader Zim, which was also funny.

Hah yes it is. I never thought about that.


Rebecca I think Peter would appreciate this: How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal
Last edited by Curtis2011; 03-15-2010 at 08:04 AM.
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Old 03-15-2010, 11:08 AM   #6 (permalink)
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The Oatmeal kicks serious ass. Great job of viral / social marketing.
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Old 03-15-2010, 10:49 PM   #7 (permalink)
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The Oatmeal has some great stuff. It's so perfect for the social media crowd. Thanks for sharing Curtis. Another blog with a humor twist is Stuff White People Like, although I haven't seen it on any of the social media sites.
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Old 03-19-2010, 06:12 PM   #8 (permalink)
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Great example of creative juices flowing, great site...
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Old 03-19-2010, 06:17 PM   #9 (permalink)
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He had 905,000 unique viewers this month.

Absolutely astonishing.
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Old 03-19-2010, 06:19 PM   #10 (permalink)
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The Oatmeal kicks serious ass. Great job of viral / social marketing.
How did he make the site go viral? What exactly was he doing on Digg that made it take off?

My intuition is that he was doing the Tim Ferriss thing - build up a core audience that will consistently push your content to the top.
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Old 03-19-2010, 07:22 PM   #11 (permalink)
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How did he make the site go viral? What exactly was he doing on Digg that made it take off?

My intuition is that he was doing the Tim Ferriss thing - build up a core audience that will consistently push your content to the top.
I think it's just that he gives away massive value in a way that nobody else does, by making very memorable and unique comics that actually make people laugh.

Basically, he is giving away free positive emotions to his visitors, and they only have to pay if they want to buy a product of his.

Seems like a pretty strong business strategy (almost identical to Steve's: give away free value, and only get paid if the visitors want to buy a product you advertise)

As far as Digg goes, I use it regularly. Whenever The Oatmeal submits a "story" that is one of his comics, it always gets Dugg to the front page almost immediately.

Basically, everyone on Digg is a fan of him. But I suspect that anyone on any social network would be a constant fan of his if they like his comics. I doubt he actually had to "work" to build an audience.
Last edited by Curtis2011; 03-19-2010 at 07:25 PM.
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Old 03-19-2010, 07:26 PM   #12 (permalink)
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How did he make the site go viral? What exactly was he doing on Digg that made it take off?

My intuition is that he was doing the Tim Ferriss thing - build up a core audience that will consistently push your content to the top.
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Originally Posted by Curtis2011 View Post
I think it's just that he gives away massive value in a way that nobody else does, by making very memorable and unique comics that actually make people laugh.

Basically, he is giving away free positive emotions to his visitors, and they only have to pay if they want to buy a product of his.

Seems like a pretty strong business strategy

As far as Digg goes, I use it regularly. Whenever The Oatmeal submits a "story" that is one of his comics, it always gets Dugg to the front page almost immediately.

Basically, everyone on Digg is a fan of him. But I suspect that anyone on any social network would be a constant fan of his if they like his comics.
I don't know about the Oatmeal guy specifically, but I have a colleague who gets millions of pageviews monthly from Digg. He runs a general "guys' site".

With him, he knew some guys at Sports Illustrated, they guest posted some items from him, that got it enough traffic to get to the front page of Digg repeatedly and get a following who read Digg. Now even without guest posting his items frequently get pushed to the top on Digg.

Viral marketing is a great thing...
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Old 03-23-2010, 07:41 PM   #13 (permalink)
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What a great site! Oooh and I loved Invader Zim... thanks for the reminder people!
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Old 03-23-2010, 08:08 PM   #14 (permalink)
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I don't know about the Oatmeal guy specifically, but I have a colleague who gets millions of pageviews monthly from Digg. He runs a general "guys' site".

With him, he knew some guys at Sports Illustrated, they guest posted some items from him, that got it enough traffic to get to the front page of Digg repeatedly and get a following who read Digg. Now even without guest posting his items frequently get pushed to the top on Digg.

Viral marketing is a great thing...
Care to link to his site?

I love examples of people who are effective viral marketers. Viral marketing is something that is very difficult to see coming and/or replicate - when it happens, it's like, "How the HELL did this site about widgets sell for a million bucks?"
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Old 03-23-2010, 10:33 PM   #15 (permalink)
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Rebecca I think Peter would appreciate this: How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal
Haha yeah that one is awesome. Pete actually had a client like that recently, these people exist in great numbers!
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Old 03-24-2010, 12:06 AM   #16 (permalink)
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Haha yeah that one is awesome. Pete actually had a client like that recently, these people exist in great numbers!

That is sad lol
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Old 03-24-2010, 06:01 AM   #17 (permalink)
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The Oatmeal has some great stuff. It's so perfect for the social media crowd. Thanks for sharing Curtis. Another blog with a humor twist is Stuff White People Like, although I haven't seen it on any of the social media sites.
I saw that site on reddit maybe 2 years ago, so yeah they picked up on it, then it became a book.
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Old 03-24-2010, 02:29 PM   #18 (permalink)
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Hah yes it is. I never thought about that.


Rebecca I think Peter would appreciate this: How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal
He he!

I just got a new web client today, but hopefully he being a designer himself I wont have the "just move everything around" spiel

But I never say "we're going to shoot for the stars"
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Old 03-26-2010, 11:14 PM   #19 (permalink)
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Haha yeah that one is awesome. Pete actually had a client like that recently, these people exist in great numbers!
This Oatmeal post made me laugh - and I wish I had read that Oatmeal cartoon before working with one of my graphic designers......ahem...LOL (at myself)
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Old 03-26-2010, 11:47 PM   #20 (permalink)
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I love the oatmeal!! I found it about three months ago! That seems to be key with any type business, if it has a sense of humor, it sells. It's the same as People of Walmart, that site is huge now!

Cheers
Alice
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Old 03-27-2010, 06:54 PM   #21 (permalink)
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How did he make the site go viral?
Looks like one of his main tactics are backlinks by spreading online quizzes......this was an article linked to from one of his sites

SEO Guerilla Marketing | Living On Dividends

He has a great site though....I know I was researching SEO stuff for my site and ended up wasting far too much time reading his comics....so he is providing quite a bit of value.

Back to my research.....
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Old 03-28-2010, 10:51 AM   #22 (permalink)
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yes the site is awesome..said it right..we need to blog what we like to blog about and not about something ''popular''. Hey! do you think a blog on poems will be attractive to readers???
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Old 03-28-2010, 01:12 PM   #23 (permalink)
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Interesting site. Has some good humor on there. If I was a better artist, it would be simple for me to make similar comics. I'm going to keep checking out his site and have a few laughs.
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