I've been reading PvP for a long time, and I have to say Scott isn't the best person to go to for this offer. He's a bit of a blowhard, and he's can be very unprofessional (doesn't keep to a rigid schedule, gets in online flame wars, etc.).
If they want a real example of how to do it, I'd point them to Howard Taylor, who hasn't even had a LATE update yet, with a 7-day color strip, and feeds his family of 6 or so (Scott is just him and his wife).
I wouldn't call Scott a blowhard - he definitely likes to stir the pot however, and you can't argue with his success to date.
I would say Howard is a good pick, but I don't know him too well. Also Ryan Sohmer, who runs a rapidly growing media company in addition to his several comics is another great example.
Does Howard Taylor actually make more money than Scott does, though? PVP is much higher up on the traffic charts, and I've seen Howard occasionally post about his family's financial struggles while Scott certainly doesn't seem to have any.
Not having a single late update is a very different skillset from knowing how to market effectively. If I had to pick one person as a marketing consultant it would be the one who has a better marketing track record, not the one who doesn't keep to a perfect schedule.
Kris and Scott work in the same office in Seattle with PA and (last I checked) he didn't give up the dream; ChainSawSuit and Starslip are updated multiple times a week.
I like Scott as well, and I probably would hire him for this as he has the perspective and the willingness to get the job done, even if it offends people.
But I'm not from a syndicate and if I get my way, I'll help flush them and book publishers out of existence :D
Scott has been on this bandwagon for years. It has always confused me why he has concerned himself with this issue so much over the years. Certainly he is right in his thinking however the effort he expends on this continuing campaign seems wasted on an industry as close minded as the newspaper businesses appear today.
This is the perspective of an outsider of course, who enjoys web comics and on occasion buys their loot. Scott has long been a leading figure in the web comic scene and so naturally he has a passion for the medium.
"It has always confused me why he has concerned himself with this issue so much over the years." Because whether intentional or not, it helps increase his visibility, which is what all independent content creators work hard to get.
I'm friends with the woman who won the first Amazon/Universal/GoComics contest back in '09. Her strip, "Girl", still hasn't appeared anywhere on the net - it's basically been in development hell for the entire last two years. Last I asked her about it she was like, yeah, they ask for changes, I send off a new batch of strips, they send me money, it still hasn't gone anywhere, it helps pay the bills.
Honestly, after two years, I basically figure this is never going to happen.
And her other projects have been suffering for this, too. It eats up a lot of her time, and nobody but her editors at Universal are seeing the results.
Like Kurtz, she's a webcomics pioneer who worked in the daily four-panel mode because she loves it. Getting into the syndicates was a lifelong dream. But it's too little, too late - have you looked at the comics page of a newspaper in the past few years? I sure haven't, not on a regular basis. I see one maybe twice a year, and it's the same old zombie strips that were old when I was a kid, printed at about half the size they used to run. The syndicates are dying because they're tied to the newspapers.
Winning any "talent search" put on by the syndicates, if Dana's experience is any guide, is a monkey's paw kind of win.
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I would be all for Kurtz putting his money where his mouth is and starting a post-newspaper comics syndicate. IMHO there are three things the syndicates did in the old days:
1. They got your comics distributed by making them available to the newspapers. Nowadays? Wordpress + Comicpress = RSS feed for your comics. Stick it in your feed-reader and bam, there you go. Obsolete.
1.5 Of course you still need to find a way to get new readers, now that "selling your strip to the editors of newspapers" is dead. Project Wonderful works pretty damn well - it's an ad network that's very easy to buy space on, reaches a lot of people who are already INTERESTED in reading comics (most of the ad space available on PW is on comics sites), and can be pretty cheap. I got a heck of a lot of clickthroughs for just a couple bucks when I recently bought a campaign there for my webcomic. And these were people who read the entire archive.
2. They managed making the merch happen. Talked to toy companies, mug-makers, book-printers, etc. Nowadays? Well, you can DIY a lot easier, but honestly that takes time away from the real work of drawing the comic. Better to get in touch with someone like Topatoco. (Whose bar for entry is basically 'have a similar reach to a syndicated comic in the glory days of the newspapers'.)
3. They deal with TV and movie licensing. This is the big one that nobody's really duplicated on the web yet - "dying" though they they may be, TV and movie studios still have a lot of reach, and a lot of money floating around to advertise the hell out of the adaptations that happen. I know Kurtz has dabbled with web animated series, but animation costs an insane amount of money, even when you do tons of cheats.
Well, after a 10 year hiatus I checked out PVP again and it is still not funny. If the author can figure out how to make money out of that dreck then the syndicates should definitely give him a consulting contract.
And he made the front page of Hacker News. I think he's a better business man than people give him credit for. I think he's a really entertaining guy and tune into his podcasts whenever he puts them out.
Wow, they are really digging into the syndicates there.
Even if these places did hire them, I really don't know how much they could help. When I open the newspaper these days nearly all of the comics have their own website, and the ones that don't are so old nobody reads them anyway. I see what they are doing, I just hope nobody actually hires them and suddenly they are faced with the daunting prospect of bringing silent movies into the 80's.
If I put a HILARIOUS comic of my own on my website, there is a really good chance that it won't generate any traffic. Nobody reads my website and submitting it to reddit or whatever may or may not give me the eyes it needs to go viral.
As pretty much a nobody with zero artistic talent I managed to create a web-comic as a side project which in it's first year of existence managed to get over 250k+ unique visitors and almost 1000 Facebook fans. It's not that hard.
Blog post somewhere that shares the tale? I've had a little side project that I did a few strips for but then never posted because I figured I'd have to be willing to dedicate way more time than it would be worth to build an audience. Sounds like you may have "cracked the nut"?
1. Always update on time, every time. Never miss a beat if at all possible by making comics ahead of time and posting them in advance with a delay.
2. Write & draw what you love, whether it is video games (PA, PVP, etc), sex jokes (leasticoulddo), anime (megatokyo), music & life (questionable content), nerdy awesomeness (xkcd)...you get the idea.
3. Connect with your fans by blogging as much as you post strips. Let them feel a part of the creative process and help them get to know you.
The same holds pretty much true if you put it up on somebody else's website that doesn't generate much traffic. I think the argument is these cartoon syndicates don't have much traffic.
If they want a real example of how to do it, I'd point them to Howard Taylor, who hasn't even had a LATE update yet, with a 7-day color strip, and feeds his family of 6 or so (Scott is just him and his wife).