How Internet Cartoonist Rick London Made It To The Top

by Alexa Ferotina

Even though I had hours of academic marketing classes, and cartoonist Rick London, my former boss had none, his killer marketing instincts could have rewritten the textbooks. He is no guru, in fact, is anti-guru. He doesn’t write ebooks or exploit those who know less. He tells it like it is. He approached cartooning knowing nothing about the business. He learned it as he went.

Rick focused his cartoons into themes, usually different business themes from law to science to medicine. He also utilized society such as relationships, sports, war, philosophy, religion, etc. Anything that was a topic of interest in which journals were published, Rick wrote cartoons in that arena. He made call after call. He knew it was a numbers game. After a hundred calls a day, he usually made a sale or two. He was building his portfolio and bringing in a few shekels for beans and rice.

Rick was a master of barter. Where he learned it, I will never know. Since a lot of his clients had little or no budget, Rick bartered with them. I cannot think of a product he did not have. All he did was pick up the phone and if they said no, regarding paying for a cartoon, Rick would give them the cartoon at full value for half a barter back. Rick was “out nothing”; the cartoon would have sat on the Internet and still did. The publisher or webmaster simply got nonexclusive rights to it, and Rick got real retail goods, food, vitamins, and even a wardrobe. He almost made a deal for a car once. Though he had no formal education, his marketing skills were magic.

It was a cold winter in 1997. Rick was living and working from an abandoned Mississippi warehouse. He was not eating well but had made some good trades with fishing tackle companies to put his fishing-related cartoons on their sites. He took the tackle and lures (sometimes live bait he dug up from the woods) and would fish after working in the late afternoon, sometimes into the night until he had enough fish to make a meal. This man knew how to survive. It was like living and working on Walden Pond.

Though he still enjoys the negotiation process of bartering, he does so less than when he started. He started out of need. Now he is the one solicited by publishers and authors who need his work. He had vision when he created his cartoons into categories that would fit into trade journals and business websites. He knew what he was doing when others thought he was a little “mad”.

Rick started his cartoon in the days before Google, social networking, blogging, ppc, and all the other goodies that make it much easier to get one’s project known. When those entities hit the Internet, he was right up there with the big-dogs learning and absorbing all that he could.

I sometimes feel like if I look up “commitment”in Webster’s, Rick’s pic will be there. He wakes up and he is drinking coffee and working. It is habit. He does not drive to an office. He does it all in his living room, yet every move he makes creates jobs for people all over the world from manufacturers to artists to affiliate marketers to publishers. He has a mind that is very creative and unique. I have learned a great deal from him.

Though he is from Mississippi originally (where I met him), he is not from that part of Mississippi that is known to produce such genius; the delta which brought us William Faulkner, Elvis, Grisham, Willie Morris, Morgan Freeman, B.B. King, Eudora Welty, and others. Though Ms. is not known for its education, it is usually last of the fifty states, it still produces some genius. I brushed shoulders with one.

I am only in touch with him these days by email. We have both moved to separate states. But I still know him as that “grown up wiz kid” who showed me the ropes. I visit his main cartoon website and numerous webstores and think back to the time when it was just a gleam in his eye. Nobody in his hometown knew he had it in him. I don’t know why I did, it was just a feeling. I admit, that though I did, I had no idea he would make it this big. I continue to buy items from his many web stores which are fanastic and contain his cartoons; from mousepads to hoodies. I even buy regular casual wear from him. His products are fantastic. I really miss that man and hope to see him again on one day.

About the Author:

Rick London has the largest offbeat Internet’s Top Cartoon Site on the Internet and several cartoon gift shops Rick London’s Marketing Secret: From Nothing To Internet’s Top Cartoonist And E-Tailer, and