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Comment by ugh | Hacker News Reader

That’s revenue from merchandise sale. What are the margins on that?

not sure. FYI, xkcd also makes (or made in 2008) it's money on merchandise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/business/media/26link.html

“People are generally surprised that we make a living from it,” Mr. Munroe said. Without being specific, he said that the sales of xkcd merchandise support the two of them “reasonably well.” He said they sell thousands of T-shirts a month, either of panels from his strip or in their style, as well as posters.

Even Yogurt knew where the real money was: Merchandising. The Oatmeal the Flamethrower

I want a The Oatmeal the Flamethrower t-shirt.

Licensing is where you make your money. Check out this NYT article from 1987 about upheaval in the comic syndication business.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE0DF1738F...

(sorry for the long link)

Reads like many of the "publishing will die" stories circulating today. States back then that merchandising accounted for 50% of revenue.

I'm surprised more startups don't consider selling merchandise or some simple physical product. The margins can be pretty healthy and the value proposition is pretty simple. I think the recent spate of successes on KickStarter will tip people in this direction.

If you can make something novel, ala AirBNB's Obama O's cereal it seems like an easier path to ramen than AdWords.

I think The Oatmeal started as a marketing campaign for an online dating site. Some of the older comics still have links to it.

Merchandising seems questionable, though. Consider: You have a business, and you're going to sell merchandise to promote your business. Now you have two businesses.

This is a perfectly valid strategy for a small business or a bootstrapped startup. For example, try to figure out how many different businesses 37signals is in. I'm aware of online software, books, training and advertising, and there's probably a couple of others. As they put it: "Sell your byproducts."

This strategy probably doesn't make sense for a funded startup, however.

Jobs board too.

As a broad rule, typically 20% - 30% retail markup on fashion merchandise.

For many t-shirt brands, typical cost to produce is $3-5 or so, with wholesale to stores at $9-12, retail at $18-24

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