Three Artist Use Cyberspace For Profit and Prestige

When you go to your local comic book shop, you’d see your favorite super heroes in the front of the store ready to great you. These established characters with a long, storied history carry years of joy and pain that is backed by years of marketing and mega budgets from the likes of Disney and Warner Brothers. In the back, though, you’d find the lesser known, independent comic books that tend to get lost in the wake of the Spiderman and Wolverines of the world. How do they get to compete for the same attention? Raymond Francis, Timothy D. Craggette, and Robert Spencer Jr. of RayTimandRob.com thought to change the landscape of independent comics the way television has change over the last few years, the internet. The internet has leveled the playing field for independent comic book creators that want to get their stories out to the masses in the same ways traditional comic books have made its way into home across the US. The problem comes from not having the same reach and marketing resources the major publishers have as Timothy explains, “…being small and independent does make it hard to be seen.”

Timothy, and experienced entrepreneur and internet marketer, decided with Raymond and Robert to use internet marketing techniques to game the system for exposure and sales the same way he has with his information products online. “To make money online, you need three things…a product, an audience, and conversations. We have the product with our books and we’re going to mass audiences from live events and social media. All we have to do is make the right offer.” When ask to explain how they plan to use social media to sell their comic books, Timothy said, “Places like Facebook have millions of people daily visiting and all we have to do is use their ad networks the way us internet marketers do to sell our products and services.” He paused, smiled and said, “Hopefully we make a couple bucks selling comics.”

The three artist are scheduled to premiere their collective work at this year’s Baltimore Comic Con on September 7-8,2013 at the Baltimore Convention Center and to teach some of their internet marketing techniques to other aspiring comic book enthusiast.