It’s bothered me ever since I got on the web and started posting my cartoons begging for attention that some of my success with public acknowledgement got me zip in the financial department. The reason being is that while particular websites highlighted my work they didn’t give a share of ad revenue.

This is going back to 2000. Currently we have community blogs that allow revenue share like Today.com and while you’re not likely to get rich, but you would get a nice chunk of change if one of your pieces received a surge in traffic. When you create something extraordinary you can at least profit from it.

One of my oddest successes was a small flash cartoon done right after 9/11 called The Taliban Women’s Revolt. Originally I was paid for the nonexclusive rights to the Flash toon by a client who specialized in the kind of content you would have to turn the safe search off on Google Images to see. The amount: 250 bucks. Not too bad.

Since I still retained the rights for The Taliban Women’s Revolt I figured I might as well get some publicity for my time waster site Swensonfunnies.com . As I mentioned, I was begging for attention. So I submitted the animation to Newgrounds.com, Ifilm.com and several smaller video sites. The views soared from there and the toon has well over 2 million hits.

But that 2 million or more hits meant nothing except some positive feedback, “Hey, that was funny, animate some more like that.” Where was my share of the ad money that resulted from all of the views to the cartoon?  Nothing.

I’ve been thinking about how much money the average user makes MySpace, Facebook and smaller social networking sites simply by hanging out and creating content in the form of user pages, blog posts and images. It’s in the billions I’m sure. Where’s our cut?

At least YouTube gives its video makers a cut of ad share revenue off of clicks when they have their videos posted. It’s honestly not a lot unless you have a YouTube show that is soaring in the ratings, but it’s something.

I guess the smart web entrepreneurs made money off other people while I was busy just being an artist. I was never a business person and have only now since grasped how much artists and writers lose to companies who simply manage content and find ways to get people to do it for free. Social Networking is increasing in benefits to those who can steer it but the steering will increase in difficulty the larger these social sites get.

The days of the individual website may be numbered. They may be feel like nineties antiques as social networking sites exponentially grow their content to overwhelm the web. It’s a blessing and a curse.

All I really want is to go back in time and demand my share of the loot for those 2 million hits to my Flash cartoon.

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