Matt: I think, with donations, youre not getting product and youre giving somebody money. Andrew: So at first it was a book and it was ads. Were you trying to avoid their wrath as you were designing? I feel like right now the Internet is a wonderful place to be because its so easy to make something small and just explode it out there. Basically with design, which happened a lot at SEOmoz, I would make something, deliver it to the client, they would hate it. Matt: Since becoming a comic artist, Ive started paying a lot more attention to whats going on around me. Andrew: Gotcha. And I ended up selling all of those and I got a book deal. If not, fine with me. I dont want to operate off of what sells the most merchandise. Shes got a degree in, I dont remember, library sciences or something, but shes the expert. Matt: I integrated it into the blog section on my site because I sincerely wanted to see what would happen if I had comments. Matt: The first month was actually pretty terrible. I had a lot of fans who were like, We want The Oatmeal to be able to do this full time. I just did it because there was this brief month where I had tons of traffic, tons of visibility, but I had nothing to sell. Other than that, like I said before, listening and thinking about what were all saying and what were all doing and articulating it. Its a website designing package. Matt: Well, in the first few months, I also did donations as well and that was a minor part of it. One of them that kind of pushed me over the edge was someone posted on Reddit saying, The Oatmeal is an a-hole. And there were all these people saying, Oh, Ive met him in person. Im looking at the comic version of you, and hes a fat guy with a pointy hat and he looks ridiculous. Matt: It was called Hungover Aliens and it just was the most horribly received comic Ive ever done. What about some simple search engine optimization tactics, like with Mingle2, you created quizzes that people could embed the results of on their websites and right underneath it, youd have text that linked back to your site with the right anchor text. Matt: Originally, it was mostly StumbleUpon, and I think I might have gotten on Digg once or twice. [1] Inman said in 2010 that The Oatmeal received more than 20 million page views per month;[13] as of 2012 the site received 4 million visitors a month. I didnt decide, oh, Im going to rank for semicolons and build a business on it. Musk then donated $1 million for the development and construction of the museum. I just started churning out way more content, and when I did that, it sort of pushed over this edge and The Oatmeal just sort of exploded. I send it to her just to make sure and she comes back with all these little minor things that might be wrong. Shopify Remember the interview I did about how the founder of DODOCase sold about $1 mil worth of iPad cases in a few months? I submit my stuff and it goes straight to the homepage every single time. It was a Rickroll and I did Chers Do You Believe In Life After Love and the song Informer by Snow. Andrew: I thought when you launched TheOatmeal.com that what I saw was a series of quizzes. Andrew: And as a co-founder, did you invest money into the business? Now I work for myself and really no one can control what I say. My Dog: The Paradox: A Lovable Discourse about Man's Best Friend (The Oatmeal Book 3) May 7, 2013. by The Oatmeal , Matthew Inman. Matt: I used to play a game called Quake when I was a teenager, and when I played online and I always used the name Quaker Oatmeal. But on a plane its like being locked into this boring, boring room so you have nothing to do but farm your own brain for crops. Andrew: Cool. So I learned that in order for someone to commit to buy something because theyre a fan, you actually have to repeatedly do well. I wait six months and I do a huge sale. Andrew: And Digg. I dont actually meet that many people in person. So I just called it The Oatmeal because thats a name that Id been using for so long. Matt: I started making quizzes at first. Inman said that he found it is much easier to gain exposure for his work through the internet than it would have been two decades earlier. Matt: Adobe Fireworks actually used to be a Macromedia product. I didnt realize you made that many. So basically I was this giant image hosting machine. Matthew Inman, creator of the geek-famous internet comic The Oatmeal, has a pretty great gig. Its the worst, worst, worst thing to read that. I just hate the way vector graphics look as JPEG. Itll make you hate your job for about ten minutes, and then after that you get over it and you figure out what you did wrong and try to make some things better. Also, my reputation is still suffering from being in SEO. Im a one man operation and I just calculated the number of pageviews I got in 2010. She e-mailed me that spectacle that you see and I wrote her back and I said, You know, Kimberly, this is a really insightful comment youve got on dyslexia and how Americans interpret that. I was in the comments a lot responding to users, being like an actual real part of the community rather than just going in there and trying to leach off of Diggs traffic. The organization, Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, hoped to buy and restore the facility that was Nikola Tesla's last laboratory, preserving the site and creating a museum to Tesla. This eponymous comic became an instant hit when it went live on The Oatmeal.com and was liked on Facebook by 700,000 fans. He used Shopify. Did it move you in a direction? So I kind of went back to where I had started. And part of my writing style and the persona that I have online is sort of this crass, bloated, obese, drunk monster. Andrew: And so was it always going to be a business? If people really want to say something, let them reblog it and say something on their own blog. . Andrew: Why didnt you degrade the quality of the images? . But its what I know and its what Im fast with, so I stick with it. Andrew: Wow. She is professionally known as Iman (meaning 'faith' in. If you read my Twitter account, it is like Hitlers port-a-potty. So I think with The Oatmeal, for them to actually remember my name, they probably had to visit my site 10 or 12 times. Its Andrew Warner. And I did that with the dating site, Mingle2 and then when Mingle2 was acquired, I had to go work for the people who bought it. Matt: Yeah. [1], Inman opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). And not just Reddit. Youll read an article or an image and you actually dont ever commit what that logo is. Matt: And it might be just that what I did then is irrelevant to what they do now. What about How did you get a book deal after you self-published your own book? I know what Im getting out of this interview. So thats sort of the process. I didnt sleep. [20] In 2016, Inman received the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award from San Diego Comic-Con, an award given "to people in comics and the popular arts who have worked to help others. Andrew: So 80 percent was coming in from the book in the first few months? I feel more whole as a person. You dont. [56] At 2 a.m. the following day, Elon responded by tweet: "I would be happy to help". And then from there, I slice them up and I put them on the website. Andrew: I see. But I feel like it didnt really get into its stride until now with things like Twitter and Facebook and social sites where you can make one little thing and explode it out there. Reputation & Background It was more of . Do you have these issues and how do you deal with them? You said you were thinking of Reddit as you were creating your comics. 23 while the Dobson family, owner of Whataburger, ranked No. So I tried to just pick a bunch of different things that I knew I could make work. So from that you could connect, like, how long could I survive inside of my own washing machine. How will you use Twilio to build voice and SMS apps? Are you working with a co-founder? The last time I did an interview with you, lots of people ended up e-mailing me through that saying, Oh, I didnt know you lived in Seattle. He sold Mingle2 but stayed on with the new company, and wrote comics and quizzes to attract readers. View FREE Public Profile & Reputation for Matthew Inman in Parrish, FL - See Court Records | Photos | Address, Emails & Phone Number | Personal Review | $70 - $79,999 Income & Net Worth Most people, they go get an agent, the agent negotiates the book deal and then you get your book. So thats usually how I respond to it. So when you did start to publish them more frequently, how did it affect your work? This is going to sound super cheesy, but embrace social media. Matt: I think the feedback that has changed my comics somewhat wasnt from comments, it was from traffic. The website is theoatmeal.com and Matt, thanks again. I think ads about 20 percent and 80 percent is the merchandise. If you check out what other have built on Twilio, I bet youll get inspired. Matt: Ive been trying put some comics there lately. Youre one of the few good looking SEO tech people. Im on Digg. From what? Then Ill get on the computer and Ill draw it. By the way, is the information in The Economist magazine that I used in the intro right? But as far was why he didnt mention me, I have no idea. When people know that there are going to be more frequent posts, theyre more likely to come back more frequently and then that just builds on itself. Sounds like you had the same experience? Lets make my own website that can generate, be sufficient and not have to work for anybody. So thats what was the real decision for me. . [4] The comics cover an eclectic range of topics: a 2010 article describes comics on being chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor, evil scheming kittens, people being sodomized by Bigfoot, and babies that taste like nachos. I did it kind of in an odd way. It banks on the humor and the insight in those comics and the utility of them. It would be mine. Matt: She doesnt look spry. I guess I just needed a little bit of a break from that for a while. [16][17][18], At the same time as announcing his fifth book, The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons I Run Long Distances, Inman announced "Beat the Blerch", an organized running race in 10 kilometer, half, and full marathon formats which was held in Carnation, Washington, on September 20 and 21, 2014. Matt: It was that same magical month. What will you sell online after you discover the power of Shopify? In 2019, Inman announced plans to step back from The Oatmeal for a while to concentrate on other work. Every few years, I compile these comics into books, such as How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you. So the traffic from the two kind of fed off each other. And people were saying that the example I used means Im better at physically holding a panda bear than a bottle of liquor. Matt: I would say, for one, if you start a new project, be patient with it, build, work on it. FunnyJunk's lawyer, Charles Carreon, attempted to shut the campaign down, alleging it violated Indiegogo's terms and conditions. When I heard that that was when I was like, thats how I want to be. Then eventually I switched to printing it myself because, with Zazzle, I think I sold 10,000 posters and I got a check for like 50 bucks. Some arent. Its probably going to be about cats, but Im not sure. Matt: Not really. Oct 2016 - Dec 20215 years 3 months. Here Ive got someone who has mastered it and has intentionally pushed it aside to focus on other things. Im the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. I probably wont put them on the comics anytime soon. I just finished Hugh Macleods latest book, an he seems to think of e-mail as his direct channel to his fans. Ive gotta find some other Maybe I should just go to jail or something. Its somebody elses website. So I started running that on all the images to help cut down on the costs. Matt: Oh, OK. Ive got a newsletter set up and its got a following on it, but it is a fart in the wind compared to Facebook fan pages as far as a way to communicate with people. It was kind of informal, and the understanding was I had X percent of the company if we were to sell and when I quit, that kind of dissolved. Andrew: Howd you get started in web comics? Senior Mechanical Engineer with a focus in mechanical and aerodynamic design, heater development, CFD, and experimentation for both fixed and . The first time I had it printed in Seattle and the second time overseas. So I keep moving the mic away. I read online, Im looking here at my notes, where you said that you were miserable there for a few years. Hes a total jackass and blah blah blah. [9][10], In June 2019, just after the release of The Secret Life of Pets 2 a feature animated film in which Inman was credited as creative consultant Inman told the Washington Post that he "wont be regularly creating the Oatmeal much longer" and was planning a hiatus of around two years. Its dead simple and very effective. The Oatmeal was kind of in that new, up and rising phase, so it was real exciting for me to work on it. Well, I didnt degrade the quality. Find Matthew Inman's phone number, address, and email on Spokeo, the leading people search directory for contact information and public records. I dont go to conferences. Matt: Yup. They helped me with the mechanics of the back and the binding and that kind of stuff though. I cant live off this. Why not do simple things like that? Its actually much funnier than a drunk 15 year old. Matt: I think Ive got four or five now and theres a sixth one in the works about how to use a comma. 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