So, I'm back from Comic-Con with a renewed thirst for making money. I'm going to do this goddamned albatross of a comic strip as my full-time job even if the journey there kills me.

One of the things I've come to realize is that Goats and other "webcomic" sites aren't about webcomics -- they're about selling merchandise (and, in our case, services). The strip is there to get your interest, a sort of indirect advertisement for the other stuff we provide.

The basic conclusion is that I want to start offering lots more t-shirts. Both the Overclocked Lemon shirt and the Cold War Supervillain shirts went over extremely well at the con -- Phillip and I even ended up selling the ones we had ordered for ourselves. Various minor celebrities, employees of Pixar and of ILM are now wearing Goats apparel. So, you figure out a good thing, you do it some more.

The next shirts up are going to be a Crab City shirt, a Sporkle shirt, and a text shirt (a la the text shirts that rstevens sells [dieselsweeties.com]. When the designed shirts are ready, I'll run them by you folks, as your feedback has been extremely helpful.

The one bit of help I could use now is suggestions for the text shirt. It will probably be white text in the Goats font on a dark color; we can figure out what color later.

What I need now is suggestions for quotes from the strip that might make for good t-shirts. They should make sense out of the context of the strip, so people who haven't read it could still buy and enjoy the shirt. They should be relatively short. And they should be as cryptic, surreal, and bizarrely funny as possible (for example, rstevens' jesus shirt [dieselsweeties.com] sold like gangbusters). If you can include the link to the comic it comes from, all the better.

So, suggestions, anyone?

I'm still waiting for a Bloated Warthog shirt, myself.

I don't think I'd buy a Crab City shirt unless it had the Hover Dachsund on it.

I really really doubt I'll buy a Sporkle shirt.

In Response to zamphir (#7688):

You won't see a Bloated Warthog shirt, probably not ever. I need to start designing shirts that appeal both to hardcore fans and a wider audience that doesn't care as much about the back story of the shirts as they do about the designs and humor. I don't see this as a bad thing; it's necessary if we want to sell more shirts, but I think it will also make for better shirts as well (the OCLemon and Cold War Supervillain shirts were designed with this in mind, and they're the best shirts we've done so far in my opinion).

One of the Crab City designs I'm pondering had the hoverdaschund on it; the other does not. I'll put both together at some point and get feedback from you guys, but there's no point in speculating right now.

The Sporkle shirt as I'm envisioning it, if I can pull it off, will probably be the best shirt we've offered so far.

But, like I said, what I really need now is quote suggestions for the text t-shirts.

In Response to jon (#7690):

I'm not sure that a Sporkle one would appeal to "norms", but if you reckon it'll be one of the best so far, then I wait with baited breath.

On the text only side, I like the recent Fish line: [goats.com] "Please pick me up! A big dog scared me with barking."

I can see it as a really cheesey bad pick up line (the obvious pun intended)...

In Response to jon (#7690):

"I suspect her naked ass on your naked crotch probably had something to do with it" [goats.com].

Although it may be a little lenghty for a shirt, I alwasy enjoyed the line "We're going to need all your weaponry and Hefeweizen" in This Strip [goats.com]

Also "Aw hell. We got zombies" fromthis strip. [goats.com]

"Excuse me, I'd love to penetrate both of you repeatedly, but my friend here has called 'dibs.'"

....personally, i come here for the sense of community...ROFLMAO

In Response to Dynedain (#7697):

any of speak-n-spell's lines work well too

Hmmm, okay, how about......

'Why the hell am I wearing this dress?!?'

http://www.goats.com/archive/970512.html

'It's my face isn't it? I could get surgery...'

http://www.goats.com/archive/970614.html

'I should tell you my theory about how Aardvarks run the government!'

http://www.goats.com/archive/970625.html

'Is this a beer I see before me? The bottle toward my hand? Come, let me drink thee'

http://www.goats.com/archive/970731.html

If you want any more, I am quite happy to spend several hours going thru' the archives looking for quotables.

A Life, who needs a life.....

I'd love to see a shirt with the entire Litany of Beer on it.

Cheers,
Graham

Well, when it comes to being catchy and appealing to the masses (read: lowbrow), I think a repackaging of the Mug'o'Fish stating "Don't ask me lady, I live in Beer." is in order.

Am I remembering that correctly? I thought there was a design along those lines, but I can't find it in the store...

At any rate, that'd appeal to the mass-market 'peeing calvin and hobbes'/'clever-logo-alteration' demographic, I believe.

Also neat things to do, posters and shirts with a all-inclusive cast poster, including the most obscure characters from the many years of goats. While not witty, this should appeal to the long-term fanbase (who are your most captive audience). I believe everyone's probably seen the Simpsons poster along these lines... at least, if you've had any call to be in a dormatory in the last 2 years. At any rate, goats has quite a few distinct major and minor characters, so that any such effort would be visually entertaining (Marlon Brando and Evil Jon? How can you go wrong? :)

Another possibility: Post-it note Tee? If you even sell one shirt, you've already more than recouped Phillip's time investment in it. Also, Post-it notes are well recognized, so anything sufficiently clever should generate more than one sale. Perhaps even three!

Not to ramble, but judging from the state of your contemporaries, the key is in management. Mister Abrahms seems to've neglected his ledger lately and is paying the piper. He had the right idea and early success via his home-grown T-shirt sales (as opposed to the easy-to-use but low-return cafepress option), but seemingly grew complacent. rstevens has always seemed to have raked in and kept the dough (as I'm sure you well know), but not only are all of his shirts extremly iconic and universally accessable (my Metal Steve shirt often gets people claiming it to be from some random NES cart), but he also hand-made that batch of limited books, which may've been some additional labor, but if my skills of multiplication didn't fail me... he made like the proverbial bandit on.

And then there's mister Kurtz and his surprisingly successful comic. Tenacity was on his side with that, I believe. The Dork Storm deal got him attention, which he cashed in when he traded up. The lesson there is that self-publishing or small-press publishing can indeed pay off. If you've ever entertained these thoughts and shrugged them off as being too improbable to pay off, consider: what harm could come from trying? At the least, you've wasted time and made a little money. At the most, you've made a whole lot of money and gained popular recognition. And I'd gain a pleasantly bound copy of Patent Pending. gt;:)

Also, a lesson can be learned from Pete and rstevens as well... they've both self-produced some of their merchandise. The fewer middlemen, the more profit in your coffers. Seriously look into outsourcing tshirt production to a local shop, or even buying the equipment and converting a spare room into a sweatshop that'd make Kathy lee proud. Knowing NYC pricing, outsource to a non-local shop if you go that route. I know you're going through a non-cafepress vendor for the pre-orders, but I assure you that you can get even better deals if you're willing to do a little directory scavenging and phone calling. You may rationalize yourself as 'not being worth the trouble', but if you really mean this to be your sole source of income, it is worth the trouble. A dollar here and there add up. You can apply this self-production/private-agreement principle to any sort of item you'd like to sell. Why not bind your own books, or make a beneficial deal with a small company? Why not make your own posters? Perhaps sell stuffed Diablos and Evil Cheeses? Or plush poop, with a certificate stating it was crushed between Chuck's fleshy buttocks?

Do you know how simple it is to create a stuffed item yourself? It takes a cheap amount of fabric and stuffing, a small amount of time to make the pattern (easily enough if you know someone...

Read the rest of this comment...

In Response to mcgrue (#7712):

Oh, not to be anti-climactic after my magnum opus here, but since you also ended the world and then ignored it, you could do a shirt along those lines and capture the slashnerd HHGttG fanatics. The ubergeek mindset that unsubtly quotes DNA to (wink wink) let you in on the fact that they are one of you and you are one of them may be irritating at times, but they tend to have a lot of disposable income.

So, with that in mind you could always go for the easy "The world ended and all I got was this lousy..."

Or, if you're feeling particularly geeky, you could add in a bit of Monty Python and Babylon 5 paraphrase:

"The world ended. It got better."

Apparently God is cohabitating with Jenny.

From here [goats.com]

In Response to neild (#7719):

Silly, silly Scientologists. There's nothing worse than an ignorant cult member. [goats.com]

Cognitive dissonance reduces my productivity. [goats.com]

Neil

I'd be in favor of new shirts, especially witty text shirts. I mean, sure I haven't ever bought a goats shirt, and only recently did I register here and purchase a premium account and the hardcover books, but I'm working on changing that. I'll read through the arhives for the third time this month and pick out some things I like.

Does this also mean we might get to see Goats: Book 2 sometime in the semi-near future?

In Response to Dynedain (#7698):

I second the speak 'n' spell idea.

Maybe it doesn't appeal to a wide audience, but it appeals to me:

'...And I get to be a pirate! Arrr!'

I was hoping in the future that there'd be an extremely simple beer design. I need a shirt that says something simple like 'I like beer', has a stubby on it and, as a bonus for goats, has the goats url. But I'm just dreamin'.

I have no emotions... I exhibit carefully orchestrated visceral reactions to external stimuli designed to fool the casual onlooker. [goats.com]

In Response to mjforbes666 (#7729):

And the very next day...

So punctuality isn't much of an issue if your units are arbitrary, huh? [goats.com]

For some reason I've always liked "Pancakes is the better part of valor" [goats.com]. I don't know why.

"I have devised a perfect plan" [goats.com] might work.

Debatably better-suited to a shirt with an image, but "I gave my nipples for this country" [goats.com] could probably find a market.

Hmm... "Go get a wheelbarrow and some firearms. Run." [goats.com]

"Chickens have beady eyes." [goats.com]

Let's stage a bloody coup today." [goats.com]

"Tastes great!" "Makes me drunk." [goats.com]

Tell your mom to stop calling me." [goats.com] Eh, maybe not...

"I am your poison potato god!"

...er, no. Wait...

"We can't stop here... this is Kitten Country." [goats.com]

Also, I second a vote for "Ah hell. we got zombies." Just because... you know... zombies are cool'n'stuff.

In Response to mea37 (#7731):

'Tell your mom to stop calling me' is a good line on its own. Would probably get people to visit the site, even if it is just to abuse. Even then, remembering the abusive letter you posted in a previous discussion, this would possibly be a good thing.

This would be the perfect opportunity to mention another one of my hair-brained site improvement suggestions:

How about putting a user (possibly member only) rating system on the strips, or even better, on each of the speech bubbles in the strips? then, each month, or quarterly, or whatever, you could bring out a text shirt with the highest rating speech bubble!

It'd be like goats-strip-hot-or-not! how cool!

In Response to unFalln (#7735):

And we could use the data collected after years of this to create a witticism AI script!

In Response to Megatronman (#7694):

"Aw hell. We got zombies"

That was the first thing that came to mind for me... I was just a little slow to post.

I forgot about the Hefeweizen line, but I'd buy anything with the words Hefeweizen and weaponry in it. You just can't go wrong there.

In Response to mcgrue (#7736):

a witticism AI script

There can be only ONE!