How To Start a Comic Books Business
Comic books are still as popular as it was for over 30 years ago, and it still has the same buzz in our world today with advanced technology. You should understand that technology has improved the creation of comic books, making them more appealing to comic book fans. Yes, the comic book has gone digital, and as of 2019, both digital and print format was estimated over $1.2 billion in sales.
The sales of comic books provide appealing entertainment through the act of storytelling, combined with the use of art. And it has become trendy amongst people of different demographics, with the continual rise in sales in the industry. You can become part of the billions of dollars in sales in this industry by starting a comic business.
Just like starting any business, there are particular considerations you should put in place, in addition to the specification for the comic store. You have to take into account an understanding of the comic industry, to ensure that you succeed in this business.
How to Plan Starting Your Comic Books Business
We have outlined a concise plan to help you start your comic business. It is not enough to have neither the passion nor the capital, but you need to organize and plan strategically to succeed in the business.
Below are factors you have to consider when starting your comic business:
- Draw a business plan.
- The branding of your business
- Determine how to make money from your comic business
- Advertisement and promotion of your comic business
- How to keep customers coming back and attract new customers.
- How to keep the business afloat.
Draw a Business Plan
You must come up with an appropriate business plan when starting any business. And beginning a comic store is no exception, to enable you to sustain the market for a long time. Before drawing a business plan, you have to understand the industry and what it entails to start the business. Suppose you had an experience as a salesperson or had worked in any capacity in a comic store. In that case, it will be an added advantage to carry this experience along with opening your comic store.
But, if you have no experience, you should learn about the business as fast as possible. You can gather information from people who know the market. In drawing your business plan, you can consult those who are experienced in the business for guidelines, especially on the financial angle. Use the internet to get information, compare prices from suppliers and which comics are more popular and will yield high sales.
In drawing a business plan to start a comic store, you should include:
- The capital to start up the business
You have to determine how much it will cost you to open up a comic store. And this will include rent for the shop and the capital to order your first inventory of comic books. These are the initial capitals you should consider in a comic shop. Also, you should invest in getting a computer and hooked up to the internet. For in our present-day world, you will have to build an online store and include getting to sell digital comic books.
In getting a store, you should consider getting one with a cheap rent but in a good location for your business. You may have to spend over $10000 to start up the comic store business to start this business on a small budget.
- The recurring expenses
The recurring expenses need to be accounted for in planning your comic business. You may need to budget at least for a year to keep the business running until it can sustain itself. These recurring expenses may include salaries for employees, rents, electric bills, comic book supplies, and regular payment for other items.
- Determine your target customers
A business plan should include the people you want to provide these services for and how to reach out to these people. The aim and objective of the business are to present comic books for those who are interested in it. The goal and objective of the company will be defeated if people who are interested in reading comics fail to locate your shop online and offline.
You have first to know your customers and what they desire in a comic book. There are different categories of customers in the comic industry; we have collectors and casual customers. The collectors will spend a considerable amount for rare collections, so you should keep contacts of these sets of customers and inform them whenever you have unique collections in your shop.
On the other hand, we have the casual customers who will purchase the latest comic books or just want to pick one of the shelves to pass time. You should make consideration for all types of customers in your shop to ensure you have a regular flow of customers. You should know that the customers include men, women and children.
Read Also: How to Prepare Cash Flow Forecast for Small Business
Brand Your Business
You should get a brand name that you can use to market your comic shop. Choosing a suitable brand name is a vital step in starting your comic business, and you should endeavour to select a catchy, easy name to remember for your business. You should ensure that this name has not been used or trademarked by another company. Personalize the chosen name to your business and register it with the appropriate organization.
At this stage, you can create a logo that will be used to represent your business anywhere it is seen. Get a graphic designer to design a logo for your business, something that can easily be used for your social media handles and on your websites.
How to Make Money with Your Comic Business
It is apparent that you have to sell comic books at profits to make money, but there is more to this if you want to stay in business for a long time. You have to know what the customers wish, to be able to sell your products to them. It is not wise to pick up comic books and place them in your shop. There is a need to be specific about what you are pushing to your customers with this business.
Ordinarily, you need to be an excellent trader to sell your books, when talking to your customers; you should be able to convince them about the comic books in your shop. You must learn how to be a good salesperson, known more about what you are selling to satisfy your customers about your product. It is advisable to know some of the stories behind these comic books as you seek to promote them to your customers. You should show your enthusiasm about your business to further develop the interest of the buyers.
You can learn about comic characters and stories by searching about them online, and endeavour to increase your knowledge about the stock of comics. This will enable you to encourage customers to buy these comic books, with enticing stories about what is inside the books. You should find ways to obtain proper stock of comic books and sell them at profits. One way you can make massive income from sales is to gather up classic comics that are rare and sell them at a costly price. These vintage comic books are usually priced high in the market, and you can make a good profit when you have customers who are looking for these classic comics.
Another avenue you should consider in making money is from online sales. The use of online stores has shown to be an effective way for businesses to increase revenue. The internet and the use of smartphones had made it necessary for shop owners to take their goods online. To receive your market online, you have to consider two angles of selling your comic book, and they include:
- Selling physical comic books
- And the sale of digital comics online.
Now you can create an online store where you can promote the comic books you have on your physical store. With the creation of your online shop, you are taking your business beyond your vicinity, and you can reach out to more people. People can order comic books they find on your online shop, and you can find ways to deliver these books to the clients. The online store will increase your revenue with the rate at which people are making orders online.
Another angle you have to consider with your online stores is the sale of digital comic books. With the use of handheld devices, there is an increase in the number of downloaded digital contents. Users have become comfortable with reading books on their handheld devices or their computer, and this will be a profitable avenue to increase revenue.
The sales of digital comic books can also be an entry point to the business for those who do not have the funds to open a physical store. Digital contents are easy to buy and resell, and it is also easier to build your online store to make it an easy way to enter the business.
In the comic industry, pricing is flexible, especially when you are selling from a physical store. You can negotiate with customers but ensure that you do not place the price below 20%. For example, if you bought a comic book for $20, your sale price should bring about 30% profit so that you will place a cost of $26 on your store, but with negotiation, you should not go below say $24, so you can stay at your profit range. However, the market sentiment will determine the sales price, and you may want to adjust your price to what is happening with the market.
However, for your online shop, the price is not negotiable, so you should ensure to place an amount that will encourage customers to buy on your online stores.
How to Promote Your Comic Business
You need to engage in the massive promotion of your comic store from the beginning because you need to build a customer base. The customer base is required to do the business and ensure that it succeeds over time. You should understand that people need to come into the store regularly, buy your comic books, so you can meet up with your recurring expenditures, make a profit and continue to invest in the business.
At this stage, you need to find comic book enthusiasts and promote your store to these people. The first point of promotion of your business is your store, and you need to make them attractive to customers. Your store should be appropriately designed to attract people and ensure they know that the shop sells comic books. Get a graphic designer to make some attractive posters that will depict comic books characters to show the purpose of the shop. Build your shop as the first point of advertisement, with appropriate designs to attract those interested in getting a comic book.
You have an online shop for selling digital and physical comic books, and you can promote your products online. You can achieve this by hiring an online marketer to help improve your online store and products. The good thing about online marketing is you are going to target people interested in comic books. And this will increase the chance of them purchasing your comic books and increasing your revenue.
If you are on a small budget, you can carry out the online marketing on your own using the right social media handle. A business like the comic shop will make use of platforms that you can use images adequately to promote your comic books to your targeted audience. There are some social media platforms that you should focus on to promote your comic store properly. Let us take a look at how you can promote this business on some of these social media platforms.
Facebook: Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms with millions of active daily users, and you can use it to promote your store. This platform offers you various avenues that will enable you to reach out to your targeted audience. You can use Facebook ads to tailor an advert campaign that will reach out to people that love comic books. With the campaign, you can achieve this because Facebook has data of the user, which they can use to determine their interest. When you adjust your ads campaign with some specific criteria, Facebook will use the data they have about their users to direct your ads to those who will be interested in your comic store.
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Also, with Facebook, you can create a shop on the platform, where you can place your product up for sale. However, this shop will only be available to people on the Facebook platform. With your brand on Facebook, it will further boost the popularity of your brand. And on Facebook, you will have people that are interested in your platform, so you already have contacts you can target whenever you have new stocks of comic books, or you are running a promotion or discounts to attract buyers.
Facebook can offer you so much with your online marketing, and you should include in your strategy. Note that you can handle this yourself and you may not need to pay anyone to do it for you if you are on a budget.
Instagram: Instagram is another popular social media platform that focuses on images and video to promote your business. One of the advantages of using this platform is that you can easily promote your comic books by displaying captivating images for your customers. If you promote your business correctly, you can gain enough followers on this platform, and you can market your books efficiently on the platform.
Getting an Instagram account will help you promote your products, and people can easily find you on this platform. Instagram is one of the most accessible platforms you can use to promote your business.
There are other popular platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and other platforms. It is best if you have the most popular ones suitable for your platform. You do not have to create a platform on all the social media platforms, for you cannot keep up with managing them.
Also, these social media platforms can be used perfectly as a customer support system. You can relate with your customer on these platforms, get to know what they want and what they think about your business.
How to Keep People Coming Back o Your Store
The comic business is more profitable when you have regular customers amongst the irregular ones. You have to find ways to keep your regular customers coming back to your shop, and you can achieve this through the following ways:
- Keep updating your shelves with newer stocks of comic books. Customers will like to come in every week to check out your new stocks, so you should plan for a steady supply of comic books. If they have to see the same comic books over and over again on the shelves, then they may move on to another shop with new comic books to offer.
- To keep your regular customers coming back, you have to know what they want and make it available in your shop. That is why it is essential to communicate with your customers, talk to them and find out what they like. Keep updating your shop with the particular comic series they want, and you will win a set of dedicated customers.
- Keep your regular customers happy with gifts, discounts and promotions. When you know that a customer has been dedicated to your shop, you can throw in a discount on the books they offer and give the customer an extra comic book as a gift.
How to Keep the Business Going
To keep the comic business going, one has to be conversant with the new trends in the industry. One has to know which of these comic characters is trendy and the latest series of comic books. Get to know your market; get to know what is going on with the producers of the comic books.
You should be aware of what is happening with the big comic labels such as Marvel to know what is happening with their character. When they are making a movie about any of their characters, you might be expecting big sales in the comic books based on that character. And that is the period you should promote those comic books online and offline.
The best way to keep the comic shop going is always to provide something new for your customers. You can add other aspects to your business, like promotion of movies, sales of souvenirs of comic characters and other related stuff to help increase revenue and promote the business.
In conclusion, a comic business may not be a business that yields profits faster, and you should expect to be patient with the market. In planning your budget to start the company, you should consider a capital that will last for at least a year to make enough profit to begin to maintain the business. And with this in mind, you should draw a strategic business plan.
The business may not be that capital intensive, but you should ensure that you have enough to sustain you till when the market starts picking up. Have a proper account for the business to ensure that you pay your taxes and monitor the inflow and outflow of money. If you cannot keep an appropriate account, you should outsource this part of the business to a specialist. It is a crucial aspect of the company and should be handled with adequate care.
Follow your business plan judiciously and ensure that you have enough capital to follow that plan. A good business plan can get you a loan if you can come out a repayment plan that will not affect the growth of your business; otherwise, you stick to getting capital from friends and family.