Matt: In the beginning, I wanted it to be. So thats sort of the process. Matt: Essentially, when I left SEOmoz, I think part of the reason I wanted to set out on my own was to build my own website that was its own beast. 5. They Digg up my stuff. Matt: Hows that different from an employee that gets shares? Ping me if you think its taking me too long to post it. [44] Inman, a fan of Tesla, promoted the fundraiser with a blog post on The Oatmeal calling for people and companies to donate. Why not show that off? So basically I was this giant image hosting machine. [1], Inman opposed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Its nice reading them and seeing all these fans talking. Other than that, like I said before, listening and thinking about what were all saying and what were all doing and articulating it. . Inman has produced a series of Oatmeal books with content from the webcomic and previously unpublished material, related board games, and other merchandise. For example, I made a comic about semicolons and how to use them, and now if you Google semicolons, I think Im third or second or something like that in the search results. Now I work for myself and really no one can control what I say. Matt: Yeah, I did everything. And shes in jail right now, I think, so I dont think she can respond. Id get enraged. I was building computers that would provide backup servers for all our old FreeBSD boxes. Im a one man operation and I just calculated the number of pageviews I got in 2010. Andrew: Yeah, it seems like, for him, its an e-mail newsletter, where he sends, what does he call it, one of his drawings a day. Its got a years worth of comics and a bunch of new comics in it. But when I learned how to code, I kind of just put it on a back burner for a while. On one occasion, only one occasion, I actually pulled a comic from my site. It was more of . Thats his main form of communication with them. Youre one of the few good looking SEO tech people. View FREE Public Profile & Reputation for Matthew Inman in Oak Grove, MO - See Court Records | Photos | Address, Emails & Phone Numbers | Personal Review | $100 - $149,999 Income & Net Worth Guys, thank you all for watching. Webcomic and humor website by Matthew Inman, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, "COVER STORY: The Oatmeal, he's a cereal killer | Brand X | Los Angeles Times", "Cartoonist Matthew Inman will step away from the Oatmeal after his latest and possibly final book", "The Oatmeal beat Funnyjunk, but other cartoonists aren't so lucky", "Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil", "I wrote a response to the Forbes article about my Tesla comic", "Tumblr Adds Suggested Tumbeast to 404 Page", "The State of the Web - Winter 2010 - The Oatmeal", "Cartoonist Matthew Inman To Step Back From 'The Oatmeal', "How Two Of The Internet's Top Comics Names Turn Creativity To Cash", "Exploding Kittens Raises $30 Million From Peter Chernin's TCG Capital", "Exploding Kittens Laps Up $30 Million Investment | Los Angeles Business Journal", "Exploding Kittens is the most-backed project on Kickstarter to date here's how a $20 card game became an internet phenomenon", "Exploding Kittens to Get Netflix Series With Lucifer Star", "Paperback Advice & Misc. But in the beginning, they actually banned me. What about How did you get a book deal after you self-published your own book? Trying to just identify those and put in the right words. Would you check out TeamworkPM.net? And also I think I had one or two comics that did really well, and I realized that if I made more of these comics that did well, I could probably sustain myself with it. Youll read an article or an image and you actually dont ever commit what that logo is. He said that while the act would have afforded him more rights, he disliked like the way that SOPA would have put the onus on sites to prove their innocence. Oct 2016 - Dec 20215 years 3 months. This eponymous comic became an instant hit when it went live on The Oatmeal.com and was liked on Facebook by 700,000 fans. If you look at the actual character, its very crude, but its got things like gradients and drop shadows and all this stuff around it that a web designer uses to sort of beef up a work. Andrew: [Laughs] I actually find that section very funny, but I saw people were complaining about it so I figured Id bring it up. I did it kind of in an odd way. Matt: They did well. I think it was a grammar poster of How To Use an Apostrophe, was the first product. Matt: Yeah. Andrew: Its possible that he didnt mention you just because I didnt bring it up. Every few years, I compile these comics into books, such as How to tell if your cat is plotting to kill you. You just publish more frequently, he said. The Oatmeal was kind of in that new, up and rising phase, so it was real exciting for me to work on it. If people really want to say something, let them reblog it and say something on their own blog. Andrew: And when you say sustain yourself, how were you thinking the revenue would come in that would sustain you? Make something interesting. I dont do that. I didnt sleep. And he said, I can almost quote him exactly, he said that he worked in a tiny little dark hole for 15 years with zero feedback, didnt do a book tour. So from that you could connect, like, how long could I survive inside of my own washing machine. She doesnt look very fast, so well see. Matt: No. So thats what sort of changed. "Carreon claims victory, drops his lawsuit against The Oatmeal et al", "FunnyJunk Attorney Charles Carreon Drops Lawsuit Against Oatmeal Creator", "Funny Junk Drops Frivolous Lawsuit Against The Oatmeal", "The Oatmeal sued over trademark by 'Oatmeal Studios', "Oatmeal Studios Responds to The Oatmeal Lawsuit: 'We Are Simply Trying to Protect Our Name', "Excelsior Printing Company v. Inman et al Filing 33 STIPULATION of Dismissal with prejudice by Excelsior Printing Company. It wasnt offensive, it was just not funny. Matt: I didnt have any problem with that. Andrew: So at first it was a book and it was ads. This is a huge issue we need to discuss. So then I awarded her the Retarded E-Mail Hall of Fame Champion. We also talked about SEO. Andrew: Why do you think the donation didnt do as well as merchandise? 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. So I put up a donation page saying, Hey, do you guys want to support The Oatmeal? But yeah, definitely posting more frequently in the beginning helped a lot. It wasnt that big a deal. A lot of people who try to get on Digg find a power user, submit it, try to make it look like it wasnt a marketing company, try to make it look like it wasnt an actual social media guy and they try to make it look natural. I think youre still spending thousands after you switched. But I only did that once. Andrew: Not artists, writers have told me that. Most people, they go get an agent, the agent negotiates the book deal and then you get your book. Matt: Yup. I know there are going to be some people who are listening to this interview who are in a situation that you were in a year or two ago, where they just dont like their jobs, theyre not inspired by it. Selling something that you actually use, rather than something that just makes them giggle, actually usually sells a lot better. Matt: Those people, I have their permission to do it. Matt: Oh, as far as what generates traffic the most? [3][1], Exploding Kittens is being made into a Netflix series by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels. ( 1,339 ) $4.99. I wasnt paying attention to the costs because I had never run into this issue before. Matt: It was called Hungover Aliens and it just was the most horribly received comic Ive ever done. Matt: I dont know really. So I started doing client work again. In 2019, Inman announced plans to step back from The Oatmeal for a while to concentrate on other work. So if one guy can generate that much traffic, I feel like the Internet has kind of come to fruition. One thing youll find is that if you ever make a post about grammar, suddenly every pedantic person from across the Internet will find you and point out every little thing that you spell wrong or do wrong. And then I became a web designer, and I got good at vector graphics and drawing icons, logos, websites, things like that. I love the format and the way it works. So, I see that youre in the community. Matt: How do I get ideas or how do I get them out there? He just wrote what he liked and what he thought was funny and that humor coincided with his fans. Send me five or ten bucks, buy me a beer. And that actually was able to pay for the hosting costs until I had posters and all that stuff in hand that I could actually sell things on the website. This stuff just keeps staying out there and keeps growing or keeps getting talked about. [12], The Oatmeal received 300,000 visitors in its first month and within 10 months had received 4.5 million visitors. I still do occasionally, but I found that with Reddit, the best thing is just to leave it alone and if Redditors want to submit it to a thread, they can. And that basically evolved straight into comics. Matt: I think, with donations, youre not getting product and youre giving somebody money. Its more just like kind of a vacant lack of ideas and a sense of being uninspired. Why are things different there? [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. I made a self-published book and I wanted to be able to at least generate some secondary income from it. How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You spent at least 20 weeks on the NYT bestseller list "Paperback Advice & Misc. If you're a premium member, you can save your likes. I'm a cartoonist. 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. Its the stand-up routine where someone gets up there and says, Whats the deal with airline food? You take that and you apply it to a comic. I need to hurry. Matt: I did too, actually. I think the best way to describe my drawing style is very poorly drawn but dressed up really well. And when Im making a comic and its like today, its a Tuesday and Ive got the rest of the day to draw, for some reason I feel like I have to get this comic out as quick as possible. Matt: Yeah, it was all the old ones: Why You Should Keep Your Tyrannosaurus Rex Off Crack Cocaine; Things Bears Love; How To Tell If You Loved Ones Plot to Eat You. That kind of stuff, kind of old Oatmeal. I was a developer and a designer and I built a lot of SEO tools, but, as far as what SEOmoz offers now is such a different animal, its probably just wasnt that relevant. On a plane with no distractions I get so much more done. Matt: Theres a lot of reasons. I had a donation page up for about a month, and then I took that down when I was able to actually have real merchandise on hand. Thats really what changed everything. Im the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. How do you get your ideas out there? Its just kind of the result of making something that was well-linked to. Andrew: What was in the original book? I had this expectation that I would [inaudible 21:48] and I think had a couple hundred of these books to sell, and that Id get all this traffic and selling them would be super easy. Andrew: So how did it come about and why did it come about and what did you do? 23 while the Dobson family, owner of Whataburger, ranked No. I do like two sales a year. You didnt bring up e-mail when I asked you where you get your traffic. [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 started using Tumblr for the first time like a month ago and I love the software. Also, my reputation is still suffering from being in SEO. And because I only do sales really rarely and usually big, like 40 or 50 percent, people respond really well to them, rather than the weekly 10 percent off this week, 5 percent off next week. . The creator of that comic is popular, so Im going to get traffic for it. Andrew: You mean, in the first book there was new material? Matt: It was horrible. He added that he enjoys making people laugh, and although he can't actually see the reaction of others to his work, he still appreciates seeing the high number of page views that his website receives. Whats your full process from nothing to something that everyone Diggs and interacts with? Maybe we can go back before to your days at SEOmoz. Also, I am horrible with clients. The more comics I put up, the more people are reading my site, the more I was able to see it as a real job rather than just a side job. Its kind of old and I actually wouldnt recommend that people draw comics with it. Are you working with a co-founder? How do you fit in there? So I realized that a lot of people in our generation, we stress about app purchases at $1.00 even though we buy things like iPhones and cars and houses and $8.00 mochas. [16][17][18], Inman appeared on an episode of Last Call with Carson Daly in 2010 and mentioned his web site. Matt: Adobe Fireworks actually used to be a Macromedia product. Theres a sense of community with that, but its sort of halfway there because its a community and there are people commenting but they arent repeat users, they arent signed up, they arent doing anything. And when you started to do them more frequently, back in, I guess, was it October 2010, did I get that date right? It was a quarter of a billion almost. And sometimes I do put out things that arent perfect, even if Id actually worked on it a bit, I would have been better. Its the worst, worst, worst thing to read that. Theyll actually have a cover designed and the publisher wont allow them to use it. Its one of those all-in-one merchandizing solutions. What I did was I found this cool script that you can run on a 24-bit PNG that will actually make it look exactly the same as it had before, it just is a lower file size. [7] In response Inman made a second post going through the Forbes article, acknowledging some good points but picking apart others, including calling multiple sections "bullshit" and defending his work as "a comedian [who speaks] in hyperbole. Why would someone who knows so much about SEO just push it aside? So I started running that on all the images to help cut down on the costs. Andrew: Did you have shares of the business? Reputation & Background Well, in my opinion, those are kind of two different things. Where did that come from? Andrew: I thought I saw an expression on your face when I said 2010 and then that made me realize I had the wrong date. I send it to her just to make sure and she comes back with all these little minor things that might be wrong. Ha ha ha. What advice do you have for that person whos listening to us right now? So my creativity was being rewarded by basically putting all of the value of our company into another company, in Google in particular and particularly one man at Google, who at any time can decide this is not a good linking practice and this is. I thought this was a cute side project, but I dont think I can do this full-time. Matt: Yeah. Here Ive got someone who has mastered it and has intentionally pushed it aside to focus on other things. And the publisher I picked was Andrews McMeel, who is the same publisher who published Gary Larsons The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Dilbert, Doonesbury, Foxtrot, all these comics which I loved. 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. I've been publishing comics on this website since 2009. [63][4] The campaign raised $220,024 at completion. Andrew: And as a co-founder, did you invest money into the business? Please enter your email address to continue. By the way, is the information in The Economist magazine that I used in the intro right? Andrew: Ben Huh told me thats one of the things that he did when he acquired Lolcats or I Can Has Cheezburger. 260 records for Matthew Inman. Matt: I set up a Rickroll, a Rick/Cher/Snow-roll and enjoyed the absence of commentary for a while. Im looking at the comic version of you, and hes a fat guy with a pointy hat and he looks ridiculous. Matthew Inman in Texas. Andrew: Right. Wouldnt you worry more that youd lose this whole thing that you love so much? So the traffic from the two kind of fed off each other. Andrew: Lately Ive been thinking the Tumblr system is probably best. I know that doesnt go a long way if you look at the music industry, but it did for me. I didnt decide, oh, Im going to rank for semicolons and build a business on it. View the profiles of professionals named "Matt Inman" on LinkedIn. Some are personal. The two-day event was to take place in May 2020 in Portland, Oregon, U.S. [45] The state of New York agreed to match donations up to $850,000. I carry them in my pocket and I write things down all the time when I get an idea. I dont actually meet that many people in person. Andrew: I see. I think when I launched How to Use an Apostrophe, I put out another grammar comic right away after that. We became SEOmoz, I think a year later, and then I was appointed as Chief Technology Officer. Usually, Ill semi-script something, loosely into a notepad. Initially, I used Zazzle, which is sort of like CafePress. So even with my brief foray into link-building, a lot of people still regard me as this slimy, greasy SEO because I used to do aggressive link building. In the last panel of that comic, I think theres something that not perfect, but it could be better. When I launched the comic, people who read it didnt necessarily hear that same tone. 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