It was a long lonely journey. You may have started with nearly zero funds using technology as your leverage. You may have been a "trust fund baby" or backed by venture capitalists and sped things up quite a bit and it didn't take so long to "make it".

If you were like me, you started with a beat up computer, and a lot of confused friends around you. Some of them dropped by the wayside, thinking you had lost your mind. Maybe you were like me, had left corporate America to fulfill a vague dream, or maybe you had a your vision was already crystallized as to what people would see and buy from you on the Internet, and how much you would have sold, once you "had arrived".

My vision started in 1997. It was still very vague and I did not have a business plan. I had written thousands of cartoons, but could not draw well. My vague vision was that i would find a risk-taking entrepreneurial artist who would work with me for years until this vision was completed. The vision was to have at least 5000 single-panel offbeat cartoons completed, be world famous, and be in "the spirit of The Far Side" by Gary Larson who was a major influence.

I was naive. My first artist lasted about 4 months and his wife made him "get a real job". I was single. I probably went through thirty artists after that over the next few years until I built a team that stayed with me. By the year 2000, we had almost 2000 cartoons finished and posted.

My other vague dream was that once these cartoons were on the Internet, newspaper syndicates would come running to us begging for syndication. I might as well have been buying lottery tickets.

Fortunately, I had the skill of barter, which I still use, and discovered that many companies indeed beg for the cartoons to use in newsletters, on their websites, and many needed custom graphics which my team provided. Many paid and many bartered, but we did enough business to keep the lights on.

In 2001, I fell ill with heart trouble and sort of let the project glide for several months, even thinking of selling it or closing it.

Then I was contacted by a manufacturer in New Jersey who made everything from t-shirts to wall clocks to Christmas ornaments with artwork on them. He wanted to do business.

The amount he wanted to pay us was not close to what I had in mind. We settled on doubling it and he agreed. That business has been profitable since the third month and didn't cost me a penny.

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