Word of mouth... well... post.

I have mentioned it before on my blog, but for those of you that don't know I draw a comic strip for the niche market of surveying. I have a contract with Professional Surveyor magazine and I draw a strip each month. In addition I have a little online store with calendars, shirts, etc. It is a lot of fun and recently (and with the help of my Red Fish Blue colleague, Clinton George) I have moved to doing the strips in color.

I get my ideas from my experience of marketing to Surveyors over the past three years. A lot of the people I work with at Hayes are surveyors as well, so of course I use them a lot for resources.

Anyways, a competing magazine (P.O.B.) has a very popular message board for surveyors. They can come and post all of their problems, solutions, ideas, or general thoughts on the board. I just finished a full year of doing the site and cartoon before the board noticed my work. A couple of days ago however, someone made a post on the board about my cartoon.

Saturday's post | Monday's post

Within an hour more than 200 visitors flooded my website, Out-of-Plumb.com, which is more visitors than I have seen in over three months. Nobody bought anything, but that is my fault. I have to do a new calendar, Christmas cards, etc. before people will want to buy anything. And on all of the posts the feedback was always positive.

The point that I am not making very well here is this: the outcome to this scenario could have been completely different, seeing how I am not a surveyor, have never surveyed, and have only affiliated with the industry for a couple of years. After so many surveyors witnessed my brand of humor applied to their profession they could have ripped me a new one. They could have said things like, "He obviously has never surveyed a day in his life." But they did not. They found the humor relatable and appreciated and supported the continuation of my work.

Whew!