The way that Rick London crafted and organized Londons Times Cartoons and it's peripheral shops was a brilliant move in my mind, as a marketing major. Though Rick was not formally educated at the time of launching the venture, he had an instinctive sixth sense of knowing what was missing in the cartoon world.

Rather than simply create a lot of cartoons, on any topic that came to mind, as so many cartoonists do, he wrote down a number of professions, societal issues, and current events and put them all into categories. He then researched the Internet to find trade journals, websites, and such that in which the publishers might have an interest in adding humor to their publications, websites or both and pitched them.

Since Rick was living hand-to-mouth at the time, if the answer was "no, we don't have the budget" which it often was, Rick would offer the cartoon as a barter for a product or service to run the cartoon in their catalogs, websites, or other publications. This worked at least 50% of the time, and Rick was able to barter the cartoon images for everything from fishing tackle to food. Food was his main goal at the start because at times, he was not eating, simply working day and night. Until this day, he has a four year running barter with one natural food company where he receives a huge box of natural food and vitamins in trade for a single black and white cartoon that is published on their hard copy mail-out catalog

Rick is an avid fisherman, but had no fishing tackle. Now he has closets full of the best rods, reels, lures, and other equipment. He knew his cartoons had value. He also knew the chances of a new cartoonist becoming syndicated in newspapers were next to nil, so he had to do something to stay alive and keep the project afloat. And barter was the answer. That was 1997.

He no longer has to beg for barters though he occasionally does them just for fun, especially with other businesses just getting started and needing help. He has not forgotten his roots. But more often he is approached by newspapers and magazines, and even college textbook authors to buy his cartoons outright. This has been happening for several years now.

Rick started his cartoon in the days before Google, social networking, blogging, ppc, and all the other goodies that make it much easier to get one's project known. When those entities hit the Internet, he was right up there with the big-dogs learning and absorbing all that he could.

Commitment is something we learned early on in marketing school. Rick London is as committed as the come. He blogs, he does opt-in email campaigns, he creates and he sells; all on a daily basis. It is just another sales job to him that he takes very seriously. He just happens to sell a fun product. He is no party animal and is very conservative in many of his ways.

Though he is from Mississippi originally (where I met him), he is not from that part of Mississippi that is known to produce such genius; the delta which brought us William Faulkner, Elvis, Grisham, Willie Morris, Morgan Freeman, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and so many others.

I don't see Rick anymore as we have both moved on and are on other sides of the country. He was like a dad to me. He was trustworthy and kind. And he was very very smart. I still stay in touch via email and he always answers as soon as he can. I order products from his stores which have hundreds of thousands of cartoon collectibles, funny tshirts, things for the office, and all kinds of gifts. I love that man and the work that he has done. And the fact that he started it all with just a thought, virtually not a penny to his name. An amazing story, it truly is.

About the Author, Alexa Ferotina:

Rick London has the largest offbeat cartoon site on the Internet and several estores Rick London's Marketing Secret: From Nothing To Internet's Top Cartoonist And E-Tailer, and Web directory.