How I launched a profitable comic website and made it to Alexa top 89,000 websites in 2008

When I was in my 20s, my first startup ranked amongst Alexa top 89,000 websites in the world, and made $2k in its first month of launch in 2008. And then it met with a funny, yet tragic demise

I was 25, fresh out of an MBA course in the UK. Rejected an offer from HSBC, UK to come back to India and, well, startup! I had about 50k from my job waiting tables while studying. And so it began.

Back home, I was chilling and listening to some metal, contemplating my future. A friend pinged me on Yahoo chat (really betraying my age here) asking me for my comic. And like most ideas that come suddenly and naturally, I had one. Why not open up my library for everyone?

Needless to say, I was a huge fan of comics. And all I wanted to do was spread the love for them to the world. And that was my eureka moment! I found a php freelancer in Bangalore and paid him 25k to develop a simple comics website. Started scanning and uploading my comics soon!

I called the site Toonwalk and made a post about it on Digg.com. Guess what? The traffic on the first day crashed my server! I'd received 6k unique impression in the first six hours!

You know what I did next? Pressed NOS on the server and started uploading more comics! But I could not meet the demands of the traffic from the world over. I shipped a lot of comics to a few teenagers in Assam, who helped me upload to the site. And we did!

With my teen army on my side, we were unstoppable and had a LOT of comics on the site. We were mainly getting a lot of traffic from Digg and the Reddit comics page. The next realization was that we needed our own community. And so, we did make one!

All our revenues came from ads, and we even started getting partnership deals from other comic websites for sharing traffic. In the second month, our impressions were reaching 100k, with 72% unique hits. Our revenues rose from $500 to $1500/month.

Next, we faced a unique problem. Once you're in the comics space, it doesn't take long for Rule 34 to come into play. So now, Hentai comics were in
After much deliberation, we added an “adult” section to the site for 18+ users. Predictably, the servers crashed the very next day.

Within 3 months, we were cruising into Alexa top 90,000 website list in the world. However, because of the adult section, we couldn't use Google ads and had to switch to an alternate ad network that catered to adult websites.

After a brief lull, we picked up the pace! At that point, it was just me full time and two other friends helping me part time with server and dev work.

I continued working on marketing and community building. And even to my surprise we were moving fast and breaking things at breakneck speeds! Traffic and revenue changes everything in startups. Traction is everything. We'd even get CVs everyday!

I knew this wouldn't be a business till we started uploading our own comics. I even started speaking with local artists to upload their comics in return for revenue share.

And then my worst nightmare was realized.

I received an immediate cease and desist notice from… Marvel comics. I was extremely upset. Till I realized I had an acquisition offer on hand.
It was kind of spacey. The offer was from a Bollywood producer, and he wanted to start a comic series on legendary Indian fictional detective Byomkesh Bakshi.
I asked him he was still interested given the current circumstances. He was! I was the happiest man on earth. I got my cash and treated my friend and my dev partner to a fancy Rs. 25k ($400) keyboard and some vada pav (A local delicary in Mumbai costing 20 cents) at VT railway station.

It was a big win for me, and for my startup dreams. To 2008, and beyond. More power to startups 😅