Thursday, October 13th
Oct. 13th, 2011 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinNews For Today
We're getting relatively close to my fairly arbitrary $1,000 cut-off for the fundraiser. I have a feeling I'm going to need to keep banging the drum once it's over to keep my income up where it needs to be, but I'm hoping I'll be able to do so in less in-your-face ways. The reason I've been keeping the fundraiser going is because after months of barely scraping by, I really could use a big influx of cash. That hasn't really happened. Things are picking up, but I don't have any cushion and every major bill I pay is a pretty large hurdle. I'm living the equivalent of paycheck to paycheck, with paychecks coming at odd and uncertain intervals.
I worry about the future a lot right now. I've had long dark nights of the soul before, but this is... less dark, but more long. Before I feared crashing with a bang, now I can see the whole thing going out with a whimper. If I can't keep up with my credit card repayments, I'm going to have to look for something steadier. Now's not a great time to look for a job, and I'm not a mid-twenty-something anymore. I can't work full time and then write a 2-4,000 word chapter/story in a two hour blaze of glory any more. I can't stay up all night to make up for lost writing time anymore because staying up all night destroys my ability to write.
But at the same time: I'm not in a huge bind. There's no real emergency. Things are picking up. I still feel like I'm circling the drain, though, and so it's a question of are things picking up faster than they're going down?
New streams of revenue are essential. The Sponsor A Chapter thing hasn't caught on like I'd hoped it would... so far one chapter has attracted a sponsor. Maybe I haven't made it visible enough, or made it clear what I'm offering. Or maybe it just doesn't seem worth it. I'm thinking of replacing it with something else. More direct sponsorship, more direct correlation between writing and paying, paying and writing, seems like the way to go.
I'm going to try to improve the visibility of the chapter sponsorship, and if it still doesn't catch on, I have two other ideas.
One is to do a monthly auction to sponsor the next month's stories, with the winner getting prominent (and permanent) credit on everything that goes up that month (with a minimum update guarantee... if my arms are immobilized in casts for half the month, their run will continue when I do). I like this one because it answers multiple needs. It makes me accountable to a single person each month. It's easier to feel and fulfill an obligation to a single person than to an abstract mass.
The other is a bit more drastic. It's to set a donation threshold to keep the site going. Maybe $100 a week. Or $50 per regular chapter. Something not too onerous, because it'd be meant to supplement the more regular parts of my income. As long as the threshold is met, everything keeps going.
This latter option basically turns the site into a permanent telethon, which is something I'd like to avoid. But both options draw a stronger line between continued productivity and earnings, which I don't mind at all since it would be a two-way street.
In fact, as I write this I find myself wondering if this isn't the next level for me, a more professional approach to the business side of the business.
Things to think about.
State of the Me
I'm a little hoarse today. I had insomnia last night and ended up taking melatonin fairly late at night, which means I'm a little in the fog today, but still fairly productive.
Plans For Today
Write, write, write. I wrote over 1,200 words of Other Tales already, a couple of hundred words of flash fiction for next month, and I'm going to start on the Tales of MU chapter today if I can. It's only day 1 of the cycle, but I've got some clear bits I'd like to get down.
We're getting relatively close to my fairly arbitrary $1,000 cut-off for the fundraiser. I have a feeling I'm going to need to keep banging the drum once it's over to keep my income up where it needs to be, but I'm hoping I'll be able to do so in less in-your-face ways. The reason I've been keeping the fundraiser going is because after months of barely scraping by, I really could use a big influx of cash. That hasn't really happened. Things are picking up, but I don't have any cushion and every major bill I pay is a pretty large hurdle. I'm living the equivalent of paycheck to paycheck, with paychecks coming at odd and uncertain intervals.
I worry about the future a lot right now. I've had long dark nights of the soul before, but this is... less dark, but more long. Before I feared crashing with a bang, now I can see the whole thing going out with a whimper. If I can't keep up with my credit card repayments, I'm going to have to look for something steadier. Now's not a great time to look for a job, and I'm not a mid-twenty-something anymore. I can't work full time and then write a 2-4,000 word chapter/story in a two hour blaze of glory any more. I can't stay up all night to make up for lost writing time anymore because staying up all night destroys my ability to write.
But at the same time: I'm not in a huge bind. There's no real emergency. Things are picking up. I still feel like I'm circling the drain, though, and so it's a question of are things picking up faster than they're going down?
New streams of revenue are essential. The Sponsor A Chapter thing hasn't caught on like I'd hoped it would... so far one chapter has attracted a sponsor. Maybe I haven't made it visible enough, or made it clear what I'm offering. Or maybe it just doesn't seem worth it. I'm thinking of replacing it with something else. More direct sponsorship, more direct correlation between writing and paying, paying and writing, seems like the way to go.
I'm going to try to improve the visibility of the chapter sponsorship, and if it still doesn't catch on, I have two other ideas.
One is to do a monthly auction to sponsor the next month's stories, with the winner getting prominent (and permanent) credit on everything that goes up that month (with a minimum update guarantee... if my arms are immobilized in casts for half the month, their run will continue when I do). I like this one because it answers multiple needs. It makes me accountable to a single person each month. It's easier to feel and fulfill an obligation to a single person than to an abstract mass.
The other is a bit more drastic. It's to set a donation threshold to keep the site going. Maybe $100 a week. Or $50 per regular chapter. Something not too onerous, because it'd be meant to supplement the more regular parts of my income. As long as the threshold is met, everything keeps going.
This latter option basically turns the site into a permanent telethon, which is something I'd like to avoid. But both options draw a stronger line between continued productivity and earnings, which I don't mind at all since it would be a two-way street.
In fact, as I write this I find myself wondering if this isn't the next level for me, a more professional approach to the business side of the business.
Things to think about.
State of the Me
I'm a little hoarse today. I had insomnia last night and ended up taking melatonin fairly late at night, which means I'm a little in the fog today, but still fairly productive.
Plans For Today
Write, write, write. I wrote over 1,200 words of Other Tales already, a couple of hundred words of flash fiction for next month, and I'm going to start on the Tales of MU chapter today if I can. It's only day 1 of the cycle, but I've got some clear bits I'd like to get down.