Monday, January 7th
Jan. 7th, 2013 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinThe Daily Report
An important thing that needs to be said: 2012 was the first year that my income has gone down instead of upward since I started the whole "writing for money" thing.
The most direct cause of this has to do with things that I haven't been doing, which come back to my flagging motivation and my failed attempts to bolster it. Part of it's writing less, finishing fewer non-MU projects, doing less promo work... and a big part of it is reminding people that I need money less often, meaning even when I keep up my end on Tales of MU I'm getting less money for it. There was no real fundraising in 2012. I was too aware of my failure to deliver on previous ones, even the ones with "easy" incentives, and not driven enough to do anything about it.
I've been working to remedy the motivation problem, and now I'll be working to get things back on track, finance-wise. Basically, I'm assigning a value to MU chapters: $150. That's roughly five cents a word. As money comes in, I'm going to fill up a "bank" with it. When I post a chapter, I'm going to take $150 out of that "bank". At two chapters a week, that's $300 a week and around $1200 a month. Not a princely sum, but the baseline of where I need to be and something I've both easily attained and maintained with a readership at its current size.
Advertising money from the MU site will go into the story bank, but only when the funds are actually released/claimed, so in big chunks every once in a while rather than steadily. Monthly sponsorships will go into the bank, same as a donation or an annual newsletter purchase. Basically everything but unrelated Amazon sales.
For the rest of January this is going to be an entirely internal, intellectual exercise on my part. It won't matter if the bank goes negative in the middle of the month. The number won't be posted anywhere. I'm basically seeing how the idea plays out. Come February, I'll be adding it to the site as a visible reminder to donate, a reminder to everyone... including me... of the relationship between the continued writing/posting of chapters and the flow of money. When the bank goes negative, I'll know it's time to start rattling the cup. If it gets too high... well, then, if I find myself in a place where I can turn up the production or put out some OTs in addition to the twice weekly updates, I'll do that.
(N.B.: This is not going to affect how/when I get money... the "bank" here is notional, because part of the problem is I don't have a lot of excess money I can save, anyway. It's more of a motivational thing.)
The State of the Me
Had some weird sleep patterns this weekend, but that was mainly because I managed to sleep too much during the week. But I feel great! I have a new working definition of "adulthood": you're an adult when going to bed at a reasonable hour starts to feel like unlocking a super secret power-up for your life.
Plans For Today
I'm traveling later in this week, so I'm working ahead a bit. Trying to be done with tomorrow's story by business close today.
An important thing that needs to be said: 2012 was the first year that my income has gone down instead of upward since I started the whole "writing for money" thing.
The most direct cause of this has to do with things that I haven't been doing, which come back to my flagging motivation and my failed attempts to bolster it. Part of it's writing less, finishing fewer non-MU projects, doing less promo work... and a big part of it is reminding people that I need money less often, meaning even when I keep up my end on Tales of MU I'm getting less money for it. There was no real fundraising in 2012. I was too aware of my failure to deliver on previous ones, even the ones with "easy" incentives, and not driven enough to do anything about it.
I've been working to remedy the motivation problem, and now I'll be working to get things back on track, finance-wise. Basically, I'm assigning a value to MU chapters: $150. That's roughly five cents a word. As money comes in, I'm going to fill up a "bank" with it. When I post a chapter, I'm going to take $150 out of that "bank". At two chapters a week, that's $300 a week and around $1200 a month. Not a princely sum, but the baseline of where I need to be and something I've both easily attained and maintained with a readership at its current size.
Advertising money from the MU site will go into the story bank, but only when the funds are actually released/claimed, so in big chunks every once in a while rather than steadily. Monthly sponsorships will go into the bank, same as a donation or an annual newsletter purchase. Basically everything but unrelated Amazon sales.
For the rest of January this is going to be an entirely internal, intellectual exercise on my part. It won't matter if the bank goes negative in the middle of the month. The number won't be posted anywhere. I'm basically seeing how the idea plays out. Come February, I'll be adding it to the site as a visible reminder to donate, a reminder to everyone... including me... of the relationship between the continued writing/posting of chapters and the flow of money. When the bank goes negative, I'll know it's time to start rattling the cup. If it gets too high... well, then, if I find myself in a place where I can turn up the production or put out some OTs in addition to the twice weekly updates, I'll do that.
(N.B.: This is not going to affect how/when I get money... the "bank" here is notional, because part of the problem is I don't have a lot of excess money I can save, anyway. It's more of a motivational thing.)
The State of the Me
Had some weird sleep patterns this weekend, but that was mainly because I managed to sleep too much during the week. But I feel great! I have a new working definition of "adulthood": you're an adult when going to bed at a reasonable hour starts to feel like unlocking a super secret power-up for your life.
Plans For Today
I'm traveling later in this week, so I'm working ahead a bit. Trying to be done with tomorrow's story by business close today.