“Don’t worry. Everything will be alright…“
-Someone Elsewood
hear the clip
Hello, wonderful people. Today's Update is a bonus for everyone to read: both paying subscribers and free followers!
I am so grateful to you all for being awesome and supporting me throughout this journey, Not only have some of you been subscribing, but adding one-off donations which is just so amazing. Special shout out to Dreamcartographer for donating to my Ko-Fi the other day while I was streaming on Twitch! <3
I have been trying to be less shy about promoting my projects and soliciting donations as of late. Right now, I am not in the best financial situation, but I appreciate what I have. I know that it is not at all anything to take for granted. Still, it would be lovely to be a bit more comfortable and not worry as much. Especially considering that I am about to get laid off from my primary place of employment at the end of January. I still haven’t found any substantially promising substitute. Last time I got laid off from my main income source, I tried to see if it was a sign to maybe start doing my creative gigs full-time and figure out if I could survive from that alone. Unfortunately, it didn’t really take off as much as I needed it to. It was not enough to sustain me, so I had to scramble and find another “real” job. I suppose we’ll see what happens this time.
I love to support people, but, sometimes, it seems that I am giving more than I am receiving. I need to work something out if I want to be balanced and successful. I suppose I’m just trying to treat people the way I want to be treated, but the golden rule can sometimes make me lose all my gold, unfortunately lol. Perhaps it will get paid back to me one day. Until then, I just have to keep praying and keep going.
Though I’ve been attempting to improve, I should strive harder to become even better at self-promotion. It’s something that I have been trying so very diligently to work on. I am attempting to find a balance between being wayyyy too passive and being a total nuisance who begs people for donations every time they look up. It seems that neither of those strategies has worked incredibly well for me so far. Either I am doing nothing and asking nothing and getting nothing, or I am doing things and asking things and not getting too many things. Some people have complained about not having a lot of success, only selling a few hundred copies a year lol. I can’t even say I’ve done anything close to that. I know everyone’s situation is different, but, from what I’ve gathered, I feel like people looking at me from the outside think I am more successful and well-off than I really am.
I am thinking of starting a fundraiser project to see how much I can collect. I really want to build up the hype around Someone’s birthday next year, and drafting up a goal to earn a bit of money will ensure the festivities will be really super extra special! I have a lot of things planned; short audio dramas, story snippets, cool surprise streams, and more! I want at least one piece of new content published every day in February leading up to the big shebang on the 29th itself.
A lot of people don’t actually notice how expensive it is to do all the things that I do. And I do this a whole lot, most of the time offering it to everyone for free. It takes up a lot of my time and attention. It also costs a lot of money to compensate the voice actors satisfactorily. I want to pay them well because they do an absolutely spectacular job! But I’m also doing some of the voices, along with editing and publishing, producing, advertising, designing, writing, and everything else, but I am not compensated. It’s fun and all, but working seven days a week and still trying to find a way to get things together can be very taxing and costly. I know this, but I don’t really know a solution to the problem that I can implement on my own. I don’t want to stop doing it, but I need to figure something out. People suggest I delegate, but delegation costs money. That’s another reason why I do a lot of things myself.
Sorry for this lengthy rant. I say this to say thanks to all of you who are following me, paid or not, because you help to motivate me and keep me doing these things for you all. I truly appreciate and cherish your generous support. Words cannot describe how much you mean to me. Still, the inevitable mention is that, like it or not, money makes the world go round. This is one of the reasons I may take a hiatus on certain projects. Thank you for understanding.
If you are able to support, I will be eternally grateful. If not, but you know people who might be willing to chip in a bit or two to help me out, I would really be honored if you shared my links--my projects--any of my works with anybody. And if there are any perks you’d love to see to help you feel more compelled to contribute to my efforts, please shout them out. I’m going to try to get merch up and stuff like that. I already have some things going that have been established for a while, but I don’t do enough advertising. Perhaps I’ll be changing that soon but hopefully not to the point of painfully unbearable annoyance lol.
I love each and every one of you so very much! God bless and great success to you with all the stuff! Sending so many prayers and hugs. <3
#writerslife #update #support #love
