I took some time this morning to teach myself how to use the Google Charts API. It’s a handy tool for making graphs on the fly by simply putting the data you need in a URL—but I can see how it might become a little more difficult to use when you have a LOT of data points to put in. Expect to see more tinkering in future updates.
So 2010 may very well be the year of explicit contracts and service level agreements with clients. I mean, I’m a nice guy and all, but some things really blow my mind at times. Let’s take, for example, the calendar I worked on near the end of 2009 and was trying to get a follow-up done in the last couple of weeks by getting desktop stand-style calendars printed with the same images (by the way, if you’re ever trying to do this, make sure it’s in the October-November period of the year—it gets far more difficult to find a printer after this).
Let’s look at some numbers on the original calendar:
Time spent on making 13 drawings for the calendar = 10 hours
Money spent on printing the calendar = $24.85
Money spent for next day shipping = $15.00
Money paid to Casey for this calendar = $20.00
The look on Casey’s face upon seeing this = PRICELESS.
So yes, even though people may be friends or you may have or had a good working relationship with them, you still need to get things down on paper and a firm understanding put together before you start doing the work. Otherwise, things like this happen. It’s not something that I’ll let sour the relationship nor will I be bitter about it, but I’ll definitely approach things differently next time.
Today was still a good day, though. I sat with one of my more “big business”-minded friends, and she was able to have a good talk with me on the ideas of things like incorporation, focusing my efforts on doing one thing well and how to invoke actual growth in money. It was good to bounce ideas off of someone who’s really into making effective change in a limited scope of time.
Doing some research on avenues already available to me, and I’ve (re-)discovered a couple:
I’m resurrecting an art book that I published called Blazin’ Apes: Sketches to Sketches, Brush to Brush (Edwin, I still need to sign yours!)—it’s a collection of work that I’ve done over the years, collected into one tome—feel free to support if you’re interested 😊 You can get more information on it by clicking below:
https://www.blurb.com/books/312787
Also, LiveJournal gives Paid/Permanent users to generate revenue through ads in their journals. I might try it out—LJ friends, if it drives you insane, please feel free to let me know. But, you’ll need to give me a better alternative for continued revenue. Deal?
Today’s increases came from $0.10 donated by Sakshi this morning, which was awesome—every little bit helps 😊—$2.00 from cashing in a December lottery ticket and $20.00 from that calendar job. Money is money, right? This means that…
The 2010 20K Running Total = $62.20
For anyone who’s done the math, $20,000 over the span of the year means that I’ll need to earn an average of $384.62 per week to make it. It’s a good start, but I’m going to need to turn up the heat to hit the goal. But Day 7 out of 365? It’s way too early to say die 😊 Let’s do this.
Thanks for reading,
–case p.
