Part of my normal Monday routine is to catch up on bills and reconcile statements and look at cash flow and all of that kind of nonsense. With the Buffalo "aside" this week, I just didn't get to it until today.
On one hand, I feel pretty good about the incoming ad revenue from April and May, but because of the long accounting cycle with "real" ad agencies, I'm not sure when I'll see that actual cash. That's a bit frustrating. But still, it was nice to have a couple of really good months like that. June won't be quite as good, despite rising traffic, but things are still better than they were in the winter.
August will be tight for cash, and in September I'll probably have to borrow a little money, which sucks. I'm at an interesting point where I feel like the work I'm doing will eventually generate revenue, particularly with projects that seek a larger audience. It's just time to develop and then develop an audience that makes it feel hard in the long run.
The truth is that I'd probably jump at the chance to get back to a day job, not so much because of the regular income, but just because of my aforementioned desire to get out of the house. Not that it matters, really, because with today's unemployment figures in Ohio exceeding 10%, yeah, this is a shittier-than-usual place to be. It's not that I'm not getting interviews, it's that there's nothing to even apply for. What a reverse from a year ago, when the phone wouldn't stop ringing and I could pick and choose (and chose poorly, twice).
The thing that the accounting does not show is the "sweat equity" that I've been building. In two months, or more like one when you consider the traveling and miscelaneous dicking around, I've made myself a quasi-expert with a new Web framework, written parts of a book that may find its way to some form of media, increased CoasterBuzz page views per visit by 16%, wrote a new blogging engine on the platform I've been learning, become an expert on Google Ad Manager, and most importantly, teach myself how to work at home. While most of this doesn't translate into instant income, it's a whole lot of ground work that may in the long run.
So yes, looking at the numbers out a few months is a little scary, but if this sort of thing were easy, everyone would do it. Living in this market, and we're stuck here until we can shed both of our houses, I can't rely on getting another job any time soon, so I've gotta develop the things I've already got in motion.
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