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Possibility of non-monetary payments
2 years ago
General
Okay, so, to elaborate on the previous journal:
I have a day job. The "Code" in "Codelizard" is there for a reason; I'm a programmer. A senior one. As such, I earn a pretty good salary from my day job. For this reason I have been trying to keep my rates low, at around the minimum wage given my average writing speed. I want my stuff to be fairly accessible, and I just charge the money so that I get some compensation for my time. It's a hobby, not my job, so I am always flexible with payments if people need to split them up or wait for a pay day or something, because it's not paying my bills. It's just meant to be a nice little side income that mostly ends up being passed on to other artists when I commission them and pay out of my PayPal balance.
The government thinks otherwise. Because my day job income is a not-insignificant salary, all extra income from my writing commissions gets taxed... heavily. To the point where it doesn't even feel worth it any more, again given that I was originally trying to aim somewhere around minimum wage for my writing rates.
But as crushing as it is to discover this the hard way, I don't want to stop writing or give up commissions. It's a good creative outlet and I enjoy doing it. I like hearing from people who read and enjoy my stories, and I'm always happy when a commissioner likes what I've created for them. Plus, my commissioners give me fun ideas to work with. I want to keep doing it, but I also don't want to be doing it for free (or paying half of it to the IRS). And trying to raise my rates accordingly is a losing battle that will just price everyone out of commissioning me, and I don't want to do that.
So...
I'm currently considering how to accept non-monetary payments. Art would be an obvious option. Or video games or gift cards or stuff like that. I've actually done this a couple times before where I've given people credit for either drawing or commissioning art for me related to my stories.
And doing the math, I could even give a huge discount on it. Even if I hypothetically dropped the exchange to my original rate of $1/100 words, I'd still be coming out ahead compared to earning the money directly and then having the government eat half of it. Not to mention that there's a better emotional payoff; I love seeing my stuff brought to life visually (or even as audio, which has happened once). Even moreso if it's something involving one of my characters. Plus, it helps spread awareness of me and brings in new potential readers to enjoy my work. These things are worth more to me than the $40 (well, $20 after tax) or whatever I'd otherwise get.
There are obvious caveats. I'll need to be willing to accept cash in full either way as not everyone will want to go this route. A perfectly equal exchange is highly improbable, so I'll still have to accept money just to cover the difference, and just treat the non-monetary payments as a discount option. I'll also need to be a little picky on artists and art styles, so that people can't try to pay with MS Paint doodles or tiny background slots in an overpriced YCH. Any given artist and I won't work in lockstep so one of us is going to finish first. It'll require a certain amount of trust between me and the commissioner, as well as the third-party artist.
If I accept gift games I need to be careful not to end up with a thousand games I'll never play, and I have to be picky there too so people don't try to gift me copies of Bad Rats or hentai games or whatever. Gift cards might be nice in certain circumstances where I already have something in mind I need, like a new piece of computer hardware, but otherwise aren't very useful to me. I guess I could also take GrubHub credit for when I order dinner, since food is obviously something I need regularly, but there's an upper limit on how much of that I need.
I'll have to think on it some more before I write it into my terms officially. Until then, it is unofficially a potential option, so feel free to reach out if you're on my queue and interested in such an exchange. I'm also open to ideas in the comments if you have any.
I have a day job. The "Code" in "Codelizard" is there for a reason; I'm a programmer. A senior one. As such, I earn a pretty good salary from my day job. For this reason I have been trying to keep my rates low, at around the minimum wage given my average writing speed. I want my stuff to be fairly accessible, and I just charge the money so that I get some compensation for my time. It's a hobby, not my job, so I am always flexible with payments if people need to split them up or wait for a pay day or something, because it's not paying my bills. It's just meant to be a nice little side income that mostly ends up being passed on to other artists when I commission them and pay out of my PayPal balance.
The government thinks otherwise. Because my day job income is a not-insignificant salary, all extra income from my writing commissions gets taxed... heavily. To the point where it doesn't even feel worth it any more, again given that I was originally trying to aim somewhere around minimum wage for my writing rates.
But as crushing as it is to discover this the hard way, I don't want to stop writing or give up commissions. It's a good creative outlet and I enjoy doing it. I like hearing from people who read and enjoy my stories, and I'm always happy when a commissioner likes what I've created for them. Plus, my commissioners give me fun ideas to work with. I want to keep doing it, but I also don't want to be doing it for free (or paying half of it to the IRS). And trying to raise my rates accordingly is a losing battle that will just price everyone out of commissioning me, and I don't want to do that.
So...
I'm currently considering how to accept non-monetary payments. Art would be an obvious option. Or video games or gift cards or stuff like that. I've actually done this a couple times before where I've given people credit for either drawing or commissioning art for me related to my stories.
And doing the math, I could even give a huge discount on it. Even if I hypothetically dropped the exchange to my original rate of $1/100 words, I'd still be coming out ahead compared to earning the money directly and then having the government eat half of it. Not to mention that there's a better emotional payoff; I love seeing my stuff brought to life visually (or even as audio, which has happened once). Even moreso if it's something involving one of my characters. Plus, it helps spread awareness of me and brings in new potential readers to enjoy my work. These things are worth more to me than the $40 (well, $20 after tax) or whatever I'd otherwise get.
There are obvious caveats. I'll need to be willing to accept cash in full either way as not everyone will want to go this route. A perfectly equal exchange is highly improbable, so I'll still have to accept money just to cover the difference, and just treat the non-monetary payments as a discount option. I'll also need to be a little picky on artists and art styles, so that people can't try to pay with MS Paint doodles or tiny background slots in an overpriced YCH. Any given artist and I won't work in lockstep so one of us is going to finish first. It'll require a certain amount of trust between me and the commissioner, as well as the third-party artist.
If I accept gift games I need to be careful not to end up with a thousand games I'll never play, and I have to be picky there too so people don't try to gift me copies of Bad Rats or hentai games or whatever. Gift cards might be nice in certain circumstances where I already have something in mind I need, like a new piece of computer hardware, but otherwise aren't very useful to me. I guess I could also take GrubHub credit for when I order dinner, since food is obviously something I need regularly, but there's an upper limit on how much of that I need.
I'll have to think on it some more before I write it into my terms officially. Until then, it is unofficially a potential option, so feel free to reach out if you're on my queue and interested in such an exchange. I'm also open to ideas in the comments if you have any.
Like, if I were to quit partway through the year, I'd still get dinged for however much I earned from my day job in that year prior to that. The government doesn't care of my income suddenly drops for the last X months of the year, they just care how much I made in the entire year.
And same, I do get why it's set up this way (if it weren't you know for sure the billionaires would say "Oh yeah I have 100,000 jobs that each pay minimum wage so I owe no tax"). It's just incredibly discoruaging.