again comes the day when i think about trying to set up a monthly ko-fi thing to help fund all of the nonsense i do but its always more complicated than that.
at the forefront of this the thing im most committed to is an accessibility of content and not wanting to put the stuff i do under a paywall. this is like a thing i advocate for constantly and if i can afford to make something free i will.
but then comes the obvious challenge of trying to have money to do all the things i do. having my day job keeps me from being destitute but the other incurring cost is my ability to sleep and have a normal sleep schedule. i work full time and basically have made another full time job out of all the other stuff i do. and i have been doing all this work at a loss technically.
then comes the question as to why i dont just charge more for my commissions and the answer is the first paragraph under the cut. i undercharge Severely for my commissions. i could and probably should be charging double or even triple what i charge for my sewing stuff. im still building up my portfolio of stuff. i do work that a lot of textile and plushie people dont do. its niche. i get a lot of interest in my work but i hope its in part because i can offer what i do at such a low cost to a commissioner. i also can afford to do this due to the very low cost of materials i work with. i use felt. an 8x10 sheet of felt is like 50 cents. i still have technically made a profit on all the commission work i've done this year which is great. A totally unlivable amount of money for how long it's taken me to make it though.
which comes to my next point, it takes me forever to finish my commissions. this is not because my health gets in the way or anything, my health gets more in the way of my day job tbh and sewing work is incredibly low stress and low impact. but i hand sew literally everything. im not opposed to using a sewing machine but i prefer to only use it for costumes and clothes where i need to make a lot of straight lines fast. plushie making is hardly ever straight lines. plus the scale i work at is pretty small sometimes making it infeasible to do that work on a machine. plus i like hand sewing. its meditative and simple to do. but it also takes fucking forever to do.
i've been blessed with some really patient commissioners where my stated estimate is about 3 weeks minimum and its sometimes taken up to 2 months to complete a single plushie. there's a lot of reasons to bloat the timeline so bad, but mostly it comes down to a battle between my health, my energy available after my day job, and the required slow pace of hand sewing.
and then comes up to the problem of... wanting to make the stuff that i want to make. i can put off personal projects and work but i have plushie projects ive been wanting to do for upwards of like 6 months now that i cant even start because my commission queue i started in march is still being worked on. i dont think its selfish for me wanting to make what i want to make but theres also the artist guilt of working on something for me when im like a week or more past when i'd said i'd be done with their commission. im not trying to be frustrated with myself but its hard dude!
and then here comes the hypothetical "ok i make the monthly subscription thing" ko-fi but even just as a tip jar feels like i am required to provide some kind of special content to those who do that. helping fund what i do feels like it does entitle you to like. something. right? well, like i said it can take for fucking ever to complete something. sometimes i go a week trying to prototype a single pattern piece and i dont know if anyone's even really interested in seeing me fail constantly for 7 days straight.
and then on top of that, i am not just a plushie maker. im a writer, an illustrator, a game designer, and a million other things at the same time that sometimes my work is completely unrelated to my commission work. some days i want to work on my ttrpg (yeah thats a thing im making, hopefully ill be able to put it out there soon), some days i just want to do a stupid amount of research and writing for @AStudyInSpectrum, some days i want to draw my dnd character being gay, etc. etc. i have my hands in a lot of pies because i want to but making plushies is like. my main business that people pay attention to, so im guessing that's the content people would want to see. but then even then trying to prepare this extra content is more time cut out of everything else i'm doing!
and then the final nail in this coffin is i think is just my personality. i suck at maintaining any kind of social media presence and especially one about my work i think simply because of how im built. "im built different" ok but yeah my entire brain is wired differently because i have autism i literally dont think about things the same way other people do. hence why there's this long ass post explaining every facet of the mental block i have about one single thing. i can do my best but ill probably never be a "content creator" unless i can totally reset my entire internet presence but that goes against a rule i gave myself when trying to make a business out of being on the internet. i am the kind of person that likes the things i produce speak for themselves because a part of my autism is that it is hard for me to speak. i'm not non-verbal by any means and the verboseness of this entire essay might betray this idea but communication is hard and rarely comes naturally to me. which is mad dum since the way i operate is completely antithetical to how most modern social media algorithms work. i am required to build an audience based on the merit and interest of how my stuff looks and works, not because i have a marketable personality. and by this, i have had relative success but my audience is still incredibly small. im thankful for whatever audience i do have though. everyone i've worked with and made stuff for is great and understanding of how i operate. its really nice.
tangential to all of this but also related to this is an idea of guilt. i dont want to make anyone feel guilted or guilty for not commissioning me, or not paying me more, or nor giving me money at all. i'm making a semi-livable wage already at my job and my housing is secure. i'm doing fine. money i make on commissions more or less becomes fun bucks because of how infrequently i can take them (because of that aforementioned long production timeline). i'd like to be able to do more and make more and be more but the onus is on me to facilitate that.
anyway, at the end of the day where does this leave me? i dont know. i think seeing my thoughts laid out like this just helped for myself and i can already feel my brain making pathways trying to figure out ways to make this single thing, which i will remind you here at the bottom was about if i should open a monthly ko-fi subscription thing, work for me and i dont know if i want to listen to what my logic brain says or listen to the cupital tunnel in my arm that threatens to make all of my productivity cease completely.
people say i make a lot of stuff already and are impressed with my output. feels weird to try to monetize even a portion of it. but i always feel like i'm not making enough and keep trying to do more and more time consuming and ambitious things. my 5 year goal was to be supporting myself 50% on my day job work and 50% on my art. it's been 5 years since i stated that out loud and i'm unlikely to be there anytime soon but as opposed to back then, i have more opportunities than ever to make steps to approach that goal. i don't know. i need to think about it more i think. even though ive been thinking about this for months.
i'm not trying to "get rich" im just trying to live and get compensation for stuff i work hard on and put a lot of effort into. a measure of me feeling successful is completing something for someone. that's it. i just really like making things for other people and i hope they like them.
if you got to the end of this and comprehend even a little bit of it, thank you. i appreciate it.