Back in 2023, I wrote up how I get money. It’s changed a lot since then. Here’s an update.
The vast majority of my money comes from doing contracting for tech companies. This runs out in December.
In the future, I fear that contracting will reduce a bit if I’m not proactive on what to work on next. I do have a lot of people asking me to work with them, but for the moment I’ve decided to stay longer with Wikimedia. I hope those other people don’t forget about me.
My goal for 2027 is to keep this the same amount as what I got in 2026.
The second largest amount of money comes from giving keynotes at conferences and events.
Keynote speaking seems to be a genuinely good way to supplement my income and it’s something I really really enjoy and it’s really good for marketing all my other sources of income.
My goal for 2027 is to keep this the same amount as what I got in 2026. My other goal is to create a more transparent pricing system.
In third place, I get money by begging people on the internet. The vast majority comes through patreon. The second largest is liberapay. In third place it’s youtube. In fourth place it’s my stripe payment link.
My money from begging has been declining because I’ve been neglecting it. Now that I’m back on it, it has stabilised.
My short-term goal is to keep this stable.
I get a tiny amount of money from showing adverts on my youtube videos.
This amount has gone up a lot since I started publishing new videos every week (but it’s still extremely small).
My short-term goal has been to multiply this amount by ten as an experiment to see if it’s a lever I can pull. If I can (and it’s looking like I can), I’ll look at doubling it. If I can do that, I can probably start to think of it as an actual source of income.
I’m starting to get occasional bits of pocket money from performing at gigs.
This source of money is not a priority for me, but I won’t turn it down! I think I’d need to do a LOT more performing to make this source of income viable and I don’t think I want to do that. However, it might be something I start tagging onto my keynote deals.
Here are some things I don’t get money from:
I think I could get a lot of money from merch. I haven’t done it yet because I haven’t found time for it. It’s important to me that I don’t damage the reputation I have by selling crap merch. I have many ideas on how to do this right.
Many youtube channels make a lot of money through brand deals: “Download NordVPN now!” etc etc…. but this doesn’t work for me or my style.
It’s taken a long long time to build up a “following” that cares about what I put out. I put in a lot of time to it. I don’t see it as a balance between this and artistic integrity: For me, I enjoy using the internet and internet presence as an artistic device. My inspirations for this approach include Kusama and Warhol and Maywa Denki.
I also enjoy the pace of releasing things on a very fast cadence. I know some people think that patreon and youtube’s pressure to KEEP PUBLISHING is bad. But luckily for me… I’m all about bad art! and doing things without thinking too much about it. I think it’s best to keep the artistic-output-cadence going. That way you keep it low-brow and, more importantly, you keep it slightly surreal.
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