If I Were A Rich Man: Playing With Money 2: Da Biz

So last time I just kind of said business accounts and left it at that. What I didn't say is if I had those business accounts I would do the same things I would do with my personal accounts so lets do this.

Business Income Accounts
I have a couple ideas. I would like to have one overall grouping that I'll just for now collectively call enterprises split into multiple projects. Each project would have it's own set of accounts and all of them would include an income account. Again this would help keep track of how much money is actually rolling in. And provide a broad picture of how much is running out.

As for the blog if I had some straight up capital I would try to monetize in a couple of ways. Upgrading the website would make advertising a little easier so that's the obvious. Next up having actual bank accounts would allow for Kickstarter and donations. Beyond that I could also merchandise. I actually do have a logo and branding. Slap that on a t-shirt and sell it. Free marketing baby.

Furthermore if I had the money to do things in a more polished way I could do what everybody else does. Find some endorsements. Then of course I could also try a fundraising bash at the end of the year.



Go go Gatsby.

Like the personal accounts money would flow from the income account into expenditure accounts.

Fixed Cost Expenditure Account
Right now I cut a lot of corners to do this thing on the cheap cheap. But if I were doing this professionally there would be some costs. Web hosting being the most obvious. The primary reason I stick with blogger is because it's free. But it has a ton of problems. And I'm getting sick of it.  But right now hosting and designing a new page is a hypothetical so I just sit on it.

Improvement Expenditure Account
This account would be for getting getting better equipment. And things that improve the blog overall. Better computers, software, recording equipment. Maybe even a studio.

Story Expenditure Account
So right now I'm going for low hanging fruit. But man I would like to earn my name.  I would like to take on bigger stories and doing that would require budgeting. Realistic sitting down and before hand and going, how much do tickets cost, would staying in a hotel be practical, would travel be necessary, would I need to pay FOIA fees. Just map that stuff out and budget a certain number of "big" stories through the year with room for a couple unexpected ones and maybe some room for overage.

While I'm at it budgeting for copyright in this spot might be good too. Since I don't make money at this I'm kind of loosey goosey about  it though I do have a framework that might make a good post in its own right. Still I ought to pay people.

Payroll Expenditure Account
Name on the tin. I make so little money that when I do an odd job here or there I don't feel particularly guilty putting the money in my pocket. Give me a bag of Doritos and 20 bucks. Doing things that way is starting to annoy me. I do stuff that I know for a fact other people make a living off of but the people around me act like I don't do squat.

No. No. No. No. No. No.

Here's an invoice. Pay the account. Later I get my cut out of a salary I pay myself.

BOOM!

And if I want to pay an artist for a photo or commission some art, or pay a writer that's cool too.

Tax Account
Guess what this pays.

Legal War Chest
The days of Calvary and swords are long past. To defend what is yours in this age ... you need a lawyer. And  maybe an accountant.

Segregation of Operations
One thing keep all of this from happening is that some of my blog stuff stuff connected to my personal accounts. Blogger itself is easy enough to segregate and  I would want regular webhosting eventually anyway but I might need to migrate all the YouTube stuff and that would be a chore.