Life, Love, Sex

Spreadsheet Fool

I’ve been a spreadsheet making fool these past couple of weeks. I made one the other week when figuring out how much it would cost to go to Shibaricon. I half did it for me to see what the cost would be, I also half did it for Jefferson’s sake, who I’m dragging along (for my benefit as I want him to learn mad rope skills). He says I’ve found my calling somewhere between running a business and negotiating Jefferson. Yep, sounds about right.

If one thing’s for sure, I’m damn good at making lists and budgets. I made different calculations of whether to include air fare, or if we stayed 3 nights instead of 4, or if we drove. God I’m so glad I learned my algebra and basic arithmetic. You really do need this stuff when you grow up!

(If you drive 1600 miles round trip and your car gets approximately 25mpg, how much do you spend on gas when it’s 3.15/gal? Can you figure that out?)

Then tonight I worked on a list (yes, instead of studying) for my photography getting different prices for products I need to make pictures and then I worked out basically the approximate cost per image based on different sizes.

By the way, this business stuff is hard- which I mentioned before, but I was chatting with Jocasta who has her rope store and was giving me pointers. I guess I should maybe file for a Tax ID? I dunno- I’d have to think hard about making this into a serious business rather than just a little side venture. Because I don’t have any capital for overhead (other than my parents, and I don’t know how willing they’d be to front more money than they just have for this first batch of supplies).

I guess every business starter faces this dilemma- can I afford to fail? In my case, no I can’t really afford it.

I think what I’ll do is start with baby steps. If I can sell at least 25 prints through you guys and through people I know in real life, then I’ll take the next step and start a small website.

So, I think for the near future, I’ll deal with purchases on a more informal basis- once I make some work to sell (after Christmas at the earliest), I’ll set up a dedicated blog, or page, or something to list what’s available and what the prices are, then people can e-mail me and we can just do the transaction through PayPal.

I guess I kind of have a good head for business, huh? Provided people buy my photographs, I have the potential to be decently successful here! (And really, a lot of the success lies in getting people to want my art!)

Plus, I think I get off a little bit on making spreadsheets. Just saying.