Day 70: Vanishing Money

Illustration from Jules Verne's The Vanished Diamond. From here.

I received a royalty statement today on a series of calendars I did a while back for a negative amount of money. It was kind of depressing. In other words, I still have a long way to go until the initial advance is paid off and I start earning any additional funds. Since it's for 2013 calendars and we're already into January, I'm not holding my breath. I find that licensing is kind of like playing the lottery, only with higher expectations for some type of payout. You might get a big client with a big project, but in the end the actual checks might be small. Or the opposite happens, too, and a nice big check comes in unexpectedly.

While sometimes I dream about only having one, steady income source, the volatility of licensing, etsy, and the economy in general often makes me thankful to have my eggs in several baskets. It's a tricky balance, though, and something I'm pretty much always working on.