The code and data behind xeiaso.net
revenue/expenses report for 2022
Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@christine.website>
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---
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title: "Xe's blog made $2564.42 in profit last year"
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date: 2023-01-31
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tags:
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- finance
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- prettyGraphs
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---
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My tax situation is complicated. Thanks to all of your efforts, it is now even
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more complicated. I was running all of the number from last year, and in the
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process I have discovered that this blog makes a profit. This is astounding.
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Really, thanks for all of the support that you all have given me. It is a very
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unique feeling, and it's comforting to know that should I hit rough times I
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won't have to worry about keeping the lights on.
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This article is going to contain some breakdowns of how much I've made and
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spent keeping the lights on.
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<xeblog-hero ai="Waifu Diffusion" file="shrine-maiden" prompt="masterpiece, best quality, outdoors, watercolor, anime, afternoon, mountains, breath of the wild, shrine, glowing sigils, holy grail, 1girl, kimono, facing shrine, black hair"></xeblog-hero>
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## Income vs profit
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Here is the breakdown of income by each income stream for 2022:
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(All amounts are US dollars)
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| Source | Amount |
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|--------------|----------|
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| Ads | $256.73 |
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| Patreon | $2451.19 |
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| Itch | $208.44 |
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| Ethereum | $996.24 |
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| Twitch | $207.27 |
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| Other Income | $474.68 |
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| Total | $4564.55 |
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<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-income/income_breakdown"></xeblog-picture>
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This is more money than I could have ever imagined a single person's blog could
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get. This is _an entire paycheck's_ worth of income and it's more than enough
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to have the blog not only pay for itself, but I make _a profit_. Here's a
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breakdown of the expenses that I incur for not only this blog, but all of my
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personal infrastructure:
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(All amounts are US dollars)
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| Vendor | Amount |
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|---------------|----------|
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| Google | $117.67 |
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| Hetzner | $587.67 |
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| Digital Ocean | $386.28 |
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| Vultr | $231.44 |
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| fly.io | $16.85 |
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| Cloudflare | $174.54 |
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| Porkbun | $31.99 |
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| Anbernic | $407.99 |
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| Backblaze | $1.80 |
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| AWS | $43.90 |
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| Total | $2000.13 |
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<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-income/spend_per_vendor"></xeblog-picture>
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This means that my total profit is just over 2.5 grand. This is _astounding_.
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My blog is officially my most profitable side project ever.
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I have cut out Cloudflare and I don't expect to spend more on Anbernic this
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year. I'm also considering downsizing the server that my main blog runs on and
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moving all the other stuff it does to fly.io and
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[Funnel](https://tailscale.com/blog/introducing-tailscale-funnel/) to cut out a
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huge amount of monthly spend. There is a lot of room for cutting things out in
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other places, I'm pretty sure I could cut out almost all of my Digital Ocean
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spend, and most of my Vultr spend could easily also head to fly.io and Funnel.
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<xeblog-conv standalone name="Cadey" mood="coffee">I really wish I wasn't locked
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out of my Digital Ocean account though. Support has been unhelpful and I don't
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know what legacy infrastructure I have in that account so I can either upgrade
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it, cut it off, or move it elsewhere. Please help.</xeblog-conv>
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<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-income/revenue_vs_profit"></xeblog-picture>
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## Video game spend
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When I ran these numbers, I also wanted to figure out if a joke I was telling on
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stream was true: all of the excess Patreon money goes towards my crippling video
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game addiction. I imported all of my invoices from the Nintendo eShop and Steam
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into my spreadsheet (minus my Steam Deck) and I ended up with this figure:
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(All amounts are US dollars, the Steam values were converted by machine at the
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time of calculation, facts and circumstances can and will differ)
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| Vendor | Amount |
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|----------|----------|
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| Nintendo | $288.79 |
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| Steam | $1236.13 |
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| Total | $1524.92 |
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This means that I spend about 76% of my blog's profit on video games. It's
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pretty great to have my blog pay for my entire gaming habit!
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<xeblog-conv name="Mara" mood="hmm">Do those numbers make sense? Is something not
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being converted to USD from CAD? The Steam number seems a bit
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high...</xeblog-conv>
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<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">I'm pretty sure the numbers were
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correctly converted from CAD to USD, if this is wrong, then I only spent about
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$927.40 on Steam last year (a lot of the increased price is because games are
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more expensive in Canada due to HST and GST being higher than sales tax
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typically is in the US, combined with currency conversion fees baked into the
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price). This would make the total just over half of the net
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profit.</xeblog-conv>
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---
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Thanks for all of the reading and sharing you do, it really helps a lot. I've
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been working on new and interesting things (such as a longer article that
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explains why I think [WASI](https://wasi.dev/) is cool with interactive
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examples) and I hope you'll enjoy them. Let's see what 2023 will bring!
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<xeblog-conv standalone name="Cadey" mood="coffee">If I ever incorporate for
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simplifying the tax situation of all of my side income, I am going to have to
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invoice myself to pay for video games that I reference on the blog or on stream.
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This is a very surreal thing to think about.</xeblog-conv>
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