Budget
The Current Budget and Road to Fiscal Solvency
Very basic, broad brushstrokes
Current Deficit
I won’t upload vast spreadsheets, but here are some big-picture numbers for starters.
As of November 1, 2009, we will be $4,600 in the hole. (Software development, staff, and data entry are the main expenditures.)
| $5,000.00 | Expenses for datagathering and site launch |
| $ 400.00 | Advertising revenue |
| $4,600.00 | Deficit |
| Expense | Amount per month | Details |
| Labor | $1,500.00 | Operational and data staff only |
| Software Development | $ 400.00 | See below |
| Web Hosting | $ 5.00 | |
| Miscellaneous | $ 200.00 | –E.g., applying for S-corp business license cost $175.00 |
| Marketing, advertising, distribution, printing costs, map licensing |
$ 0.00 |
My background is in sales, marketing and PR, so it’s done internally. |
| Total | $2,105.00 |
Current Ongoing Monthly Expenses
Software development: $400/mo budget to chew through current and future projects (link: technology plans). The map has a long way to go: $1,000 has been spent, $400 more for version 1.5 (see basics), and an estimated $400 more will be needed to get it out of beta.
Note that the cost of global distribution and print costs is zero. Hosting is negligible. If you consider that software development could be counted as labor, you can see that the current costs are predominantly based on labor costs.
Staff and Hierarchy
People are paid to do data entry; the internship didn’t work out (see mistakes link).
I work 30 hours a week, unpaid. Stephanie works 25 hours a week on every respect of the site, and takes as much as possible off my plate. She started in the summer doing the data gathering for maps, then graphic design, and then managing the Friday Night Army (the team of art critics). Almost everything you see on the site is her handiwork, and she basically plays a partner role in this entire endeavor. Currently, she is transitioning into managing staff of her own who will take on more basic-level work like data entry and uploading. This will allow her to focus on project-based work, like designing the art review aggregator and developing the artist database.
(pop up, uploading has become increasingly more time intensive as we put in additional SEO measures.)
Volunteers
We are blessed with art critics who—outside of occasional cash prizes—work for free.
Monthly Revenue Needed for Fiscal Solvency
| $ 385.00 | Recouping of initial investment |
| $2,105.00 | Monthly expenses |
| $2,485.00 | Total |
If we sell 10 ads per month at $200 each, plus reselling the Art Map and Calendar Tool as off-the-shelf software (link) to a few cities beyond Chicago we should stay above water. If we could sell ads at the $400 price mark, things would probably be much easier, as managing the sale of 10 ads every month is a lot of work. We’re also open…well, frankly…to being bought or absorbed by something much larger than us.
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