I've been taking a break from the blog. I loved doing my posts every night for years. Of late, we're working on a video late at night after the children go to sleep, and when we're done, I want to just go to sleep—only I have a blog post to write. I should write them earlier in the day, I know, tell me about it. It just doesn't seem to happen that way for a collection of reasons, all of them my fault.
But I'll be back, and I have a slew of topics that have happened since I last wrote here. I'm going to backdate the posts and catch up on everything. Currently, I have a project I shouldn't have accepted from a company that wanted to send us a printer. It sounded like a good idea at the time; it was anything but.
I have set a drop dead date of the end of this weekend for publishing the video, which won't be what I wanted it to be, but the printer is poorly documented and entirely different from anything else on the market. I'll do the best I can to be honest while also telling the truth about what my thoughts are on the printer. I can do it, but it won't be the video I wanted to do. I can't spend more hours figuring out things that aren't supported with documentation by the company or the small number of people who have bought the printer. It will be something, though. Typically, we require up-front payment, but my producer let them pay afterward since they were sending the printer, which was not inexpensive.
Never again will I do that. I would rather not have the printer than have a question of if they will pay us or not. It is far, far too easy for companies to just not pay. I have fellow content creators who have chased down companies and gotten angrier and angrier, feeling entitled to the money when they have virtually nothing to stand on and are without a legal team to pursue what is very small money in comparison to legal fees. Couple that with the companies typically being in China, and, well, you're never seeing the money—which is why we have an up-front payment policy in almost all cases.
I do trust my producer and the decisions he makes, but I would rather not have the worry about the work we're doing, which is not low-quality, and not have the product to show. Some people don't mind post-payment, but most people I know work that way. As we grow, it will be easier because companies want exposure from our audience. That's always the thing, though, will we see growth? If so, how much and how fast? So far, we've been very fortunate to have over half a million total subscribers/followers we now have across the platforms we publish on, but things could always change.
