Wednesday 20 August 2008

Making money

I would love to make money from beer. But I love beer too much. What's the financial balance of my internet activities?

Google Ads. I have those on my site. Good for maybe $60 a month. That just about covers my hosting costs. Now that the dollar is worth so little. Compared to the euro, I mean. Don't anyone take offence. None was intended. I'd love the dollar to be worth more. It could boost my earnings by 10 or 15 euros a month.

I sell a pdf version of my Amsterdam Pub Guide for 5 euros. It's almost 200 pages. Has details of 90-odd pubs. All of which I've visited. Then there are the ones that weren't up to scratch. Just a few hundred hours of research and composition. Plus the beers I had to buy. Purely for research purposes, you know. A few jenevers, too. Let's say a minimum of 5 euros per pub. I make that 450 euros.

Yes, I'm coining it in.

There are adverts on my blog, too. They're lumped in with those from my website. So no extra money there. Not that writing the blog costs me much. Just the books, really. They average around 20 euros a pop. How many do I buy in a year? Not many. Fifty or sixty a year. (Yes, really, Dolores.) Seventy, tops.

I suppose translating all that stuff from German brewing manuals does take a bit of time. Transcribing brewing logs, too. Flying to London just to visit the archives isn't free, either. Not to forget, I only get paid for the hours I work. But four hours in the archives is well worth losing 8 hours pay for.

I'll be retiring to Cannes any day soon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please ignore this question if you want, since the answer is none of my business: how do you plan to publish your book? Have you approached many publishers? I ask because your research is thoroughly competent, and surely there's someone out there who would value it enough to offer you a respectable deal. I like to think so, anyway.

Unknown said...

Heck, I'd gladly pay $20 for that book you discussed in a recent post (that's like 3 Euros now, isn't it?)

Ron Pattinson said...

Josquin, good question. I'm still thinking about that. I'll probably hawk it around publishers when I have the outline right and one chapter just about finished.

Anonymous said...

Based on a number of your posts, Newark is ripe for a new brewery.
You should move back to England and start a brewery!
Then you'll have all the beer you want.

Unknown said...

I look forward to you publishing a book. Your research is something that I could just not do on my own.