Financial Update

Hello lovely Patrons! I promised a while ago I would update you all on my financial situation once I graduated from drama school, so here we go!

For the uninitiated: I am an actor renting and working in London. About 99% of actors also have another job that they do to survive because acting jobs are very few and far between, most are very badly paid, and it costs to be an actor: you have to pay subscriptions to casting websites, buy theatre tickets, get the train to auditions, pay to rent out theatres to put on your own shows that almost always run at a loss, and so on. So, we have other jobs like working in a pub, or one of my acting mates designs financial software part-time…

My other job is this. YouTube. Making the show for you takes time and work, especially research, that I probably couldn’t do if I had a job in a pub or designing financial software. So it’s a good thing I make my living here!

How does that work? Well in terms of income, I get a bit of money from advertising – every time you watch all of an ad or click on an ad I get something like 0.001 pence and that ads up every month to... not a lot. Especially now that ads on YouTube are going down the pan and my videos keep getting flagged as 'Not Suitable for All Advertisers.' It’s nice to have though. Helps with the bills.

I also have my tip jar at PayPal.me/PhilosophyTube, which is where people make one-time donations, and usually every month that’s enough to buy me a pint or two.

Also under income will (hopefully) be my acting work, which is entirely unpredictable. I graduated from drama school about a month ago so it’s too early to tell really.

The majority of my income comes right here, through Patreon. It’s you all, here on Patreon, that really keep the show going because as I said, if I had to get another job as well as acting I probably wouldn’t be able to make it.

The biggest chunk of the Patreon money goes on rent, which in London is very expensive. But also council tax, I have to pay that now that I’m no longer a student; food, obviously; travel in London is a big one – but also things like books, which I use to research the show, and the Patreon rewards themselves. If my camera or my laptop breaks, as it did a while ago, or I need a new light or something, that’s where you Patrons come in. Patreon and PayPal take a bite out of whatever you give me and the exchange rate of dollars to pounds also makes a bit difference. Anything I don’t use at the end of the month just goes in a savings account until I need it.

Right now, as of October - although things change rapidly month to month – I’m keeping my head above water. Sometimes a big patrons’ card gets declined or they drop out, or I might have to pay to go to three rounds of auditions and then not get the gig, so I can take a hit from lots of angles and it’s not the most stable living in the world, but I can’t complain. ‘Precarious’ I think is the technical economic term – I am part of the precariat, the new class of people in the world who are surviving and doing okay but it’s unstable.

Because my financial situation is so unpredictable I can’t really give an exact figure for how much I would need every month to survive. Maybe next month I get an acting job in a commercial and McDonalds give me thousands of pounds; maybe my two biggest patrons drop out and my fridge falls on my laptop and I’m hundreds of pounds short. So I’m gonna leave the Patreon goal where it is – it was set a while ago, it’s probably a bit low now that I’m no longer a student but I can’t really calculate by how much and I don’t really wanna… touch it incase it all falls apart!

Every little penny makes me that little bit more secure and able to roll with the punches, and able to do the two things that I love. Most people are lucky to do one, I get to do both of jobs I adore for a living. A precarious living, but as they say on The Flintstones “It’s a living!”

I am so proud that Philosophy Tube is my job; it's amazing and fun and I hope I get to do it for you for a very long time!

Lots of love,

Olly