Someone asked me for an update on things happening on my end. This buy still isn't done because there is still one long-suffering member who has not received his package (thanks to the fine people at USPS and my own failures). I was planning on doing my 'big reveal' on Valentine's Day, but I didn't get around to it.
Instead, in the interest of accountability and transparency, I am going to release my kept books to you. This way, you know where your money went during the sale. I think it is important to be upfront with this data to ensure that there is always trust between the GB organizers and participants. This is especially true for those of us who claim a non-profit intent. Without further ado, here is a quick summary of the costs:
Invoice Income | $10922.60 |
Paypal Fees | -$407.64 |
Expenditures | -$10292.30 |
Refunds | -$211.99 |
Est. Stock | $112.90 |
TOTAL | $123.62 |
So currently I have made a profit of $123.62 in money and unsold stock. I've attached a spreadsheet with the detailed entries and calculations which has been scrubbed of personal data of the participants. Since there is still an outstanding order which may be refunded, that figure may go down by about $97. I still have some hope that the package exists though, so I haven't written it off completely.
As you know, I promised to donate any profit from the sale to the keyboarding websites. Donation distribution will be determined based on which website the participants claimed to hail from in their original order. As such, the distribution will be
8% of the funds to Deskthority,
72% of the funds to Geekhack, and
20% of the funds to /r/mk. Donations to DT and GH will go toward paying hosting costs for the individual sites, and the donation to /r/mk will be an open contest for switches, per the recommendation of /u/ripster55. Since there is still an outstanding order which may result in a change in my revenue, I will be holding off on making the donations until that is decided. I will post here notification when the donations are made.
I also kept a simple log of how much time I spent making this a possibility. This is very rough, accuracy of each data point is on the close scale of an hour. Accounting for my time I spent on this project:
Photoshop: 3 hours
2D CAD: 2 hours
3D CAD: 2 hours
Placing Orders: 3 hours
Driving/Transit: 7 hours
Excel/Word: 17 hours
Sorting/Shipping: 32 hours
Support: 9 hours
Total: 75 hours
This number doesn't include lost sleep while I was worrying about getting everything right. At my current salary, assuming I only work 40 hour weeks (lol), I would expect to have made $863 from that.
Now that I have everyone thinking I'm insane, I'll let that stew for a bit. My next update post will be my 'big reveal', and I can show off my reason for going through all of this for no profit. Hint: madness is only part of the answer!