i just got done updating my spreadsheet for 2008′s earnings and have began doing the research on how to file taxes when you’re a self-employed graphic designer. when your income is coming from multiple sources, let me tell you something… be organized ahead of time. i can account for every penny i’ve made this year because of a simple excel spreadsheet. i could not imagine having to put together all of that information at the end of the year in comparison to just keeping track of it as you go.
anyhow…
this post really isn’t about taxes.
after crunching my numbers, i went around checking my balances in different places and found a few dollars sitting in my paypal account that i hadn’t yet transferred to my bank. i remembered that when i had money in my paypal that i had been meaning to buy a cup of coffee for a guy named ben.
who is ben?
ben is a graphic designer that runs benblogged.com where he gives away unique, quality vectors for any use… and i have definitely used them. last march, i had sent him a link to one of my stores showing him some of the ways i used his vectors and thanked him for letting his licenses remain open for royalty-free commercial use. he even wrote an entry about it HERE. so… yea… he includes this image link to buy him a cup of coffee on his sidebar:
…i thought that was a pretty fun way of interacting with viewers, even if they never actually do it. at the time, i was pretty broke. but, i always kept in mind that when i had some money i’d buy him a cup of coffee. 9 months later… i did. ha.
the graphic design community is smaller than you’d think. you put some time into it and you’ll start noticing the same users all over the place, the same free resources used by everyone and the diversity of designs put out using those free resources. it’s definitely interesting. anyhow, go check out benblogged.com… he’s got some great skull, wing and heraldry sets… plus a lot of other randomness.
hmm… now it’s time to get my own cup of coffee up in here. i’m on a little hiatus from drinking, but don’t be surprised if my little coffee cup graphic someday changes to “buy asyrum a shot” … =)
cheers.
