Help Fund Seattle's Feminist Makerspace!
If you're curious to what I've been doing lately... this is one of the things. We're Seattle's first feminist hackerspace, by which I mean we're the only hackerspace in Seattle that explicitly aims to provide a safe space for people of all genders to make cool things and not have to deal with assholes. We're only a couple hundred dollars away from funding a wood shop, and there's 9 hours left in the fundraiser. Go check it out!
www.indiegogo.com/projects/lau…
Mrow
Real life and all that.
Here's a Con Report
Thirteen conventions. I think it's about time I wrote a con report.
Some time around the second week of January 2012, after BroNYCon, I decided to quit my job once my contract ended and do something stupid. Stupid like traveling around the some fraction of the world attending My Little Pony conventions. Since I became "self-employed" I've done eleven conventions within thirteen months. Now that all the conventions are over I suppose I should write down all the things that I have been meaning to write down. Also, I am going to toss some sales numbers and dollar amounts out there because they are helpful to people who want to do this kind of thing, but hard to come by because (understandably) most people who sell things at conventions want to keep them private.
Photo Notes: Badges from BroNYCon Sept 2011 and AnotherAnimeCon not pictured. (Sadly I lost my old BroNYCon badge after two long distance moves.) The Flim Flam brothers badge was from BUCK, which only did admissions wristbands last year. The conventions I've attended, in chronological order: BroNYCon 2, BroNYCon 3, Bronycon 4, TrotCon, BUCK, Midwestria, AnotherAnimeCon, EQLA, Las Pegasus Unicon, Cloudsdale Congress, BigApplePonycon, TrotCon, Everfree Northwest.
How This Whole Thing Started
About ten years ago, a friend and I thought it would be a brilliant idea to start a small college science fiction convention. We had two very successful runs, but it was also insane amounts of work so we stopped after two years. Here's the thing: If you never ran a convention or organized a conference before, you don't get to say running a con is easy. And if you've done one, you don't either because then you'd be lying. But that's all beside the point. At the time, to raise money for it, I got a cheap button maker.
Fast forward about eight years, the whole pony thing started. Somehow my friend and I decided to go to (the second) BroNYCon in Sept 2011. I remembered that I had a button maker stashed somewhere in my closet, untouched for almost a decade. My friend was an IT guy and had access to an old color laser printer. So we decided to make a batch of buttons from screencaps of pony episodes---they weren't even in HD or color-corrected! Honestly, the results were kind of crap. But it was pony merch, and there was no pony merch on the market besides brushables. We sold all of them made back admissions, gas, and the pizza we bought some friends so they'd let us sleep on their floor the night before, and scored maybe 20 bucks of profit each in about fifteen minutes. The best thing though was that we filled the void that existed. Now people could stick a picture of Rarity's butt on their bag. We were doing the world the greatest service.
That BroNYCon was really the best pony convention I've attended out of all of the ones I've been to. A lot of it had to do with the fact that we had no idea what we were doing and yet everything worked out wonderfully and magically because we worked together. Lots of vendors sold out of things instantly---Egophiliac brought twelve t-shirts because she wasn't sure people would actually buy pony t-shirts! The general mood was "I can't believe this is happening what is going on", and I think that included Jayson Thiessen. The conventions named BroNYCon (not to be confused with Bronycon) laid the groundwork for a lot of the stuff that happened in the fandom afterwards.
So How Much Money Did I Make?
The reason why I'm writing this today is because I just finished doing all the accounting from EFNW this morning. So without further ado, here it is: from eleven conventions in a little over a year, I've made a profit of $77.74.
Yeah. That's not very much money. Well, the actual profit is a lot higher, for several reasons.
1) I use the standard IRS $0.555/mi to account for driving costs to/from conventions. My car does not actually cost that much to operate, even figuring repairs and insurance in.
2) A lot of the revenue has been converted to equipment. It's not like I now only have $77.74 in my pocket, but more like I have that and own a small company that has somewhat expensive assets like color printers, tons of toner, software licenses, and other electronics.
3) None of my eBay trading card sales have been included in here because it's my personal account and not part of my business account. Yes, I sold all my convention limited cards.
4) A large portion of "labor" is oursourced, in that I contract and commission about a dozen artists. About 15% of my revenue goes to fan artists. If I could draw everything myself, I would be keeping a much higher percentage of money, but I would also lose a lot of sales since I won't have such a diverse set of products.
With a generous estimate on the above, I'd say that this whole thing brought in $2000 at most. It's a non-trivial amount, and if it was all liquid (which it isn't) and didn't depreciate (which it did) it would be three months' rent and living expenses back when I was in grad school (or five weeks' right now). It would also come out to about $4/hr using a rough, low-end estimate of how much time I spent working on this whole thing. So, yeah, not the best way to make money. And I've been lucky in that there has always been lots of people stopped by my table at almost every con.
The most important thing though is that being in the black means all these conventions actually paid for themselves in terms of travel and lodging. This includes a almost-two-week trip to England and Ireland. I got to travel to a bunch of places and hang out with a bunch of cool people without dipping into my savings, and that's a pretty cool thing. It was never a goal for me to do this full time. I don't think I would, even if the circumstances were right and I could---I don't think it's remotely possible to do buttons at conventions full time because the sale to profit ratio is so low.
That being said, I have met a bunch of people who do conventions full time. They all have most of the following in common: they are highly skilled and make products where they can charge a competitive labor cost, they do much more than just pony conventions, they work their butts off constantly, and they live in places with relatively low costs of living. Of course, there were also lots of people who had amazing skills but couldn't break even, even at well-operated conventions with a good crowd. The bottom line is that it's not a massive, endless, gold mine like some people may think it is. Unless you're John Joseco, I guess, and people are waiting to throw hundred dollar bills at you.
Some Lists and More Numbers!
Okay, I'm going to make some lists of notable things now.
Most Profitable Conventions
- Everfree Northwest 2013
- TrotCon 2013
- BronyCon June 2012
EFNW was the absolute most profitable con for me mainly due to the fact that I was living in Seattle by the time the con rolled around. Not having to fly across the country and pay for a hotel room was really nice---I barely broke even at EQLA despite amazing sales because of that. Having an unexpectedly large convention as well as awesome sales helped. TrotCon was weird in the sense that, yes, I did have to travel there, but it was also during my cross country move and my employer paid for the move. So my cost was cut in half and, despite being a "small' convention, had a great turnout.
Least Profitable Conventions
- BUCK
- Big Apple PonyCon
- AnotherAnimeCon
- CutieMarkCon (Honorable Mention)
In fact, these were the only conventions where I did not break even. The fun thing here is that BUCK was actually my highest grossing con in addition to being my least profitable con, thanks to hauling over a suitcase of then-US-only merch as well as getting paid in pounds sterling. But then again, flying across the ocean during the summer is crazy expensive. Similarly, staying in a hotel in downtown Brooklyn is very, very, expensive, which makes BAP second on this list.
BAP, in some sense, was a really weird convention. It was a really well done convention! And I think we all had fun there. The problem is that it was pretty much atrocious for vendors. Very few people left BAP without losing money, mostly because having a convention in New York City is expensive as hell. I'm lucky in that I recouped 80% of my costs. I don't really blame the organizers, because having lived in NYC for over a decade I know that this is the cost for doing an event this size. And my guess is that they also lost tons of money because very few people stayed at the official con hotel (the most expensive hotel in the area even after con discounts, and also unfortunately the only one that has the capability to hold a convention).
AAC was a very cheap con to attend, but it was also my lowest grossing convention. I went there because it was an excuse to hang out with some friends and be in New England, not really to make money. Doing pony only stuff at a mid-sized anime convention isn't really a good business decision, but it's okay because it was not business. CutieMarkCon was a pure business decision. I technically never went there, but I did still lose money there because I gave them table money (which they probably could really use considering their financial issues...). In the end I'm glad I decided not to go because I would have lost around $800 if I had gone.
Notice that Las Pegasus Unicon isn't on this list.Longest Distance Traveled for a Convention
- BUCK (3550mi)
- Equestria LA (2380mi)
- Las Pegasus Unicon (2100mi)
Longest Time Spent Traveling To/From a Convention
- Midwestria (Train, about 46 hours round trip)
- BUCK (Flights/Trains/Cars totaling about 28 hours)
- TrotCon 2012 (Car, about 21 hours round trip)
This one's fun! You know, I could have driven or flown to Midwestria, but it turns out that the train was cheaper and it also could let me see a lot of the country that I don't often get to see (like West Virginia, which is pretty when you look at it from a sealed air conditioned metal tube but thank goodness I didn't have to set foot in it!). Also, I could do Internet things on the train. So it ended up taking a crazy amount of time. The other thing of note is that 4 out of those 28 hours of getting to/from BUCK (and side trips to Dublin, Cardiff, and London) was spend stuck in traffic in and around New York City. See my previous comment about how getting in and out of NYC is hard and nobody really wants to do it.
Best Convention (That Isn't BroNYCon Sept '11)
- TrotCon 2013
- Cloudsdale Congress
- TrotCon 2012
After the whole Las Pegasus Unicon fallout, a ton of people suddenly decided that they were experts on conventions and the ponyconomy and took to the Internet. The most common response was that we don't need conventions besides BronyCon, EQLA, and EFNW. Well, as much as I loved those three conventions I will say that they don't even break the top five of my favorite cons. And I suspect that had I managed to get out to Pon3 Con and Fiesta Equestria those three cons would barely make it into my top ten. There is a market for cons that aren't dance parties for ten thousand people, and there's nothing wrong with small local conventions for folks who don't want to travel to the ends of the country to hang out with more than 10 people who like ponies.
What I loved the most about TrotCon is that they don't want to be BronyCon. They don't want to be a pilgrimage. They don't want Tara Strong, not only because she's expensive as hell to get but also because they want to give space to people who aren't as famous but are just as interesting. I mean, sure, Tara's cool, but I don't think I need to watch another hour of her being asked questions she's been asked sixteen times before, especially if I have to stand in line for an hour for it. The convention's run by people who know what they're doing, is amazingly responsible (even after a few drinks), and gets things done. Cloudsdale Congress was also doing the same thing, but unfortunately, being the first convention after LPU and having another nearby group decide to do a con right after theirs, they were hit pretty hard by Drama. I think without those things it could have been an even more amazing con.
I'm Leaving The Fandom Give Me Attention
I don't know if you noticed, but other than convention updates I haven't really posted very much here lately. There's just so much besides pony that needs doing. Plus, I think I just went "really?" and slowly stopped caring so much about the fandom once Hot Topic announced that they were selling lacy pony underwear. But of course, I'm not really leaving the fandom. It's just that I'll probably not be checking Twitter everyday. And I'll definitely not be going to another pony convention until next year, thanks to new job (that pays a lot more than four dollars per hour). The goal is to make it to TrotCon and EFNW at the very least, but we'll see how that goes...
Okay, I think I am done here. Time to go and put my full attention on TF2 so my teammates won't hate me as much...
Everfree Northwest!
- Over 70 designs of buttons!
- Bottle openers galore!
- Trading card singles at low prices!
- Cutie mark hip flasks from our friends at Coventry Decor!
Also, we'll have NEW Mysterious Bags of Randomness, which are $5 bags that contain at least three random buttons (some of which are discontinued or prototype designs) and at least five total awesome things. Non-button objects include bottle openers, pocket mirrors, pony magnets, official merch and potentially other cool random things!
Here's the thing: we only have 20 bottle openers, 28 flasks and 20 Bags of Randomness, period. So if you want any of those things come by early before they sell out! This will also be my very last pony convention (except maybe TrotCon and EFNW 2014) so it'll likely be your last chance to get some of this stuff!
Comments are Closing
TrotCon con report may be appearing at some point?