September 2023 Update
This post was originally published as an update on my Ko-fi.
We’re now just €60 away from reaching €300 in monthly donations to support my work! So many thanks to everyone who’s become a supporter. The current goal is to reach €500 in monthly donations, though to become sustainable and independent, I’d need to earn €5000 per month (see below).
If you’d like to support my work on the Fediverse, you can with my Ko-fi Memberships.
Current Work
I’m currently working on a very interesting and exciting proposal and project, which is in collaboration with a Financial Sponsor, which I hope to be able to share more details on soon.
Apart from that, I’m still making contributions to Mastodon, and have additionally started making contributions to Pixelfed, having many great conversations with the Lead Developer, @dansup@mastodon.social.
I’m also working on an early draft of another proposal which should hopefully tackle some of the communication issues that arise between moderation teams. The writing of this proposal as a FEP and the implementation of it in Mastodon (and maybe Pixelfed) is open for 1–3 Financial Sponsors.
Ko-fi Changes
I’ve also added several “Sponsor” tiers to my Ko‑fi memberships, for projects or organisations that just want to sponsor me without specific deliverables in return. Once you sponsor at that membership level, it’ll give you a welcome message with how to request an invoice (I cannot accept PayPal for these, only Stripe).
Additionally, there’s a new “Super Supporter” tier at €100 per month, and the previous “Super Supporter” tier is now called “Wonderful Support” (I’m running out of names!)
Oh, and there may also be some issues with PayPal donations as I migrate from a personal account to a seller account (necessary for tax purposes)
What do I mean by Financial Sponsor?
A financial sponsor is someone who hires me on a freelance basis to write, develop, or build out certain functionality.
They’re funding larger amounts (e.g., €5000) to get a project with a given specification and scope completed.
Whilst I cannot guarantee changes get merged into upstream projects, given a good proposal and design, I believe we can strongly advocate for implementation acceptance.
In order to become a Financial Sponsor, send me an email at emelia@brandedcode.com with the subject line including “Financial Sponsor” and we can talk — it comes with me being able to write you invoices & correctly charging VAT and all the usual freelancer type stuff.
Why €5000 per month?
I’ve received an number of questions about why my main target is €5000 per month, or €60,000 per year, and whilst my financial matters are my business, I thought it’d be worth explaining a bit more about where that money goes.
This number is based on how much it costs to freelance in Germany, whilst living in Berlin. My monthly outgoings are approximately €3000 (I keep a close eye on these). Then I have to account for health insurance which is 15.8% of gross income, and taxes which are 14–42% of gross income (typically 42% for a freelance software engineer).
So for earning a net income of €3000, I need a gross income of around €5000, which breaks down to:
- €2100 in taxes
- €790 in health insurance
- €3010 net income
Hopefully this clears things up as to why I’m needing SO much support to dedicate myself to working full time on the Fediverse on trust & safety and moderation.
