2023 Battle Order Financial Report (Revenue, Expenses, Charity)

Here are is the revenue and expense report for Battle Order in 2023. Revenue sources include ads from battleorder.org itself, ads from Youtube, Patreon, Merch (Shopify), and Sponsorships.

Video Production

From video production, revenue from Youtube AdSense, Patreon, and Sponsorships amounted to $44,265.57. Although note anything paid out from Sponsorships and Youtube was actually earned in 2022. Youtube payouts are generally around the 24th of the month after you earn, and Sponsorships can vary but it's usually 30-60 days after the end of the month the sponsorship took place.

In terms of expenses, I could Adobe, Scribd (for research), books/manuals, Le Monde and digital assets under that. Le Monde is a French newspaper that I signed up for to access their archive. I used it to write an article about the French 7e Division mécanique rapide (Javelot) but haven't made the video yet. This amounted to -$993.37.

So total profit from videos was $43,272.20.

Merch

Expenses marked "Printful" are the expenses for the merch (manufacturing, shipping, fees) and "Shopify" is the recurring platform fee for having a Shopify store. These expenses totalled to -$8,913.06. About -$1,009.12 of merch profits were earmarked for charity, as I have some shirts and stickers where 100% of their profits go to charity, 

Total revenue from the merch is under Shopify (Card) and Shopify (Paypal). This amounted to $11,595.51. So actual profit to me was $1,673.33 from Merch when factoring in the charitable contributions. The amount I donated to charity wasn't enough to factor into my personal tax burden because I take the standard deduction rather than itemizing.

Merch

The website isn't really a money maker. I mainly have it as a place to post graphics, articles, archival documents I've purchased, a domain for my business email, and some other housekeeping things. The total profit from website ads (minus the cost of maintaining it) was $157.05.

Compared to 2022

Compared to gross income in 2022 ($73,774.48), I had a gross income of $45,843.06 in 2023, which was a -37.9% decrease. 

Patreon income was basically the same and Merch income increased by about 3x. However, I only earned 24% the amount from sponsorships and 62% the amount from Youtube ads. The lower sponsorship piece is I took a lot fewer sponsorships and was offered fewer in 2023, and the less Youtube ads revenue was probably mainly because I had several videos pop off in 2022 but not really in 2023. I am not having huge problems with demonetization currently, although the amount of ad $ per 1,000 views did go down from $2.14 (2022) to $1.83 (2023). So not the end of the world but still a 14.5% decrease in view value.

Thankfully, unlike other Youtube channels with bigger productions and employees, I am running this by myself and my wife also works a job. So I am able to keep expenses pretty low so a 38% decrease in income doesn't hit me too hard in practice. This does mean I am limited in the number of videos I can make per month, but the minute you get an employee is when money starts getting stressful and I don't feel comfortable in asking for more beyond what I already do.

Thank you all for supporting Battle Order! I look forward to making more good stuff in 2024.