Isla Banks

As the new year fast approaches I find myself already reminiscing about Christmas, yes it just ended, but I'm mainly focusing on my Christmas budget, (presents, dinners & parties etc). How much I did I spend this year, and how do I always go over? Reality is quickly setting in and I am now realizing how much money I've spent this December alone...😲(Gulp). At this point I really start adding the numbers and budgeting for January. (This is something I do frequently, I'm sure many of my fellow Vancouverites are in the same boat. We all know the cost of living). I recently came back to this hobby in the late summer, and let me say, as an Independent Service provider these days, start up is not cheap or easy. I had spent some time in Calgary (1 ½ months) and when I returned I notice how expensive it's becoming to advertise in Vancouver. I'm quickly learning how much I'm spending on advertising alone. I try to maintain a healthy balance for my work schedule, generally taking 2days off/week. On average I probably work 20days/month as a low-medium volume provider. I advertise on 3-5 different paid sites. When I break it all down I’m spending about $50Cnd/day...$1000/month...$12,000/year!!! Whoa😳!!! With January and tax season just around the corner these numbers are terrifying, especially because I’m not high volume, just because I work all of these days does not mean I make money all of these days. Now some of these sites have very reasonable prices and have maintained the prices for years, others, this is not the case. I start shifting through old emails and text messages trying to figure out where exactly I have spent my hard earned dollars. I come across an older text message from a site that’s Free???? http://happyendings.cc (lol cute name 😊) I open the link & sure enough, it’s FREE to Join, FREE to Post & FREE to Bump! I peruse the site while I wait for the night to start. It’s clean and easy to navigate! http://happyendings.cc/about-us/ Its also donation based, so if I decide to give back to a site that’s actually helping me, I can do so. I find this so refreshing, a site that’s actually trying to help the service providers rather than take a percentage of my money before I’ve even earned it. This is not even expected of me at my day job. As a service provider that has been in & out of the business for years and have seen Craigslist(2010) and again in (2018) and Backpage (2018) get shut down I can truly appreciate a donation based site. IMHO a site like this seems like a better “mouse trap” lol, compared to some of the other options we have right now, and have had over the years. Isla Banks