April, in short, has been a month ruled by procrastination, and I’ve slacked off just enough to completely forget posting the latest chapter update on Ko-fi.
First off, here’s a quick update regarding Project Gender Bender’s translators. Quite a few of them have an unusually busy month ahead, so they’ve either rushed to wrap up their current batches early or have already started working on next month’s workload to stay ahead of schedule. Hopefully everything goes smoothly for them.
As for “2-as-1 Princesses,” once next month’s batch is complete, we will have fully translated every publicly available chapter, and the series will be placed on indefinite hiatus. The translator is currently deciding what to pick up next, with a final decision expected by the second week of June. There’s still some time, so if you’ve got suggestions, feel free to hop into Discord and ping “PunishedLyly”, preferably hidden gems that haven’t been picked up yet.
Moving on, let’s talk about Worldgate Online. One day, while I was just idling in front of my PC, the owner of the Destiny Unchain Online manga scanlation group reached out to me about someone looking for a place to host their translation. After a short discussion, they agreed to go with Re:Library.
From what I gathered, Momo is just as much of a reader as the rest of us and decided they absolutely had to read Worldgate Online, so they went as far as commissioning a friend to translate it. They plan to continue funding the translations out of pocket for as long as possible, ideally until the series is complete, but if anyone wants to help ease that burden, or simply support the project and read more, you can do so via their Ko-fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/alice_wgo_fund
Lastly, let’s take a look at Project Gender Bender’s goal. Since Ko-fi’s tracker reflects total sales rather than monthly membership, I’ll be resetting the goal at the end of each month, meaning the actual percentage will only be accurate on the final day.
It’s currently sitting at 97%. I set the goal slightly higher than expected, but given how close we are, the total we’ve received is still nearly on par with what we earned in March. As for May’s goal, I may raise the amount slightly.
I’ve never really paid close attention to payment processor fees before, but now we have a rough idea; they add up to at least $150 from the total. If we weren’t paying $12 per month for Ko‑fi Gold and instead taking the 5% cut per transaction, we’d likely be paying nearly double what we currently do.
And finally, in my defense, I wasn’t completely idle this month. I spent the first two weeks grinding through my translation quota, while the rest of the time was split between procrastinating and putting some effort into my side gig to bring in a bit of extra income
At this point, I’m actually earning more from that side gig than from translation, which does make me pause and reconsider things, at least until I take a step back and think it through properly.
I might be bringing in four figures from the side gig, but I’m actually earning a similar amount from translation as well. The reality is that both require upfront investment and capital. My side gig requires me to invest in stock upfront, while in translation, I have to cover the translators’ fees, so once everything is covered, what’s left isn’t much to speak of. In short, I’m still broke!
Not much to show for it yet, but I’ll keep at it and see where it goes, progress might be slow, but at least it’s still progress.
