[Question] How much money have you spent/made scanlating?

[MarvN]

I was wondering how the finances of scanlators look like, taking into account expenses and profits through donations and ad revenue. How many make a net profit through it? How many 'get $3k into debt'?

Personally, I've spent $0 on scanlation, if you don't count the $20 tablet I bought to play osu. I now use it sometimes for redrawing or for drawing sfx/moans. I don't take donations either, so that comes out to a clean $0 in net profit, or a $20 loss if the tablet is included.

Would like to hear more opinions.

 

[Akacz13]

$0 made, $0 spent, 0PLN made, 0PLN spent (unless you count the money I spent on buying mangas, then it should be about 120PLN) and I don't want to make any of those numbers bigger. Well, maybe the amount of money spent on, but I'd have to think about it...

 

[Bainhardt]

Someone here on MangaDex asked if they could give me $10 when I first started. I'd only put out like 2 chapters and I didn't even mention or ask for donations, but I accepted because it seemed like a very sincere gesture of thanks. I bought a mousepad with a wrist cushion so I'd be more comfortable while I work on manga. Figured that was a suitable thing to buy.

Other than that, the only times I've spent money on anything scanlation-related would be a couple times I bought volumes of manga I was working on through BookWalker because I wanted to make sure the raws I had weren't missing any pages or that the contents were in the right order and of equal quality to the official stuff. I think it was like 15 bucks total for 3 volumes? Something in that ballpark.

I do buy physical JP manga sometimes from stores like Kinokuniya, but not to make raws off of, just because I like collecting manga. Some of them, like Kako to Nise Tantei, were manga I've worked on.

 

[RonBWL]

That's a good question indeed - I've been always wondering why the scanlation scene evolved to the point where they expect readers to pay for their own TL to help pushing out release, as if if no one does that the community will miss out big title, hmmm...

When I first started scanlating in 2015, I totally spend no money on it - free raw, fully scanlated myself, no drama. Sometimes I do get small donations here and there, all thanking me for the scans and I'm happy that people get to read the series I like, simple. As time went on, I started spending money on buying raw because the freebie becomes crappier and crappier in quality, this usually means $5-$7 / volume or magazine release on Kindle, but that's about it. Sometimes a large donation much later on covered all of that, sometimes it takes a while for small donations to pile up to that amount, but it's not really important to me since that's a small amount, I'd happily take the hit if readers could enjoy a scan at better quality

To this day, I only have one paid TL for one single series that I really like to have released, and I pick what I can afford, that is $15 per month (due to my personal patreon is around that amount only). If readers want to help, I'm fine with that, and faster release = win-win for everyone, but if not, I'll still make the release monthly, everyone's happy.

 

[LowSanity]

I donated once something like 10 or 15$. I do not use patreon as they banned ppl with "wrong" political opinions. I'm more likely to buy physical objects like posters then just donating.

 

[KuroViLolitannia]

0 made.

I do spent some though. Mainly for domain and stuff like local manga and tablet.

 

[Eeliejun]

Yeah, not making anything of scanlating. If I remember correctly the last donation was around 6 months ago for around 5 euro. (Thanks for that tho!) For expenses, it would be mostly getting raws that I can't get online but those are cheap énd I also pay for a storage cloud for the team.

 

[shouldsleep]

I wonder when it became normal (well normal isn't the right term, maybe generally accepted~ish) to be paid to TL. I don't recall any scanlation site asking for donations pre-2015, and I roamed between all sorts back then.

 

[reika]

I've spent around $100, probably more. Zero donations.

 

[Plykiya]

Spent like $5 on a series that was apparently already scanlated
made $0
ez pz

 

[Rapeman]

Spent $5 on some raws I didn't end up using.

Made around $300~ from donations when I cared enough to whore for them for a couple years. And $600~ from the non-H Code Geass Oz TL commission I did.

Made around $3000~ from lewd commissions at $1.50 - $2.50/page on the lewd blog, but eventually realised (after getting Jewed on a commission) that shit ain't worth your free time in the end considering it's well below minimum wage still at that rate. Now I just do it for panda shekels.

tl;dr: It's a good hobby, but not a good job.

 

[NibbPower]

I honestly did got donations to buy raws at one point then it stopped because I had a job so I told people to only donate if they really feel the need to. So no one on the time gets paid for the work they do. They do it all for fun and love for the support of the author. If people want to donate, as much as I love the readers love and support for the groups that's working on the series unofficially, but I'd prefer that they donate to the mangaka themselves.🤩
I'll just find ways as a leader to buy raws... Someday... When I have a job...haha