Benny Jay: Creative Accounting

January 14th, 2010

I’m having lunch with Monroe, my friend the blogger, when he breaks the news: “Most web sites have to have one thousand hits before Google or other advertisers pays them five dollars.”

I’m not sure I hear him correctly so I say: “I’m sorry — try that again….”

He speaks a little slower — like you would to a child. “Okay, every time someone comes to your blog that’s a hit — right?”

“Right….”

“You need 1,000 of those hits before you get five dollars….”

Pause.

“So the ratio’s like, one-thousand to five?” I ask.

“Precisely….”

I think about that for a moment. I don’t like to swear, but….

“Shit,” I say.

“Tell me about it….”

After lunch, first thing I do is call Milo, one of my three co-workers on this great Third City enterprise. “All right, get ready for this,” I tell him. “According to Monroe — who knows a lot about this stuff — we need one thousand hits to make five dollars….”

“Who told you this?” Milo asks.

“Monroe….”

“And he told you one-thousand to five?”

“Yeah….”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yeah….”

“How many hits are we getting now?”

“I dunno – couple hundred a day….”

“Shit….”

“That’s what I said…”

“Well, get cracking,” says Milo. “We make five dollars and we’re in the tall grass….”

“Milo, I can’t live on five dollars a day….”

“That’s why the first thing we do is figure out a way to cut the Barn Boss out of the take,” he says.

“You mean, Big Mike?”

“Yeah – who else?”

“But, Milo — he helped me start this blog….”

“So what. Five dollars divided two ways goes a lot further than five dollars divided three ways….”

“You got a point….

“Randolph, too….”

“Geez, Milo, Jonny’s one of my oldest friends….”

“Fuck him, Benny – don’t go soft on me….”

“Well, I could use the money….

“Now that I think about it, what we really need is a sleazy accountant to doctor the books….”

That gets us talking about the immortal Artie Brisket – the chubby, troll-like man who used to do my taxes. He worked out of the basement of his bungalow in West Rogers Park. The place was overflowing with boxes filled with stacks of musty, old tax returns. Smelled of mildew and dust. You’d sit down there, shivering against a draft, and watching Artie total up numbers on his adding machine. The man loved that adding machine. He used any excuse to add something up. Worked that keyboard like Herbie Hancock on a piano – fingers flying across the keys. He knew the IRS code inside and out – he was always telling me about how he maneuvered his richer clients into a lower bracket. It’s a miracle all of them didn’t wind up in prison.

As I recall, I met Artie through Milo who met him through this publisher Milo used to write for. As a matter of fact, that publisher still owes Milo money.

We could probably learn a thing or two from that publisher. Maybe we should get him to run this blog….