Gamer Superstar - Chapter 59

59 – Solving Problems
When Liv finally calmed down and managed to let go of the hug, my mother asked me again.

“Noah, what did you do to earn so much money?” she asked worriedly.

Even though she knew I was making money from my artwork, she not only had no idea how much I was making, she had no idea how I managed to make more than $8,000 in one month.

My father, on the other hand, knew how much I earned from each drawing, and this made him even more confused because he could see from the calculations that even if I saved all the money from last month’s drawings and drew every 7 days of the week, I would still have a maximum of $6,000.

So I explained: “Mom, you know I draw pictures to sell on the Internet, right?” I began to confirm.

She nodded because I’d said that before.

“I get $100 for every piece of art I make, and I usually make two pieces of art a day.” I explained, leaving her shocked at how much money I made.

“You draw people’s characters and they pay you $100 per drawing?” she asked in shock.

“Yes.” I nodded. “I was paid less at first, but over time my reputation grew, and now the amount I charge is $100 per drawing.”

“But even if you were paid $100 for the last 30 days and did 2 drawings a day, that would still only be $6,000, where did the rest of the money come from?” my father asked confused.

“Actually, the money came from several sources. The initial money was just $3,200 that I had saved from the artwork and the shows that I did, but for every thousand people that listen to my songs on the Internet, I get a share of the advertising money, which was another $3,400 of money.” I explained to their surprise.

“For every thousand people who listen to your songs, you get money?! So how much did you get for The Lazy Song?” My mom asked in shock.

Since that song had over a million views, the calculation was easy: “About $1,000 on MeTube alone, it probably made another $1,000 on Spokify, so that song alone was responsible for $2,000 of the money I used.” I explained.

“2,000 for one song…” My mom was very surprised. She had heard of people making a lot of money on the Internet, but since it was always far away, she couldn’t imagine that I, her son, could make so much money in such a short time by posting things on the Internet.

“But even if you add all that to the $1,400 I sent you, you’re still $2,000 short, right? Where did you get the money so fast?” My father asked worriedly. He’d seen the messages coming in on my cell phone about transfers from various people, so he was worried that I was borrowing money just like he was.

“The waiting list of my clients for the artwork is quite long, so I just accepted some commissions for the drawings and asked for payment in advance. Those who paid had priority for the drawings. They also offered a gift of a cute, simple drawing of their characters to those who paid in advance,” I explained. I explained.

“How many pieces did you offer?” my father asked as he began to mentally count.

“I received an advance of 50% of the value of 40 pieces of art…” I said laughing as I scratched the back of my head. “Now for the next 20 days I’ve already got my schedule set.”

“Can you deliver all that, Noah?” my mother asked worriedly. “You don’t have to commit so much, if you need any help, just let me know.” I shook my head in denial.

Shaking my head, I denied it. “It’s okay, even though I take so many orders, I was going to take them anyway, so I just moved the process along.”

What I didn’t say was that I don’t usually like to work on Saturdays and Sundays, and with my plans to do weekend shows, this time became even more precious.

Now that I’ve accepted these 40 pieces of art, I need to finish them as quickly as possible.

With my drawing speed and my skill already above Lv 30, I can already do more than 2 artworks a day, so to speed this up, I intend to do at least 4 artworks a day, so that I can finish these artworks in just two weeks, considering that I would only be doing this from Monday to Friday.

Since each person was given a deadline to do the artwork according to the order in which they bought it, I would still have plenty of free time if I didn’t want to draw on the weekend, and no one would be put off by this.

But unfortunately, relying on these artworks to increase my income for the future was no longer a viable alternative.

I could increase the amount of art I did in a day to increase the amount I received, but I realized that raising the price from the $100 I was already charging was too difficult.

There was only a limited amount of money that people had to pay for something like this, so the only way to get more out of this service would be to increase the amount, which wasn’t a good alternative.

What I could try would be to post longer videos on MeTube now that I looked good, but I was still at a bit of a loss as to what kind of content to record. My daily life wasn’t that interesting to post on the Internet, and I didn’t want to exploit my family for views.

As much as it could make us rich, I’d rather keep my family’s privacy to myself than have strangers on the Internet watching us interact and doing who knows what with our video.

Aside from MeTube, the only two other ways I could see to make money were to use my programming skills to develop something that would make money in the short term, or to focus on my career and move up the ranks to get paid more for each show.

The programming option wasn’t something I would rule out, but it wasn’t something I wanted to focus on completely.

Programming was nice in theory, but studying it was very tedious.

It was just an hours-long process of reading books and articles and trying to implement what they explained, so focusing on making my game was more fun.

Unfortunately, my game was still far from being finished.

So the only thing left to do was to focus on my career.

Raising my profile from the bottom of rank E to at least the middle or top of rank E would be a big help.

“I’m sorry to put you through this, Noah.” My father apologized with a guilty look on his face and his eyes trying very hard not to shed a tear.

Knowing what he was carrying, I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. “The money you borrowed from her was for our own good, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “The money I borrowed from her was to do the shopping at the market and to pay for the consultation Ethan had to go to after he started feeling unwell…”

Searching through the memory of this body, I realized that a month before I came to this body, Ethan had actually become very ill and had to stay in the hospital for a few days, which put even more pressure on the household finances.

“Don’t worry Dad, I know you’re doing your best.” I said as I hugged him. “Didn’t I tell you that I wanted to help out more at home? Now that I have other sources of income, it wouldn’t be a problem to help out with $1,000 to $2,000 a month with the bills at home. That way you could put money away for the emergency fund again and we could also go out and have fun together more often,” she said with a smile. I said with a smile.

Hearing that, although he still felt a little bad, a sincere smile appeared on his face after he returned the hug.

“It’s okay Buddy, who would have thought my boy would change so much in one month. Now you’re a man.” He said proudly as he looked at me, making me feel ashamed.

“Just ask me one thing Dad, did you borrow money from anyone other than Karen?” I asked with a worried voice.

I didn’t even bother to call this woman an aunt anymore.

Embarrassed, my father nodded. “Yes, but it wasn’t that much money. It was $3,000 for my parents and $1,000 for my other two uncles. I had only borrowed $1,000 from Karen as well, but she offered $10,000 at the time.”

He continued. “At first I thought it was strange that Karen would offer money, but since it would really help with the bills at home, I accepted, thinking that she had improved and started to value family more than money, but now I understand why she offered so much…”

“All right, Dad, let’s work together to pay off the $5,000 we still owe and then we’ll be free of all this.” I smiled and tried to calm him down, which partly worked.

This was something he already felt pretty bad about, so at least knowing that his son was going to help him pay made him even prouder.

If it had been my old dad, I wouldn’t have worried at all, because he would probably have borrowed the money to spend it on booze, drugs, or gambling, but my current dad didn’t do that. All the money was spent on the five of us, so I wasn’t angry.

“Let’s make a big dinner to celebrate today, we’ll each get to choose a dish.” My mother said, relieved that she no longer had to worry about the money my father had borrowed from my aunt and that all the debts would be paid off in the near future.

“I want a hamburger!” Ethan was the first to respond excitedly.

“I’ll have a salad…” Olivia said sheepishly, making me look at her with a raised eyebrow.

Seeing me look at her like that made her even more embarrassed.

“Are you really just going to eat a salad?” I asked confused.

“I’m on a diet…” She said, making me look up and down and frown.

“But don’t your measurements go down with the exercise we do together?” I asked confused since we measured each other every week and she started to look slimmer after we started training.

“But my weight on the scale hasn’t gone down.” She complained a little.

“Silly girl, when you lose fat and gain muscle, your weight stays the same, but the fat is more voluminous, which makes you thinner…you can eat something more caloric, which with the intensity of our training, will hardly make you fat.” I laughed as I explained, making her relax while I actually started to think of something she could order to eat.

“I’ll have fries, lots of fries.” I said excitedly.

After all the time I’d spent on my high protein diet so I could eat during the week, being able to indulge in junk food on the weekend was something I’d been waiting for.

Especially now that I was very close to my ideal weight, I could give myself a little freedom to eat junk food on the weekends.

Of course, my mid-week eating would still be controlled, and the system would help me avoid regaining my previous weight.

But to my surprise, as soon as I answered what I wanted to eat, a notification beeped on my phone, alerting me to a message Selena had sent me.