Lessons from the Sabbatical

 As you may know, last session I took a break from classes at Portland Pottery - my first since I started teaching there in 2001. In fact, it was the first time since I left school that I have been just a potter! I’ve always had some other job. Early on, I had service jobs, then office jobs; when I started teaching, that position kept my mind in clay, brought me community, and allowed me to share my joy and passion. It was a good fit.

Nevertheless, I sometimes looked at full time potters and wondered: what have they got that I haven’t got? I know now, I think: the answer is nothing. Or maybe the answer is time, or the money to buy a little time. Because it was working. Just not fast enough to sustain. I like this answer better than "I guess I just suck at this" although the distinction has not yet had much practical effect. 

One of the reasons I started this blog was to share what I've learned with other potters. From my time on sabbatical, I learned that you can make a living selling pots, if you have enough of  a cushion to buy you time to build. I went from one or two online sales a month to three or four a week - still not enough but an enormous increase. I increased my Patreon income by about 30%. I don't know that this growth would have continued, but I do know one thing: the second, the very instant I stopped banging that drum constantly, it stopped. Last week, the week I went back to class? There were zero orders and zero subscriber growth. It's a bit discouraging, but it's also good information. 

Marketing, it seems, takes as much time as making. I was trying to post to five platforms, four times a day - a lot of copy/paste, but sometimes with slight alterations in each post tailored to each platform. I sent newsletters and targeted snailmail. Plus the occasional Youtube video.  I posted longer tutorials several times a week to the Patreon page. It was a lot, and even at that I could have been doing more. While maybe somebody out there is making pots that simply fly off the shelves, of their own accord (sure, Jan) I feel like I may have discovered the secret, at least for me: promote the holy hell out of the work & the page. However much promotion I am doing, I should be doing more! In fact, what am I doing spending on this non-income-generating blog?? 

See where this leads? I now know - or think I know - that I could be a full time potter...but is that the work I would want to do? If I could just make stuff, and then the fairies would come in the night & exchange it for cash, well, I'd take that deal! But that's not how it is. So, would I even want to do that, if that's the trade-off? I don't know that I would, but I do know that I like all of this better than: maybe I just suck at this.

Anyway, blah-blah-blah, check out the Patreon if you haven't already, there's a new post about slip decorating techniques up today.