Feeding the Beast: Social Media Marketing for Artists

Read an interesting comment on a SubReddit about social media marketing: nobody scrolls to learn. They scroll to feel.

I am not shy to admit, I suck at marketing! I'm a pretty good potter and a fine educator, but I think I'm too wonky and in-the-weeds to shine at marketing. Like, I love to talk about process! (WANNA HEAR SOME MORE ABOUT BURNER VALVES?? Didn't think so 😄) You know who likes to hear about process? Other potters! You know who has the least money or need for handmade pottery? You guessed it: other potters! (OH HAI OTHER POTTERS! Glad to see you here) What can I say? That's my authentic self. If people scrolled to learn, I'd be a champion at social media. And if "ifs & buts" were candy & nuts, we'd all have a very merry Christmas. 

Also, most people hate being sold-to. They want to be entertained & engaged. If they buy from you, they want it to be their idea.

So, if people scroll to feel, what might we try to make them feel? Curiosity, wonder, amusement. In this vein - not that I recommend doing it on purpose! - stories of minor studio disasters get a lot of sympathy engagement. My recent burner difficulties were too technical to be interesting to most people (except maybe you guys!) but I know of a potter who deliberately topples boards full of freshly thrown pots, because his audience responds. I would not do that, for all the reasons, not the least because it's the very definition of inauthentic. It works for him, though: he gets thousands of comments on those posts. 

I need to learn this skill better, so after the pottery tour, I plan to sign up for a Social Media Marketing course through Coursera. I'd have to choose a free one, obvs; if I were making enough money to pay tuition I wouldn't need the course in the first place. Have any of you done one of these? What did you think?

Also, I'd love to hear about your approaches to social media marketing, your successes and, if you want to share, your failures. I mostly use Instagram and Facebook, have just started on Bluesky, and of course you've heard me mention Patreon. I guess Blogger counts, too? Those all seem to require different approaches. TikTok is right out, for me: all content creation is work but videos are a shit ton of work & I just don't have the time or tbh the sparkling personality for that. I do a little bit on YouTube, but I can only do it because I give myself permission to suck at it and not care too much that I suck at it. (It's called authenticity, ok?? 😄)

Leave your ideas in the comments! XO L

Aaaaand, It's Live!

After a two day review period, my Faire shop is live! Faire is an online venue for store owners & buyers to find new work to carry. It's a wholesale ordering platform so it will be in addition to, rather than replacing, my online retail shop.

If it's like every other online platform, its success will depend on how well I promote it and maintain it. I'm excited to have this shop up & running just in time for trade show season! I'll let you know how it goes! 

PS. I think it helps me in some algorithm way if you click the link? I might be misunderstanding that...but just in case! If you want to help me out with minimal pain in the ass to you, you could pop in for a look! 

New Year, New Idea!

Please forgive any typos; Finn is sleeping on my right hand, so I am typing one handed with my left. (If you have cats, you understand this. It's against natural law to disturb a sleeping cat!) 

After reading of a few people's good experiences with them, I decided to give Faire a try. Faire is an online wholesale marketplace, where buyers can find makers. It makes sense to me as an alternative to wholesale shows, that require you to haul your ware sometimes thousands of miles, stay in hotels, pay thousands in booth fees, etc. The same for the buyers! This seems like a better option. 

Unlike many potters, I like to do wholesale! My favorites are the buyers who come & choose from the inventory I already have, but orders are good, too - they let me plan a bit, knowing when I can expect payment & how much. 

(Oh! There's my hand back. Thanks, Finn! I was starting to lose feeling in it.)  

I have a dim recollection that I considered this once before & decided against it, but I'm not sure I am thinking of the same site, because while I bumped on a couple of things - we'll get to those - nothing jumped out at me as unacceptable right out of the gate. Wait! Was Faire the one that I didn't know I had to apply to & got rejected anyway? Can't remember. I hope not! If I get rejected from something I didn't know I had to apply for a second time that will be a discouraging way to start the New Year! 

You pay nothing on Faire unless you sell, in which case you pay a commission of 15%. This is a little steep, considering wholesale price is traditionally 50% of retail, and Faire asks sellers - well, requires sellers - to agree not to charge more on their site than elsewhere; or rather, it sounds a little steep, until you compare it to the costs I outlined above: booth fees, travel, time out of the studio. In the case of those costs, you pay whether you get orders or not! 15% only on actual orders is starting to sound a little more reasonable. 
Speaking of costs, though, the other thing I bumped on was pricing: I see a lot of items that I can't imagine how they are making money. Someone was offering mugs at a suggested retail of $5, which would make their wholesale price $2.50! That was just one, but there were several on the first page of the search offering mugs at a suggested retail of $25, which I also could not do. I did a big more poking about, though, and found some sellers at more reasonable price points, including one who told me Faire is about 30% of their business. 
There is an algorithm to learn; the seller I chatted with, Gravesco Pottery, suggested starting with 8 - 10 items, then adding new listings in groups of three; that seemed to keep their shop on the front page for up to a week at a time. 
Right now my shop is being "reviewed," so not yet live. I plan to offer only one slip-trail design - flax blossoms - as that is the quickest & easiest, so the lower price I'll be getting won't be unsustainable. I only have one listing, because I need to photograph some items in that design & I need to make a few more. In addition to making cornbread (for prosperity in the new year) I will be doing those things today.
I know I have mostly potters reading this blog; have any of you used Faire? What has your experience been?

PS! The December photo dump is up (free!) on my Patreon page! 

How it started/How it's going

I bought some pajama shorts today - 3 pair. With pockets! I didn't really need them but I only had one pair, which I wear often enough that 's annoying when they are in the laundry. The 3 pair cost about $25 altogether. 

Lol wut - right? What do my pajama bottoms have to do with clay? Well, nothing, really, except indirectly. 

When I started writing this blog in 2007, I was making pots, teaching 3 classes a week, & working part time as a receptionist at an insurance agency (I quit that gig in 2011.) Reader, I was poor. Not broke - that implies a status that might soon change - but outright poor. If I wanted a new pair of shorts I went to Goodwill and chose from whatever they had. I actually still shop at Goodwill, because it's fun, & because re-using is environmentally friendly, but the big change is, then I had to. I couldn't just notice that I could use a thing, then hop online & purchase it. Everything had to be budgeted. But yesterday? Needed some pajama shorts, ordered some pajama shorts, end of story.

This is not a rah-rah, follow-your-dreams post. I can think of a hundred things that would have changed this journey from "difficult" to "impossible:" if I'd had any physical condition limiting the amount of hours I could work. If the unusual circumstances that allowed me to purchase a house in 2005 hadn't occurred. Even if I had had children! There were a lot of rice-&-eggs weeks along the way; it's one thing to choose that for myself, along with the skipped dental care, the shaky vehicles that stranded me more than once, the 55-degree house to save on heating oil. It's a whole 'nother thing to choose that for a child, and frankly, had there been a child, I wouldn't have chosen those things. 

But there wasn't, and I did. 

I don't even know why I'm writing this post. I guess because it struck me this morning how much easier my life has become, with even a little bit more money. Anyone who tells you money can't buy happiness has never not had enough. 

This has always, among other things, been a blog about the business of art, a topic of great interest to me for obvious reasons, and also because...idk, it seems like a puzzle to solve. And as with a jigsaw puzzle, you're gonna try some pieces that don't fit. 

I'm still jigsawing an income together. Along the way, I've identified some of those pieces that don't fit:

• Art fairs. I used to love them! In the 90s I was all about the art fairs. But I was younger then, and I lived in St. Paul, which is half a day's drive from at least 25 top-shelf art fairs. Living way up here in Maine, travel & lodging makes those prohibitive. Not to mention, fairs themselves have gotten so saturated that where we might reasonably expect to make 10x the booth fee, we're now thrilled to get half that. The smaller fairs that I could travel to locally are the same amount of hard physical work, for far less money. 
• Co-ops. This one is not absolute. (Actually none of them are!) But, in my experience, the 4-6 days a month you'll be expected to work in the store would be better spent making work or listing/promoting online. Your time is worth money! Don't discount that. 
  Again, not absolute; but at a minimum do the math! They will tell you what their yearly or seasonal intake is; keep in mind that potters tend to be on the low end of average sales, with the jewelers clustered at the top. If they make 36k a season & carry 20 artists, you're going to make lower than 1800 for the whole season. That's <$450 a month for 4-6 8-hour days of work; days that you could be spending making stuff. Doesn't sound so great when you do the math. 
• Some consignment. I'm very choosy about consignment. Any shop on its first year (first 3 years really), or any shop that takes less than 40% commission, or any shop that expects me to pay upfront for the privilege of doing business with them, dismal experience has taught me to stay away. 
• Similarly, those stores where you "rent" a stall. Nope. 

What works has been wholesale; larger, well established consignment stores; studio events; and online sales. I have a few little firewalls: income threads that put a (pretty low!) floor under me in case of dry spell from the other sources: the pottery stairs, sales of the Fine Mess Glaze Notebook & a few tools, my classes, and now Patreon subscribers. I have high hopes for Patreon although it has proven to be a Herculean task to get subscribers there. I don't even know how to do that! But as evidenced by 17 years of posts here, I have a lot of clay related thoughts, I'm probably gonna type em up, and I might as well get paid for them.

Anyway! Time to finish loading the kiln. I didn't get as much done as I hope yesterday, because it was like 90° and 84% humidity. Today's much better! Hoping to fire tomorrow. 

Just looked up this song - seems appropriate! 

By the Hum of the Burners

 

I've really dropped the ball with keeping my website updated. I am well aware that search engines will regard a site as abandoned if it doesn't get updated regularly - & they have a much more frequent idea of "regularly" than I do! If a site hasn't been updated in a month, it starts to fall in ranking, making it harder for people to find it. Last week saw 27 visits to my website. This is actually better than I expected considering there's been no new content for like 2 years! And also no meta tags, nothing for a search engine to latch onto. More than half of these came from google.This tells me making time to keep the website current is worth the effort - if 27 people visited when I put in zero effort, how many would I get if I actually tried?

The last update was so long ago that the cover image no longer represented my main body of work. It's been so long that I had to relearn how to do it - & I'm not even writing code, I use a (now pretty old) software called Kompozer to update my site. To avoid this in future, I'm implementing a new approach: when the kiln is firing, I'm updating. Updates don't have to be major to intrigue the web-crawling bots that search engines use! I changed the cover photo & added a link to my Patreon page and my Instagram; I added a link to a signup form for my newsletter, The Messy Minute. (I tried to embed a signup form but nope! that is not happening.) I reminded myself where to put meta tags, and typed in words like pottery, ceramics, handmade, stoneware, sodafired, Maine. I think of these like paint primer: you can't see them so you're tempted to skip them, but they make a huge difference in your results. 

Next - though maybe not today - I want to add an FAQ page. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because Frequently Asked Questions are frequently googled questions, and people searching for things like "Is handmade pottery food safe?" are the kinds of people I want visiting. This is a suggestion from my friend Milly's Guide to Marketing Art & Crafts Online. Blogger is being stupid about creating this link, but you can find it here:

https://marketingcrafts.online/product/guide-to-marketing-art-crafts-online/

Anyway! Time to go look at the cones! The kiln is in its climbing reduction, so doesn't require a lot of attention, so after I peer through the spyhole, I think I'll lie in the hammock & read the new Longmire novel. I'm interested in your ideas about keywords or other strategies you use to make your website a better business tool. Comment if you have ideas for me! XO L

Hi, I'm Lori, Your Friendly Neighborhood Potter

After ditching the Nazi-infested social media site formerly known as twitter, like a lot of folks, I searched for a new text-based app to take its place. I tried a few & settled on Threads, an imperfect but passable substitute - the main thing it has to recommend it over similar sites is the level of activity. 

I find myself in the art-entrepreneur corner of Threads, where there's an ongoing conversation about making and selling art while maintaining your vision, your sanity, and the roof over your head. The differences in priorities, the different strategies...I find it all fascinating. Since a lot of what I have written about here for the past tumpty-ump years is about the business of art, and my clay & business journey, I wanted to introduce myself to my new friends on Threads. 

I've been a potter since before some of you were born - took my first class in 1987. I've worked production & had various non-pottery jobs over the years but since 2011, it's been all clay, all the time. I teach classes Portland Pottery for some of my income, and the rest is selling soda-fired ware. 

I want to say that I know that I am lucky, in more ways than I can count. I am able-bodied (so far!) & have never felt any urge to have children. To some people that might sound distinctly unlucky, but if I had wanted children, I'm not sure I could have chosen clay as a profession. Especially in the early years - which would have coincided with my childbearing years - the income stream was too unreliable. When I only had myself  - & later my husband - to consider, a rice-&-eggs month was no big deal. Oh, what's that, we're out of oil? The wholesale check should be arriving tomorrow, turn on the space heater & put on a sweater! No big, we could ride out any calamity, at least of the financial kind. If there I'd been responsible for a child, it would have been a different story. & there were a few sticky spots like that!  

Another way that I've been lucky is I bought my place before prices went insane. Granted I was willing - 3 times! - to purchase in what were considered less-desirable places to live, but that's been the economic role of artists forever. We move into economically challenged areas, & by our presence make them fun & cool. Those are harder to find now, but not impossible - living someplace that wasn't my first choice was a price I was willing to pay. 

I've also been lucky to have pottery teaching gigs basically every step of the way. In Minnesota it was the Northern Clay Center & the Bloomington Art Center; here in Maine, I've been at Portland Pottery for more than 20 years. I teach 5 classes a week. Could I make a living without the teaching bit? Yes, but there's no question it would be a lot harder. Part of why I can do stuff like refuse custom work is because I have that net to catch me. More importantly, though, I don't want to! Everybody needs community, and the PP studio provides me with that. 

I hope it doesn't sound too arrogant to say it hasn't all been luck. That's where priorities come in. I've been willing to tolerate some of the discomfort & inconvenience that comes with a spotty income stream. I've driven ugly, unreliable vehicles & worn almost exclusively secondhand clothes. My furniture is all secondhand, too. I cook instead of getting take out. My floors have needed to be refinished since I bought the house. I do almost all the repairs. We take camping vacations. 

All this has been worth it to me, to be a potter. I decided early on that, since we spend SO much of our waking lives at work, my job should be something I enjoy doing - and that that was more important than fancy vacations or flawless flooring. That might seem obvious to some folks, but so often I find people who say they want to be a full-time artist but aren't willing to give up any of the nice aspects of conventional employment. So, my friend from the arts-entrepreneur section of Threads, that's a thing to think about: what are you willing to do without, to bring this dream within reach? 

Nice to meet you! Looking forward to more conversations about the business of art. 

My YouTube Discovery!

 You're gonna laugh, because you've probably known this for years, but it's a revelation to me: hashtags make ALL the difference on YouTube! 

Anecdata: I made a throwing video last week, the remnant of a live wheelcam event. I don't know if anyone watched live - there's probably some way to discover that, but I don't know how - but in the days afterward, it gained 2000 views. That's a lot, for me - it's an order of magnitude more than any other video I've posted, and some of those have been up for years. Greatly encouraged, a week later I made another. 

It got 24 views. And four of those were me. 

At first I threw up my hands: social media, whaddaya gonna do? Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't. But it nagged at me, & I ruminated on it, & remembered: the first one, I chose some hashtags. I didn't really think anything of it, just did it because I was prompted to. I didn't do so for the next one, not for any reason, just clicked by the prompt. I went back yesterday & edited the post to include hashtags, and now it has 1.2k views! The hashtags are not especially clever or amazing, just stuff like #pottery and #potters wheel. 

Anyway! Just wanted to share that here. Part of our journey here has always been the business of art, and in this-here 21st century that includes social media. I don't have a great grasp on it - the best I got is "post a lot more than you think you need to" - but when I learn something, I share it with you. 

Here's the video! This might not be the audience for it, as it's just me making pitchers, and most of my readers are potters - watching someone throw is not as fascinating for us as it is for other people. But in case you want to check it out: 

Tending My Brand Garden

I read this phrase today and it made me laugh: "tending your brand garden." Not sure why it was funny to me...maybe because I am far lazier as a gardener than as a small business owner. In fact I barely have time to garden, because I am a small business owner. 

Nevertheless it's a pretty good metaphor! One I feel I am conquering lately - a pretty rare feeling for me. I'm photographing, I'm writing, I'm making videos, I'm posting, I'm interacting, I'm getting responses! I'm watering my brand flowers or whatever. Now I need to do all that & also make more stuff. And also teach my classes. 

Sometimes I think what we do is almost literally impossible - except some people are doing it! Are they just that amazing, are they just lucky, or is it an illusion that looks quite different from the inside? I suspect that last; it's possible they also feel like they are dancing as fast as they can, even while they  make it look effortless. 
Anyway! Tend your brand garden, even if it's all dandelions. 

Oh, speaking of watering! There's a new post on my Patreon, free to all members. Check it out! If I get to 20 paid subscriber I will publicly do a happy dance. 

Full Court Press

 

This did not clarify things even a little

First, a confession: I have no idea what phrase "full court press" means. I know it's some sports thing...maybe basketball?...and I know it has come to mean giving something all of your effort, on all fronts. Or at least I think that's what it means. If only I had a device through which I could access the answers to these questions! OH WAIT

OK I googled it, read the definition, and I still don't know what it means, so, moving right along. 

After my weeks-long bout of dopamine deficiency, my motivation and energy have returned and it feels like a miracle, and like all good miracles, it came with an epiphany: I know what I need to do, I know what the next steps are for Fine Mess Pottery! Like all good epiphanies, it felt like I had always known it; like the conclusion of a particularly corny fantasy series, the answer has been inside me all along.

This is a long & overblown way of saying, I just need to do more promoting. Like, a lot more.  2-3 Facebook & Instagram posts a day, maybe 10 Threads - those can just be random thoughts, too much promotion turns followers into unfollowers - a blog post or two every week, at least one free & one paid Patreon post a week, 4 newsletters a year. 
Like all good epiphanies, this one comes at an inconvenient time. The next four days are totally devoted to the Maine Pottery Tour, & likely any posting I do will be related to that; but I want to create a posting schedule & strategy as soon as I have time. 

Speaking of the tour, I hope to see you this weekend! 

Flash Sale! I think

 

One of my New Year's resolutions was to learn to use social media better for business. I usually keep my New Year's resolutions, or at least make a mighty effort; this one was challenging, as I feel older & less tech savvy by the day. 

But I think I got it figured out! Here goes: for 48 hours - midnight February 15th though midnight February 16th - enter code FEBFLASH at checkout in the Fine Mess Pottery online shop to receive 15% off! 

I hope somebody actually buys something so I know if I did it right! 

Going for it!

The poster for the 2022
Common Ground Fair

I have been on the fence about doing art fairs again after a long pandemic break, & then just unsure whether I wanted to go to the trouble & expense of rebuilding my booth, which I deconstructed after more than 25 years of service & one facelift. In the spirit of The Big Push - my New Year's Resolution - I decided to go for it, starting with the Common Ground Fair in Unity. 

There's no guarantee that I will be accepted, of course! The Common Ground is a competitive juried event. I didn't apply to this fair last year, & the two years before that I was accepted (but the fair, of course, was cancelled both times due to the pandemic) but if I recall correctly I was not chosen in 2019. It sucks, of course, to be juried out, but that is a necessary risk of applying to the best shows. The best shows in Maine, anyway; I've made a decision that I will not be applying to any show more than about 100 miles away. This is largely for environmental reasons - all those emissions from all those artists driving all those trucks & vans to all those art fairs! We forget that the flip side of "Shop Local" is "Sell Local." I have other considerations as well, mostly travel time & travel expenses.

Anyway, I've sent in my application & my ten bucks, now we wait & see. 

Today in the studio, I am finishing a jaunty jar & making some pasta bowls for Bay View Company, and also reclaiming clay - not my favorite job, but I'll turn it into a meditation. 

Time to say Goodbye

​

And, unlike the old song says, goodbye does mean forever. Goodbye does mean we'll never be together again! It's time to let go of my old art fair set up. I built it in 1994, and while it served me well for many years it has gotten increasingly rickety (not unlike myself) and I have had to resort to more and more desperate measures to make sure it is stable enough to hold the ware for the duration of an event. Last weekend I nailed parts of it together. There was a moment when I was contemplating duct tape. It's time to let it go.

Here's how it looked, in better days...

 The question is, do I build another one? If so, for what specific uses? If it is to be solely a studio evnt display, that has a different set of parameters than an art fair display, that needs to be fairly lightweight, portable, and quick to set up. 

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about booth displays. Lately I am thinking about whether I want to do art fairs at all, given my own increasingly rickety self. Art fairs are a lot of work! And, honestly, I got spoiled in St. Paul; there were maybe 20 top-shelf art fairs within a day's drive; here there's one. Craft Boston used to be, but for the last at-least 5 years it has been sucking mud; the PMA show is headed that way also. 
Most of the good shows that I used to do, when I lived in St Paul are still running, but driving 2 or 3 days, staying in motels (I'm too old to sleep in a tent on the ground, at least when I am working), eating out - fast food is both nastier & more expensive than home-food - the calculation is different. The absolute most I could hope to make from a good show is probably around $5000 - & that would be a rarity. Subtract the booth fee & the studio time, & the classes I'd have to miss & the travelling expenses...not looking like such a great dice to roll now. 

OTOH, I used to love the art fair lifestyle. Seeing new cities, a group of friends I only saw during that season, trying new restaurants...I didn't even mind the driving. I'd try to find a Spanish-language radio station & listen hard to see if I could understand any of it. 

Anyway. The Maine Pottery Tour is over for another year. My event was successful, about 70 visitors & the same sales as last year - which is good, because last year landed in kind of a unique moment, when for about 5 minutes we thought the pandemic which had been keeping us away from public activities for a year was over. (It's still not, of course, but the pottery tour is mostly an outside event, & even a big turnout isn't densely packed, so I felt ok about doing the tour.) Anyway, maybe we've just finally hit a critical mass of people who know about hte tour, return every year, & help spread the word.

This week is always funny for me, because I've spent the last 4 months thinking about & working on the tour in basically all my "free" (lol) time, and now there's a space where that used to be. I have orders to fill & pots to list online & stores to approach, not to mention classes to teach!  - believe me I have plenty to do - but I am going to take a moment to appreciate the not-urgency of those tasks. 

Getting My Sh!t Together

This year has been so weird & unlike any other I have lived that it sometimes felt like I was living in the dot of the "i" in Jeremy Bearimy, not in a good way!  I let a lot of things slide in that feeling of unreality & disconnectedness, but this year was real and it is connected...and now I have to sort out everything that I put off, starting with my accounting. 

In 2019 - a year when my sh!t actually was together and my ducks in tidy rows - I started using QuickBooks Self-Employed and was delighted with how easy it made my taxes. Turns out it only helps if you actually keep up with categorizing the transactions - how wacky! And, boyoboy, were my transactions a mess in 2020. Between the shutdown, the unemployment snafu, losing my wallet, and having my laptop stolen, I was just using whatever card was working & available at the moment I needed it. So, yeah. It's a dumpster fire. 

Nevertheless, the arrival of the 2021 art fair applications has jolted me out of the dot of the i. Life is recommencing! I can't just keep us afloat for today & let tomorrow take care of itself. And oh my god, do I need to put out that dumpster fire in my bookkeeping. 

SO, to-do list for today:

1. Apply for the Common Ground Country Fair. It's a more complicated application than most & even has some essay questions. 
2. Work on that QuickBooks Shitshow. Better make a fresh pot of coffee first.
3. Get some glazing done
4. Maybe make more cookies? I have a new design I want to try. 
5. Since life is recommencing, I want to do a thing that worked really well in 2019, and set some intentions: My 21 for 2021. Even though that got laughed out of the universe in 2020, not giving up! 

Holy Crap It's Time Already

In the random way of things - and it is at least a little random - last year I got into every fair to which I applied. Then God said, "HA!" and all of them were cancelled. I took a moment...maybe two...or perhaps as many as four...to be bummed about that, then set it aside & got on with the business of surviving. 

Well, the time has come once again to start the application process. It will be an act of hope, tinged with a bit of anxiety; what if it was a fluke? I know there's a random factor, what if the dice all roll the wrong way for me this time? 

To complicate matters, in August someone stole my laptop, which contained the images which succeeded so well last year. Three of them I had stored in Dropbox, but I have not succeeded in recovering the 4th - so I will not be applying with the exact some images. Maybe there was some alchemic magic in those 4? 

Well. There is one way to find out, I guess. Topping today's to-do list: Apply to the Common Ground Fair. 

Wish me luck! 

But What Am I Gonna Do With All These Ornaments?

 

As the numbers of coronavirus cases rise in Maine, we are implementing extra precautions. One casualty: the Portland Pottery Holiday Show & Sale. Back in October it seemed plausible that it might happen but the virus had other ideas. I am bummed about this but I know other people have suffered real losses, and I can't dwell too much on minor disappointments. (The loss of income is another layer of suckage but my planning assumed poor sales this holiday season, and they have not been as bad as I thought; so I'm covered.) Anyway it will be twice as amazing next year due to pent up demand. 

It leaves just one question: what am I gonna do with all these Christmas ornaments? 

There was a time I would have stuck my nose in the air at the idea of making something as cutesy as Christmas ornaments. What a stick I was! Painting ornaments is a ton of fun & they make people smile. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution!" and if having fun is some kind of aesthetic sin, I don't want to be taken seriously. Although to be fair I put a lot of that on myself. Glad I relaxed a bit in my old age. 

Monkitree in Gardiner is carrying ornaments in addition to my function ware as part of the Holiday Pottery Shop. If they get a mad run on ornaments, I'm ready for 'em! Otherwise I'll sell what I can online (only 'til December 11, because the USPS is saying they can't guarantee delivery before Chirstmas after that date) and be well ready for next year. 

Cyber Monday!

 Happy Cyber Monday, friends! Enter the coupon code CYBERMONDAY at checkout to get 15% your purchase at Fine Mess Pottery, today only!

Let me take a second to walk you through the steps to create a coupon code in Square, because it's not at all intuitive. At the dashboard, there is a menu of tiles on the left.

Choose "online" then "Go to Square Online."

There you will see a menu on the left: click "Items" which will drop down a submenu. From the submenu, choose "Coupons, " then the blue button at the top right which says "Add Coupon." A form will open. From here it's pretty clear:

1. Type in the code you want people to use as a promo code - something that will reference the reason for the discount.
2. You can enter a number if you want your coupon's use to be limited; like, "First five customers get 10% off!' or whatever. Or you can leave that field blank if you want anyone who uses the code to get the discount.
3. Choose a start and end date. These can be the same for a one-day event, like, say Cyber Monday!
4. Choose your discount. It can be a specific dollar amount, or a percentage, or free shipping.
5. Choose what it applies to: Everything? Only items from a specific category? Only orders over a certain dollar amount? The default is "Everything," so if that's what you want you don't have to change anything here.
6. Click "Save" and then share your coupon code with your social media - no one will no to use it if you don't tell them.

Happy Cyber Monday!

Email Marketing: Small Business Saturday!

 Remember last year, when I was making resolutions for this one? You know, "20 for 2020" and all that? That was funny, wasn't it? 😄😄😄 Not at the time, really, but the idea of doing anything other than just clinging on with our fingernails during 2020 turned out to be sort of a tragedy of the absurd. 

Nevertheless, I will probably try to put together a 21 for 2021 list, because it actually was a very successful approach in 2019. I didn't achieve everything on the list, but many I did, and the others I got much closer than I would have otherwise. When I make the list for 2021, it will surely include more regular email marketing. I've been meaning to do this, anyway, but have been reminded & inspired to do it after reading Milly Welsh's book. 

Toward that end, I sent out a Mailchimp email for Small Business Saturday. I was feeling discouraged because fewer than half the people who receive these even open them - only 49.8%, of the last campaign. (Approximately. 😉) Then I learned that two percent is a more common number, and I felt better! Getting folks to open them is half the battle. 

Only half, of course; in addition to building relationships, reminding my customers that I exist, and telling them where in the real world they can find Fine Mess Pottery, I'd certainly love it if a few sales resulted from this campaign. Since time immemorial (as evidenced by multiple posts over multiple years on this very blog!) that has been my dilemma*: how to turn engagement into sales. Would love any tips on this that you guys have learned from your email marketing experiences. 

Anyway, if you would like to check out the missive, click here. If you'd like to receive updates & news from Fine Mess Pottery, let's take this subscription form for a test drive: 

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ETA: OMG that actually worked! Thanks you guys! 

*I hate how that word looks! When I learned it in 3rd grade, it was spelled "dilemna" - which I acknowledge makes less phonetic sense, but hey, welcome to the English language, where nothing makes any sense, at least not consistently. The phonetically correct version - which is now the actual correct version - looks ignorant to me. Turns out I am not alone! 

8 Weeks Out

On Leap Day I saw a crocus. Not blooming, yet; just the pale tip of growth poking through the frozen earth. A sign of spring! It seems far off, still, but in truth it will be here before we know it.

In fact there are only 8 weeks left before the Maine Pottery Tour! I organize the tour every year (well, mostly) so I know: that is a very short amount of time for all the stuff that needs to be done! We have 50 studios on the tour this year - more than ever! - and there are postcards to order, maps to create, and signs to distribute. That's in addtion to my own studio event to plan - I'll be doing a kiln opening Saturday morning May 2, have plates available for people to paint, and a tabletop potter's wheel if anyone wants to give it a whirl, so to speak - not to mention making pots for the sale part of the event.

Whew.

I don't have full maps ready yet, but if you are looking to plan your pottery road trip, we do have several new studios on the tour this year. Here's a list, with web links, if you want to check them out:

Common Street Arts - Waterville
Top of the Hill Pottery- Augusta
Jeffrey Lipton Pottery - Litchfield
Dragon's Breath Pottery - Warren
Maine-ly Pottery - Belfast
Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts - Newcastle
EC Ceramics - Blue Hill
Tim Christensen Porcelain - Portland
Adrian King Pottery - Portland
Bentley Pottery - Portland
Heather Abt - Portland
Muddy Toes Pottery- New Gloucester
MEC Pottery - Cape Neddick

Rolled the Dice

...Or else I set $40 on fire. I applied for the St Louis Art Fair, which happens in September. Every year I have an argument with myself about whether I should apply to the top-shelf fairs I used to go to, when  lived in St. Paul. I didn’t know how easy I had it, back then! At least 10 of the top 50 best art fairs are within a ½ day’s drive of St. Paul. The closest one to me here is the Smithsonian, which I don’t apply to because it’s very unlikely I could get in. Also the jury fee is $50, the lowest booth fee is $1300, and getting a hotel and food in DC for 3 or 4 days would be a crazy expense. Also, the *average* sales total is about 6k. Since jewelers always make the most, and since there are always a few big studios that make like 50k, that means the little people like me are making between $0 – 3000, for a show that costs about 2500 to do.

Anyway. The last time I did St Louis, I made upwards of $5000, and would have made more except I sold out of everything! I had one pot left at the end of the show. Can I expect to sell almost literally everything, again? Probably not, but I can bring more pots! One good thing is, the organizers of this event did not get greedy, and the show still has less than 200 booths. Also, St Louis in  September? I could probably find camping nearby, or a hostel. (I also have friends in St Louis, having lived there many moons ago; but it seems rude to ask for hospitality, when I know the art fair will be so much work that I will not be able to spend any time visiting my hosts.)

Of course, I might not get in! I have a better chance than with the Smithsonian, but any good fair, you have to assume you might get juried out. I probably could get into the Uptown, but the last time I was

there I grossed $2k, which was great for a fair I did not have to travel to, not so great for one 1500 miles away. I still do have a lot of good friends in and around the Twin Cities, some close enough that they wouldn't mind housing me even if I basically just slept at their house & drank their coffee, so I could eliminate that expense, but travelling 1500 miles is still going to be a spendy proposition, in terms of both time & money.

  

I also applied to 3 local shows, one is June, one in August, one at the end of September. There are not a lot of great shows in Maine, and it has taken me some time to make the mental adjustment that most shows here are going to mean weeks of preparation and three days of flat-out backbreaking work to net a frustratingly small amount of money. 

Why did I choose this stupid field*? I should have become a visual merchandiser. Or idk, a dentist, a money manager, an engineer.
Just kidding, we all know I never had much choice in the matter. Clay chose me, and I'm lucky it did. 

*Again, I know it is bad branding to admit I don't make much money! I know we are all supposed to pretend to be super-successful all the time. But fuck it, somebody has to be honest, otherwise we all secretly feel like losers. 

Wow Already? Again: Time to Apply for Next Summer's Fairs!

Last year's images

This year's images

This year's images

A potter is always living in the future. (Well: and also the past, in a different way. But that's a ramble for another time.) From a making point of view, for sure: the things I throw today, in my mind, they are already glazed and fired - I have a surface in mind for them, although it is fair to say the kiln often has other ideas. In business terms as well - in snowy January, I must decide which art fairs I want to swelter at next summer. Some of the fairs are even further out than that - two I am applying to are in September and October.

Last year I got a rude surprise when I didn't get into two big events I was counting on. (See, this is why I am terrible at business and possibly also life; I know I am supposed to pretend to be amazing and always successful; just openly failing like a common person, that is not good branding! But it's just you & me here...well, us & the whole damn internet...)

Anyway.

I got a surprise, not the good kind, when I got juried out (well: wait-listed, which in the end is the same thing) of two good shows. I made the best of it & actually had a great summer with no pressure of upcoming events, but I would not like a repeat for next summer! Getting juried out is not the end of the world, it happens to most of us at times, but it shook my confidence a little to get the boot twice the same year. Maybe my slides sucked? Maybe the pots suck?!? MAYBE I SUCK?!?!?!

So I am having to do a little work here to push those doubts aside. There's an element of the random; this was probably just that...but it couldn't hurt to be extra deliberative when choosing my images this year.

At the top of this post are the 4 images I used to apply last year; below them are the 4 I used on some applications this year, and 4 more I used for other shows. I was trying for a greater unity among the images this year. There are still lots of shows to apply to, so if you have some insight on which set of images might work better, I am all ears!

So far I have applied to the Common Ground Country Fair, The Portland Fine Craft Show, and started the complicated application for Belfast Arts in the Park, which requires filling out an in-site form, emailing images separately, and sending a 2 checks by snail mail. I'm also considering Art Providence - would love to hear from anyone who has done that show if it was worth it.

There are some smaller events, like the Winthrop Sidewalk Art Festival, whose applications are not yet open. I'm considering giving that one a try - it's only a few miles from my house, the booth fee is tiny, and I have heard good things about it. 

ETA: A reader commented that there is a Facebook group, Art Fair Reviews, that might be helpful. (Thanks, Susan!) Boy was she right! I joined the group and immediately got the information I needed specifically about Art Providence, which was , don't. Or that was my take. I saw comments like, "We almost made our expenses" and "we made our expenses, but only because we didn't need to get a hotel" and "It was our worst show of the year." Everyone says it's well organized, with excellent quality vendors; nobody says they sold well. So, I am crossing them off my list.