Becoming a Full Time Potter (Revisited)
Those of you that have been here for a while or who have dug through the older posts will know that about two and a half years ago I did a series of blog posts on becoming a full time potter. Quite neatly, they were about two and a half years into the process, so now the same time has passed again I wanted to revisit them and see what had changed.
Original Posts:
Social Media
Since posting that, there have been a few developments in the social media landscape. TikTok has become a huge platform, and Instagram has added IGTV, Reels, and Guides.
The advice about getting your content quality as high as possible still applies. A well photographed/videoed/edited/written post will do better than a lesser quality post. After a disappointing phone upgrade (the camera on the Pixel 5 does a worse job of photographing work than the Nexus 5x I had at the time of the previous post) I bought a new dedicated camera for the studio (more info at the bottom of this post).
There are far too many variables to say that the improved quality of the content had any noticeable effect on the engagement though. Given that the other elements (subject matter, composition, lighting, accompanying text, etc) was the same, and that the quality from the phone wasn’t bad enough to be a barrier, I’m not sure anyone other than me was that bothered by the improvement.
I do believe that the more platforms you have an active and engaging presence on, the more your overall profile will grow. However, there are big differences between the sort of engagement and audience profile you can expect from each platform. I never really got anywhere with TikTok, but I know from people with a huge following on there that it’s a lot less likely to translate into sales (which makes sense, as the audience is younger and less likely to be spending much money on handmade ceramics). So if you’re not on TikTok and wondering if it’s worthwhile, I would suggest that doing well on there will help make you more internet famous (which does help with sales in the long run) but won’t directly translate into more business. And if you make Instagram Reels, then you might as well crosspost to TikTok as it’s a minimal amount of extra work.
Should you make Reels on Instagram? At the moment, I’d say so. Instagram generally favour their new offerings anyway, but also Reels are the sort of quick and engaging content that is more likely to go viral. I think the Instagram algorithm that’s responsible for deciding how well a post does (there are many different algorithms for different aspects of the platform) has become a bit more all-or-nothing. It’s not as bad as TikTok, where a post can get 6 views or 6 million depending on the engagement of the first handful of people it’s shown to, but there certainly does seem to be a much greater variation in the reach of posts on Instagram now. When I started on there you could expect a similar baseline of likes/comments, and a good post might do 2-3x better. Now I have the best posts typically 10x and sometimes more like 20-30x better than the typical lower end post. I think it averages out in the long run, but I also don’t think there’s a great way to predict what will go more viral, so it’s not worth worrying about much. Just make the best content you can and some of it will do well.
Since the last post, I’ve been focusing more on YouTube too, and have seen some growth there. I had a video recently go over 1 million views, which I think it a good demonstration of the potential and the limitations of YouTube. The majority of my views, my growth in followers, and my income from ad revenue (more on that further down) has come from 3-4 videos out of hundreds. I know from speaking to potters who have a much bigger following on there that it’s pretty typical.
I really like the longer format videos, and the longer lifespan. The site is set up to reward higher quality content in a way that the other platforms aren’t, so less frequent posts with more time and effort in them will do better than regular lower effort content. Technical and useful pottery videos will probably never go viral unless they’re aimed at total beginners and are very accessible, just because the audience for that technical content is a tiny fraction of a percent of the audience for the satisfying Full Process type videos. Those are the ones that go viral and make the majority of any adsense revenue. I have found that YouTube followers (not the casual viewers who don’t subscribe) tend to be more engaged than any other platform though, so recommendations made in the technical videos are more likely to be listened to and links are more likely to be followed.
If you don’t make YouTube videos and have the equipment and time, I would recommend it. It adds a diversity to your audience, and a potential revenue stream that sits alongside making, although that should be a longer term motivation as it will take quite a while before you can even turn on monetisation (let alone make a significant amount of money)
Mindset
I think everything in the previous post still applies. I’m a few more years in and I’m still certain that sharing processes/recipes/tips/etc is better all round. Obviously it’s better for the people that learn from them, it’s better for the community overall as it reinforces a kinder and more generous style of interaction, but it’s also means there’s more reason for people to engage with your posts and follow you (for which, the algorithm gods will reward you).
I was going to leave it there, but there are a few things that came up on Instagram while I was writing this that I wanted to mention.
The first was a set of stories by Curt Hammerly of Hammery Ceramics that talked about a feeling of impending burnout and how the growth in his business over the last few years had made it harder to easily address that. Part of it was to simply say that there are downsides to growth which often are less obvious when viewing someone else’s business from a distance. He was saying that he frequently gets messages from people wishing to be in the situation he’s achieved (and I’m not going to lie, I’m always a little envious of his new studio setup (hell, I’m even a little envious of the sinks he has there!)) but it comes with the downside of increased overhead costs and decreased flexibility. Comparison is the thief of joy at the best of times, but especially when you’re comparing your whole picture to someone else’s highlights. And it’s possible to reach a really great place without perpetual growth.
The other point is that if you can see a burnout coming you probably still won’t feel able to take time off to deal with it, but being proactive is far more efficient than reactive.
Time and Money
These are the big ones, and I’ve grouped them together as they’re so linked that it would be harder to separate them. I feel this section needs a couple of disclaimers, as money can be a very emotive and taboo topic, and there’s layers of privilege wrapped up in it too. So I want to say upfront that I’ve been incredibly fortunate in a number of ways, both in support from others and in timing. Without those, I’d be in a totally different position, and this isn’t meant to be a guide that anyone else could follow exactly, or be a yardstick with which anyone else could measure their own success.
So, with that said, here’s what’s changed in the last couple of years:
We had a baby, who is now an energetic and fun toddler.
I made a choice to reduce my working hours for the first few months of parenthood and use savings to make up the shortfall
I’m now making more money, while trying to work as few hours as possible to spend more time at home.
I’ve diversified my income streams a little and have some ‘passive’ income.
Tools
At the time I wrote the previous series of posts, I had just started selling the Foot Trimming Tools. I initially created the tool because I wanted something like it and couldn’t find one for sale. I made my own and posted a blog on how to do it yourself (here). I had no idea whether they would be popular at all, and only bought enough material to make 10 of them initially.
I realised fairly quickly that the demand would be a bit more than that, so I looked into getting the outline laser cut to save me the majority of the work, which meant buying them 100+ at a time. I also created a couple of other tools I wanted (handle dies and hole cutting guides) and followed the same basic pattern. I got one for me, then a handful to gauge interest, then bought more to make it cost effective.
I’m still primarily a potter, but the tools now make up a not insignificant proportion of my income. I sell something close to as many as I do ceramic pieces, but because they’re cheaper and less profitable it works out as something nearer 1/5th of the business.
I’ll talk more about the diverse revenue streams in a little bit, but I think it’s worth highlighting that the pots and the tools are serving different audiences, and that is part of what makes them so worthwhile. Potters, especially those that share pottery tips/guide/tutorials, will end up being followed by other potters. It can be a good way to grow a following and have an engaged audience, but harder to translate into sales. Having something that does appeal to that section of your audience is a sensible idea if you can manage it.
The last few years
The following is a slightly meandering summary of the time between the last update and now. If you’d just like the numbers, there will be a section on that afterwards.
Newborn Baby
We had our son in early summer 2019. I wanted to enjoy the first few years as much as possible, and we were starting from the privileged position of having savings in the bank, so I planned to be in the studio for the absolute minimum time each day for the first few months, and gradually increase that as we got the hang of parenting. I’m so glad I was able to do that, as the first few months are TOUGH.
Babies are hard work. I think there’s a whole other conversation to be had about how some cultures apply pressure on young couples to have children almost as the default expectation, then don’t offer anywhere near enough support or understanding when they do have them, but thankfully we both had supportive parents living locally. Still, those first few months are really just a case of trying to figure out what you’re doing and come out the far side with an intact child and relationship. And that is hard even if that’s basically all you’re doing.
Rather than both trying to sleep between the feeds and nappy changes, we decided to split the night into two shifts. One parent got to sleep for 6 hours relatively undisturbed in the bed upstairs while the other was on baby duty in the living room, then we’d switch at 4am. I used my 6 hours of being pinned on the sofa under a sleeping baby (with interludes of screaming, feeding, and nappy changes) to watch the lectures of the CMW Understanding Glazes class (as well as binge watching a bunch of series on Netflix).
We formula fed, which made the workload much easier to share (fairly) equally. At the risk of straying too far from pottery (disclaimer, this totally isn’t medical advice), I’m really glad we ended up formula feeding. I know there are various arguments made about why breastfeeding is wonderful, but there’s less stress and more equality in formula. Having said all of that, the other thing I found as a new parent is that the advice given is contradictory and 90% of it will be useless for you. Every situation is different, every baby is different.
At this point I was aiming to drop down to a monthly income of around £1000. It’s not enough to live on here, it wouldn’t even cover our rent and bills, but would allow us to stretch savings much further. From a practical studio point of view, this was around an hour or two a day. I worked out an estimated 45 minutes per mug (from clay in a bag to packed and sent) in the previous Time blog post, so with a net profit of £33.33 a mug (as an easy to calculate, and not entirely unreasonable estimate) that would be 30 mugs a month and around an hour a day factoring in all the small distractions and delays.
This meant we had plenty of time together at home. As a newborn, he would pretty much only sleep if he was sleeping on someone, which meant one parent was generally immobilised and the second was the one that could do the household tasks. Writing this, it sounds like there should have been loads of spare time. I don’t remember feeling like that while it was happening though!
Again, we were very fortunate to be in a position to do this. We live cheaply (we’re quite dull and have no expensive hobbies or habits) which made this far more viable, but we also live in a country with moderately generous maternity support (compared to the US at least, where I know a lot of you are) and we had supportive family nearby.
Not quite so new Baby
After a couple of months, we started to get into a routine. He would sleep more consistently and we had a better idea of what we were doing. It became increasingly possible to actually do chores around his naps, so parental time was less in demand and studio hours could comfortably increase again. Which was perfectly timed as we were heading into Christmas.
I did a thing back then which I would highly recommend to anyone who makes anything to order (especially if the pieces are slow to make) which is that I offered a discount code for anyone placing their Christmas orders early, and the percentage discount decreased over time. This gave me a rush of Christmas orders in October, and took a lot of stress out of the making process. It also gave me more time flexibility, as I could spread the additional hours to make all the piece out over months, rather than trying to frantically cram them all into December.
At this point I knew we could live (where we were and with the lifestyle we had) if I contributed around £2k a month to the household finances, so the goal was to at least reach that as an average while being at home as much as possible. Once the early Christmas orders were in, I went back up to around 5 hours of studio time per day.
I should add at this point that I generally work 7 days a week. This is easy for me as I have no hobbies/obligations that occur on a given day. I have a smallish studio and kiln, so rather than breaking the process into cycles and making a block of work in one go, I have a handful of pieces at each stage of dryness and generally do some of each process on most days. This means I never make more work at once than can fit through any of the bottlenecks in my process/studio, but does mean that it’s harder to take a day fully off without planning it a few days in advance. It’s not something that would work for everyone, but it’s perfect for me.
Covid
Around 8-9 months into this, Covid Lockdowns began here. There was massive spike in orders of the pottery tools at this point, as lots of people were furloughed and knew they’d have a month or two with lots of time to make (if they had a home studio).
Again, I was very fortunate here, as I was set up in a way that allowed me to continue working largely unaffected by Covid. I work alone in the studio and sell online, with supplies being delivered and finished orders being collected, and thankfully the couriers were able to keep everything running.
The rest of that year was largely unchanged. At this point the online shop was run in the way I’d always run it. The products were available to order 24/7, and were made to order. I’d receive a fairly constant low level of orders and just work my way through them with the time I had in the studio. It works well in some respects. It’s definitely the best option for the customer as it allows them to pick from a wide range of options and get exactly what they want without having the stress of a timed shop update. It was simple for me to leave the shop like that, but the downside was that it was always hard to get a feel for exactly how much of a backlog and how manageable it was, so whenever there was a rush of orders I felt a little stressed about it.
I took a large volume of orders in September (a lot were tools, but also a lot of Pebble Mugs as that video was going slightly viral on YouTube). At this point it was the most money I’d taken in a month by a large margin, about £10.5k in total (including shipping). I was working more hours a day, but it was manageable.
Until I got a new batch of the light clay I used.
I used the have a white stoneware called KGM Body, which I had been throwing with for years and loved. It was cheap, threw well, and was reliable. The batch I got in Sept/Oct 2020 was different though. Some bags seemed to have a lot more grog, so I set them aside and threw a month’s worth of work in the other bags. I’d estimate that I had a 90% failure rate on that batch because of pinholes/blisters, and ended up remaking almost everything I’d thrown in the light clay. Thankfully I had the dark clay as an alternative, and plenty of time before Christmas, but it was still a lot of extra work. Looking back at the numbers now I’m not actually sure how I did it!
Because of that, I turned off the entire shop for a little while, the only had the Dark Clay option for a few months while I tested replacements for the light clay (I settled on Scarva’s PF580 in the end). This was the first time my ceramic pieces had been unavailable for purchase since I started 4 years earlier.
I managed to catch back up with the orders, and start work on the pink Valentines’ Special glaze for 2021 as well as did a Lucky Dip update with all the spare pieces from Christmas. For those that haven’t seen how they work, I divide the pieces I have left in the studio by type and size and sell them under a single listing with slightly discounted prices. So you can order a Mediumish Mug and know you’ll get a mug with around the capacity you want, but the actual design of the piece is unknown until you get it. It’s a great way to clear what’s left.
Having the Valentine’s preorders, the Lucky Dip, and the standard shop at the same time meant I took an all time record of around £12.5k (including shipping) that month.
Which brought me onto the next issue
VAT Threshold
In the UK, businesses don’t need to be VAT registered until they have an gross income of over £85k in any 12 month period. It’s possible to chose to be VAT registered below that threshold, but a requirement above it. VAT registration means you have to charge customers in the UK 20% VAT which gets paid directly to the government. If you previously sold something for £100, you would either only get £80 of it (on which you’d still have to pay all the normal income taxes) or you’d have to put the price up to £125 to cover the additional cost. Great for the government, bad for you and your UK customers.
There is an upside, which is that you can claim the VAT back on things you purchase. If you had high material costs this could be useful. Another plus point is that you don’t have to charge VAT on international orders (as I understand it).
So if you sold exclusively abroad and bought lots of supplies with VAT, you might do OK from VAT registration. Otherwise, it’s a pretty immediate drop in profits at the end of the year. If you’re going to cross the threshold, you really want to do it by a decent amount to make up for the lower profitability.
All of this to say, I was coming up to £85k income for the tax year 20-21 and very much did not want to cross that threshold.
Now, income is totally different to profit here. With international orders, shipping can be a sizeable proportion of the total cost and that money goes straight to the courier, but still counts as income. So if I charge £100 and the shipping cost £10, that’s the same net profit as if the same order had a shipping cost of £110 and I charge £200. Either way I’m left with £90, but the proportion makes a bigger impact when you’re trying to keep the gross income below a threshold. A more realistic example was a wholesale order I did for a company in Saudi Arabia where the shipping cost was £1000. I charged that so I wasn’t losing out on it, but there was no profit on it and it was 1/85 of my maximum annual income.
This lead to me turning the shop off again in March 21 to avoid crossing the threshold before the start of the new tax year in April, and made me seriously think about how I can continue to sell work in a way that makes sense and takes this new issue into account. I want to say at this point, none of this is intended to read as a complaint. This wasn’t an issue I expected to face, reaching the VAT threshold as a tiny business is wonderful problem to have and a sign that things are going very well, and it’s not something I expect to continue indefinitely either. It’s been a strange year, and I’m not taking any of this for granted. But these are the practical business issues I’ve had to think about this year.
Current Situation
My two current goals are to stay below the VAT threshold and to spend as much time as possible at home, at least until my son is old enough to start going to school during the day. To achieve this, I’ve been keeping the shop turned off (with the exception of tools, which are always available) except for monthly timed reopenings. I take what I think will be a month’s worth of orders at one point then try to make them all before the next reopening. In this context, a month’s worth is based on the total value including shipping, which I want to be in the £4-5k range. I hit this amount faster and faster with each shop opening, which is lovely but also I wish it wasn’t the case. It’s very reassuring that people want my work, but I know it becomes increasingly stressful and frustrating for anyone who attempts to order. If it carries on getting faster each time, I will have to come up with a better solution, but at this point I don’t have many practical ideas.
At this point in time, I feel like everything is balancing well. I do an hour or so of admin in the morning (processing orders, replying to emails and comments, writing blog posts, etc) at home, then stick around until lunch before heading to the studio for 4-6 hours in the afternoon. It probably sounds more idyllic than it is, but that’s entirely my fault. I have a set amount of work that really needs to get done in the studio each day. My issue is that I can’t help but add an unreasonable amount of extra things to that, then work frantically to try and do them all before rushing home. My dad is exactly the same, so I’m sure I inherited this from him and I doubt there’s a cure. There are always more things to do than time to do them, and on the rare occasion that you look like you might actually complete a to-do list early then there are always more things you could add on the bottom to make sure that you don’t.
Again, I’m well aware that I’m incredibly fortunate to be in this position. It’s taken a lot of work, but also privilege and numerous strokes of luck. I’m not taking any of this for granted, but I have every intention to enjoy it as much as possible. To have the opportunity to spend more time at home while my son is a baby/toddler is something that is not an option for the majority of parents and I’m so fortunate that the timings worked out this way.
I know there will be some of you reading this who are envious of that and I’m really sorry. I wish every parent who wanted to could spend more time with their kids and it’s cruel that for some people that’s far from a realistic option. For those of you who are a few years away from kids and starting out with a business, hopefully this gives you some helpful ideas about how they can work together.
Numbers
I know some of you will have skipped to this point, so a brief recap. There’s a VAT Registration threshold in the UK of £85k within any 12 month period (gross income), which I don’t want to cross.
There was a fairly consistent upward trend before the pandemic, but it definitely caused a more rapid growth than I would have expected otherwise.
This is the gross income. Around 25% of that would immediately go on shipping costs and PayPal fees. All the other costs are more distributed and harder to pin a single order, as I buy the materials in bulk.
The profit margins are much better on pottery than on the tools, because I get all the tools laser cut. This means I have a lot less work to do myself, but I’m essentially paying someone else for that labour. In the context of the VAT threshold, this means less of the allowable limit is profit, but frees up more of my time. As I said above, the number of tools sold is pretty similar to the number of ceramic pieces but because of the cheaper price and lower profit they work out as around a fifth of the net profit.
Costs
The biggest cost by far is shipping. This is something that I can factor into the price charged to the customer so it’s only in the context of the VAT threshold that it’s particularly relevant. I estimate that I will spend something close to £20k on shipping in 2021, £1k on packing supplies, £2k on clay/glaze materials/tools/etc, £10k on tools (that’s materials and the labour before they reach me for the last part of the process), £2-3K on office supplies, and I generally spend £2-5K on upgrading equipment too.
As you can see from that, the actual materials to make pottery are almost trivial in comparison to the other costs of running a small pottery business. This does present an interesting demonstration of how profitable it would be possible to be if you sold in a way that minimised other costs (e.g. exclusively through shops local enough that you could deliver pieces by hand). My feeling on this is that it’s best to pick the way you like selling (if it works for you) as the total amount of work seems to always end up being similar. You either spend the time packing orders to send, setting up and manning a stall at a craft fair, or doing twice as much making to cover the cut the gallery will take.
Diverse Income
This is a new one for me, but I now have a few different income streams that are more passive. I have some income from AdSense on my Youtube channel, from Amazon referrals, and from a few other referral schemes like the Ceramic’s Congress (as well as some income from purchases of the video I made for an earlier Congress). They’re all in the range of £100-1000 a year, so not a huge part of the business but not entirely trivial either. The nice thing with these as well is that they sit alongside the rest of the business in a very complimentary way and don’t cost much time that could otherwise be spent making. They’re also pure profit as there’s no associated cost to the income, which is helpful for the VAT threshold. They’re also a buffer against injury or time off, if ever I couldn’t make ceramics for any reason it’s nice to know there is a part of the business that I could direct more attention to.
Summary
It’s taken a few lean years, a decent chunk of my savings, and a lot of luck, but I’m at a good point. We can live relatively comfortably off the income from my business and it gives me a lot of freedom. I’ve hit a natural buffer against further growth which has made the decision to maintain at this level much easier to stick to than it might otherwise be, giving me a better work/life balance than I would have if I continued trying to grow the business.
Nobody could or should use this as a roadmap to follow exactly, but hopefully it’s helpful in some small ways. If nothing else, just as a demonstration that it’s possible to make money as an artist.
If you like this sort of content and want to support the creation of more, I now have a Patreon specifically for it or a page on my website if you just want to make a single donation.