On Finances:
It seems I either misplaced, or forgot to order, a debit card for the separate checking account... Whoops! Made paying for shipping rather inconvenient! I have to remedy that. I also need to look at a unified way of examining cash flow, and including extraneous costs, since the transaction fees from both Etsy & Paypal, though small, are not something I had previously figured into my prices. Etsy does have a downloadable something-or-other, I think, or I could buy some software... But I also need to sit down and make a list of all my real expenses, line by line, both in production, and in distribution... and of course, I need to start allocating for some advertising.
Speaking of which, I really need a more accurate assessment of appropriate cost to manufacture a piece, including actual time spent on production and materials. My clay comes in 25 lb. bags (I think), and it only really costs me about $12-$13 per bag, so 2 - 3 lbs of clay doesn't cost all that much... but time and studio space cost money.
I can be in class for about 4 hours, and produce maybe 6 - 8 pieces. (More like 12 if they are smaller.) It takes another 2 - 3 hours to trim them all, and after bisque another 1 1/2 to glaze everything. Which comes out to 8 1/2 cumulative hours for about 8 pieces, or 1.0625 hours per piece. Since not everything that comes out of the last step, the glaze firing, is actually sellable, my success rate is more like 60-70%. Which means I just spent $8 on clay, and $127.50 on time consumed (if I assume I cost about $15/hour when I could be doing other things with my time), to produce ~5 sellable pieces. Which gives me around $27.10 per item, of pure cost to produce. And that's not including the cost of access to the studio itself, and the fact that I only used class-glazes, which are free.
...A bit of an eye-opener, when I have things for sale at $8-12.
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