So a couple of weeks ago I kind of went offline. My main reason was to get some other projects done and just cut the chatter of normal blogging/tweeting/etc off so I could focus properly on finishing things that were supposed to be done ages ago.

But actually, I lied.

See, I need a holiday. I need one big large  holiday from my own site. It’s not that I am sick and tired of it… actually, yes I’m sick and tired of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly spend all my time doing the tutorials and stuff for free (ask anyone who’s known me for a bit and they’ll tell you it’s true). But the combination of lack of income has made me more and more concerned about how much time and effort goes into this stuff; and how little I get back. I’m not referring to money; of course, that would be nice. But the lack of reader interest. Regulars and puppetry fans/friends I don’t mind, but some days, I really scratch my head and wonder…

A perfect example is shown here. Someone is looking for where to buy ventriloquist dummies. They hit my site (being a popular link, the article is ranked high in google) at the bottom of the stats. Without even taking more than 10 seconds to read the article, they hit the shop page. Ok, less than 10 seconds and they don’t see vents sold there. With 1/2 hour of random hitting, hoping to find something useful, they try google searching again, only to give up in what I’m guessing would be frustration. Even more annoying for me: if the person had bothered to use their eyes, they would have found the info they’re looking for the first time around.

This kind of reader is pissing me off. Despite lots of work going into making the posts as up-to-date and as informative as possible, very few people either read the info, or simply contact me directly from the page they’re on - to which I simply redirect them to that page anyway, since that’s the info they’re asking about. Even with four pages, the School of Puppetry website has people coming, looking at the first page, checking the gallery page, and then emailing me to find out how much the classes cost. (Is it too much to ask that people might think to read the FAQ or ‘More info’ pages? Is it really that  hard to figure out?) Furthermore, it pisses me off that people skip all the free stuff, and put little thought into how much money I could actually be making from selling this site as membership only or as a book.

Then we have the sales - we already know how I feel about commissions - but even more frustrating is now I’m also dealing with people who put in an order and then disappear without paying. This may be something I have to get used to, I know, given the world of customer impoliteness that exists out there (hey, I know it’s a small percentage, but still)… but it gets on my nerves, particularly when there is little else to rely on for income. Truth is, I’m more worried than I appear about work; getting rejected a lot and not having much on your CV other than theatre work tends to scare off the employers. And I simply don’t have the internet experience needed to go into that line of work again (again referring to my last two jobs, both on websites, both for the same people).

So for 2010, I will not be updating the Learn Online page, except for the occasional “what’s on” stuff, or continuing to build the links to Aussie companies. I will be uploading the second part of the marionette building tutorial; but that is it… even then, I’m sorely tempted to make it a video-download-for-sale thing. I’m sorry, I can’t afford to keep doing tutorials or any other in-depth articles. There are thousands more topics I could write about, but at this point, I can’t continue doing it without losing a piece of my mind. I need to spend time doing stuff that’s actually going to make money now. Funnily enough, I did an interview with a uni student on Friday about puppetry, and he asked me “where to from here?” I couldn’t answer if I tried. Oh sure, I have the classes next year, possibly heading to One Van festival (I submitted an application, and apparently got accepted, but heard little in real confirmation), but really… there is no plan, no work, and more worryingly, no income.

It occurs to me to return to the membership-only thing I tried to start earlier in the year; I doubt it. There is way too much work involved in that, and the reasons I removed it was less to do with a ’site birthday giveaway’ (actually, it really was a temporary thing, and I never got around to redoing all the password/login stuff, but also…) and more to do with not earning money through it and it being too much of a hassle. I really don’t want to be a site admin more than a puppet maker: site membership turns me into a web creator and not a puppet creator. Frankly, although perhaps I might be able to get more money from doing online courses or selling tutorial videos or whatever, it’s not really a road I want to go down…. I may rethink this however. I’ve had a draft of this blog post sitting on my site for a few days now, and I’ve begun to think that perhaps a middle ground can be struck - some advice from some friends will be sought on that one.

What this means is that I will be updating the site in other ways - I’ll still do five days per week postings, as I want to keep my google rank the way it is. But I’ll be mainly discussing my other projects, like products I’m making, and so on. I also have some ideas for other changes, but these are less tangible at the moment and require a lot of thought before putting on ‘paper’.  Things will slow down for the moment on updates even this early in the year, so I can prepare for my market and classes, and get things straight on future plans. (On a side note: Andrew from PuppetVision wrote a while back about passive and active income. This has inspired me: more ‘passive’ income meaning more patterns are on their way; ‘active’ income, like actual puppets, will have to wait a while) I’ve already started work on a short novel of sorts, but am not sure that it’s anything more than ramblings at this stage.

I sincerely apologise to anyone (particularly the small group of members and/or my regular readers) who hoped to see more tutorials and articles. (I also apologise for venting… this has gradually gotten on my nerves over the past year, and especially coming back from the US and seeing my pitiful bank account) As you can see from my strong language above, it’s better for me to save my mind a little and do other things for the time being. The more I try to help other people by writing about puppetry, the more I feel the general public don’t give a and just want an answer in two seconds without even having to use their brains or eyes to find that answer. Pissed off with this attitude doesn’t even begin to come close to how I feel. For those of you who do actually care, and don’t mind doing a little hard graft (and I know there are some of you who do care): I will be working on projects which will require those of whom are taking this seriously to put their money where their fingertips are. Even my generous nature can only take so much… so if you like my work, please help support things by buying a puppet or pattern. Please link to my site. Please blog about my activities. Every little bit will help keep this site going.