How to Have the Right Supplies for Teaching Online Art & Maker Classes?

If you’ve been thinking about adding teaching online to your creative revenue streams, I’m with you. It’s a smart way to adjust to the current times. It’s also a great way to have a lot of fun helping people learn and expand their creative horizons at a time when just about everyone needs a healthy escape from the monotony of regular life.

Even though teaching online is a great idea, there is one very real obstacle. 

What I want to teach online requires specialty tools and materials that people don’t have on hand. 

It’s the kind of thought that can make you want to toss the whole idea out the window, right? One more hurdle to getting money in the door. Sheesh! 

Luckily, I hate when creative people feel stifled about their earning potential so I started thinking about it. I want all artists, makers and solopreneurs to see the possibilities and find creative solutions for selling their work in a way that feels amazing to them. Could there be a way around this?

I’m happy to report yes! There are several very doable approaches that work for artists who usually use specialty tools and materials in their workshops. The solution starts with design. 

In order to teach what you know online, you get to design the class just like you do when you’re in person. There are always high-end and low-end materials and tools that help to shape what you teach in a class. These are things like better or lesser paints and brushes, expensive wool or budget acrylic yarn, real silver wire or a spool of mixed metal wire, etc. Materials and tools are always a factor in any class you create. 

What is essential for your students to learn during your class so they complete it with a new project or technique under their belt? Take that answer and address it in how you plan your training. 

Are the tools and materials you came up with not ideal but they’ll do the job? For example, jeweler’s pliers are so much better than regular pliers because they’re rounded and don’t leave marks on the metal but they both do the same job of bending metal. Decide if that kind of “making do” would work for your workshop.

If it won’t, consider making kits for your students. 

Kits

Creating kits for your students can be a great way to help them have exactly what they need, and what you need to teach them properly. Here are ways you can incorporate kits into your online workshop.

• Create a kit with everything they need that you put together and mail it to them. 

• Deliver kits to their porch for local students. 

• Loan tools to your students that they return after class. 

• Create an online kit that can be ordered from a local art store or Amazon where they have a lists feature.

• DIY Kits: Tell students the ideal materials and where to get them online along with a list of what they can make do with that they probably have at home.

Once you create a kit, the neat part is that it’s another thing you can sell to bring in income. Many people don’t want to take the time to figure out where to get supplies so they’ll happily order the right ones from you when they sign up for the class. And, you can sell additional kits to your students if they want to make more of whatever you’re teaching which is a fun option.

Take Action

Here’s where you get scrappy. It may take a few tries to come up with an answer that actually works so plan to get creative. Let me know in the comments: What could you teach if you used the kit idea? 

Here’s to your selling what you make online!

Cheers,

Kate