How to price a pottery course: what a course place really costs

A course price looks like one number per person. Behind it sit your hours on the day, the hours before and after, the seat at the wheel, clay, glaze, two firings and the places that end up empty. If you want to price a pottery course properly, you don’t start with what other studios charge. You start with what a single course place costs you.

Most course prices come about the other way round: you look at what others charge and land somewhere in the middle. That works as long as the others did their sums right and your studio is set up like theirs. You know neither. This post goes the other way: costs first, then the price, then the check against the market.

How to price a pottery course: the five cost blocks

Five blocks carry every course. Four of them show up on some invoice. The fifth, empty seats, shows up nowhere and still costs you.

1. Your time. The course hours are only the visible part. Before, you prepare clay, lay out tools and write to participants. Afterwards you clean, touch up glazes, load the kiln, unload it, sort the pieces and hand them over at pickup. Count this time once for a real course, from the first email to the last pickup. For many studios it comes close to the length of the course itself.

2. Room and space. Rent, heating, power for lights and wheels. Divide the monthly costs by the hours the room is actually used, not the hours it is open. That gives you a rate per room hour, which you assign to each course in proportion.

3. Clay and glaze. Per person you need more clay than ends up in the kiln. Beginners throw a lot away, and not all of it can be reclaimed. Fresh clay costs roughly 1.50 to 3 € per kilo depending on the body. Glaze is easiest per piece or as a flat amount per person.

4. The firing. Most course pieces go into the kiln twice, for the bisque and the glaze firing. Beginners’ pieces are thick-walled and heavy. What a firing costs per kilo is in the guide How pottery studios really calculate firing fees, and the firing cost calculator runs it with your own numbers.

5. Empty seats. A course with eight places is rarely full with eight people. Someone cancels at short notice, a session runs with six. If you price for eight full places, you only earn on the evenings when everything works out.

A worked example: eight-week wheel course

A course with eight sessions of 2.5 hours, eight places at the wheel. The numbers are an example, put in your own.

• Your time: 20 hours of teaching plus 12 hours before and after, so 32 hours. At an hourly rate of 35 € that is 1,120 €.
• Room: 20 room hours at 15 €, so 300 €.
• Clay: 8 people × 5 kg × 2.50 €, so 100 €.
• Glaze: 8 people × 6 €, so 48 €.
• Firing: 8 people × 2 kg of finished ware × two firings × 3.15 € per kilo and firing, so 100.80 €.
• Odds and ends: tool wear, aprons, payment fees, 50 €.

In total the course costs you 1,718.80 €.

Now the fifth block. With eight full places that is 214.85 € per person. If you plan honestly with six participants, it is 286.47 € per person. The difference is not a rounding error. It decides whether a half-full course costs you money or not.

That turns into a price like 289 € or 295 €. It includes your hourly rate, but no buffer yet for a course that runs with four people, and nothing set aside for a new wheel. How big the buffer should be is your call. What matters is that you know the price below which you lose money.

The check against the market comes after that. On the public price pages of German studios, multi-week wheel courses sit roughly between 299 € and 449 €, single course evenings at 35 to 40 € including clay, taster sessions at 69 to 110 €. If your figure is well below that, you probably counted your time too tightly. If it is well above, look at your room hours and the group size.

What the course price includes and what comes on top

Three variants are common, and each needs a rule that fits in one sentence.

Everything included. Clay, glaze and firing are in the price. It is the easiest to sell and the riskiest to calculate: whoever makes a lot of heavy work costs you more than the average you assumed.

Included up to a limit. For example three finished pieces per person, or two kilos of fired ware. Anything above is billed by weight. This catches the outliers without loading the majority with small print.

Firing extra. The course price covers teaching, space and clay. Firing is charged by weight and paid at pickup. That is fair, but participants only learn the final price at the end. For taster sessions, which are often given as gifts, it fits poorly.

Which one you pick depends on who books your courses. For gift and taster courses a fixed price is close to essential. For multi-week courses with people who want to keep going, the limit works best.

Taster session, multi-week course, single session

The formula stays the same, the weights shift.

Taster session. One session, lots of new faces. The invisible time is largest here relative to the course time: the pieces still go through two firings and still need sorting and pickup, even if the course only lasts three hours. That is why a taster session costs more per hour than a multi-week course.

Multi-week course. A fixed group, predictable sessions, fewer cancellations per place. Here you can be cheaper per session than for a single session, because you get predictability in return.

Single session or drop-in. Whoever books one session pays for the empty seat next to them. The price per session therefore sits above what the same evening costs inside a multi-week course. The difference is not a surcharge, it is the price of flexibility.

Minimum numbers and cancellations

The calculation gives you a second number: the participant count at which the course covers its costs. In the example the costs are 1,718.80 €. At 289 € per person the course is covered from six people. That is your minimum number, and it belongs in the course description, together with the date on which you decide whether the course goes ahead.

For cancellations, a waiting list helps more than any cancellation fee. A place that gets filled from the list is better than a place that is paid for but empty, because it carries the group and costs you no discussion.

Once the course is running

The calculation only holds if, at the end, you also know what actually happened: how many people came, who paid, how much was fired. In many studios that lives in three lists, and the firing for course pieces gets lost somewhere between the course list and the kiln plan.

If courses, bookings, the waiting list and the firing fees for course pieces should live in one place, that is the course management in WheelOwl: create the course, plan the sessions, take bookings through a public page, and whatever is fired in the course runs into the same billing as everything else.

One rule of thumb to finish: price the course for the number of people you actually have on a normal evening, not the number on the booking page.