Members and staff
I will pay you to find my mistakes
This website is enormous and I built most of it fast. There are typos in it. There are dead links in it. Somewhere in here is a button that does nothing at all. Find one before anybody else does and I will Venmo you for it.
Open to current members and studio staff. The first person to report a problem is the one who gets paid for it. Up to $500 per person per month.
What it pays
Nine kinds of problem in total. The whole list is further down.
Why I’m doing this
I am too close to it to see it anymore
I have read the membership page so many times that my brain autocorrects it before my eyes get there. Yours does not.
I have built hundreds of pages for this studio. Class schedules, glaze guides, calculators, the whole University, every product page. I wrote them. I checked them. I published them.
And I still find something wrong every single week.
Sometimes it is a typo. Sometimes it is a link to a page I renamed a year ago and never went back to fix. Once it was a price that was wrong, sitting out there in public, for who knows how long.
Here is the part I have made peace with. I cannot catch these on my own. I see what I meant to write.
You do not have that problem. You are reading it cold. You will spot in four seconds what I have scrolled past four hundred times.
So I would rather pay you than keep missing it.
The pay list
What I pay for, and what it pays
Nine things. Every one of them has a number next to it. Find one, report it, get paid.
Typos and spelling
A misspelled word, a missing word, broken grammar, a name capitalized wrong. A dollar per paragraph, not per mistake. Three misspellings inside the same paragraph is one dollar, not three. Found mistakes in ten different paragraphs on one page? Put them all in one report and I pay a dollar for each of the ten.
Broken or wrong images
A photo that will not load, a photo that is stretched or squashed out of shape, or a photo that is clearly not the thing the words are talking about.
Instructions that are wrong
The page tells you to tap something that is not there, or walks you through a step that does not exist anymore.
Broken links
A link that lands on a page-not-found, or quietly drops you somewhere other than where it said it would take you.
Videos that will not play
You press play and nothing happens, or you get an error, or it plays a video that has nothing to do with the page it is sitting on.
Layout problems
Text sitting on top of other text, words cut in half, something running off the side of your screen, or a box covering the thing you were trying to read.
Tools that do not work
A calculator, a quiz, a picker or a finder that gives a wrong answer or does not respond at all. The University quizzes count. Read the next section before you file one of these.
Wrong studio information
A page says something that is not true. Wrong hours, wrong firing temperature, wrong Level name, wrong policy, or a rule that changed and never got updated.
Money and dead ends
A wrong price, a button that will not add to the cart, a form that will not submit, or a page that will not load at all. These are the ones that actually cost me, so they pay the most.
The other list
What does not pay, and one thing in particular
“I could not figure out how to use it” and “it does not work” are two different reports. Only one of them pays.
- A tool you did not understand. If the calculator runs, the answer is right, and the layout just confused you, that is not a broken tool. It is still worth telling me about and there is a link for it below. It does not pay $5.
- Ideas and requests. “You should add a page about kiln wash” is a great thought and I want to hear it. It belongs in the suggestion box, not here.
- Anything somebody already reported. First one in wins. If you get beaten to it I will tell you, so you are not left wondering.
- Things you would have written differently. If it is not wrong, it is not a bug.
- Problems caused by your own browser, an extension, or a connection that dropped. Try it once more before you file it.
- Anything outside the three places listed below. Our emails and the signs hanging in the studio are not part of this.
None of that is me being stingy about the confusing stuff. Confusing is a real problem and I do want to hear about it. It just goes in a different box, and that box is right here.
The rules
Six of them, and they are short
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1
Members and staff, nobody else
That is the whole eligibility test. Staff are welcome to hunt, and yes, they know the site better than you do. They have also read past the same typos a hundred times, so I would not worry about it.
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2
First report wins
Timestamps decide it. If two of you find the same thing, the earlier entry gets paid and I will message the other one to say what happened. Nobody gets ghosted.
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3
One problem per report
Typos are the one exception. Every typo on a single page goes into one report, and I pay a dollar per paragraph rather than per mistake. Two typos and a missing word in the same paragraph is one dollar. Everything else gets its own entry.
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4
A screenshot every time
The form will not let you send it without one. This is not me being difficult. Half the problems I get told about I cannot reproduce on my own screen, and a picture ends that in one second.
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5
$500 per person per month is the ceiling
If you actually hit that in a single month, I will pay it, I will thank you, and I will be a little bit frightened of you.
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6
I decide what counts
Somebody has to, and it is my Venmo. I will be generous about it. If it is a close call, I will pay it.
How to report it
It is one screen
Your name and email at the top, then five boxes. No page after page of questions, no interrogation about your browser. Two minutes if you are being slow about it.
- The link to the page. Copy it out of the address bar.
- Which kind of problem it is. Pick it off a list. The dollar amount is written next to each one.
- What is wrong. Where on the page it is and what happens. Two sentences. Reporting typos, list them here.
- A screenshot. Required every time. Circle it, arrow it, scribble on it, whatever your phone lets you do.
- Your Venmo handle. No Venmo, no payment. It is the only way I can send it.
The form uploads your screenshot to Google, so it will ask you to sign in with a Google account first. Any Google account works.
Where to hunt
Five places, and they are all enormous
Everything at The Clay Hole
The start-here page and every single page it links out to. This is the biggest surface and it is where most of the dead links are hiding.
Start hereClay Hole University
173 lessons and 1,259 quiz questions. The quizzes count. A quiz that marks a right answer wrong is a broken tool worth $5.
Go to the UniversityThe shop
Every product page we have. Prices, buttons, descriptions, the whole lot. This is where the $7 problems live, so it is worth being slow and thorough in here.
Browse the shopThe Glaze Bible
The hub, the family pages and a page for every glaze behind it. Names, numbers, tiles and the notes on how each one behaves. A glaze described wrong is wrong studio information, and that is $5.
Open the Glaze BibleAnything about membership
Levels, what each one includes, pausing, upgrading, cancelling, rewards. Start on the explainer and follow every link out of it. These are the pages people actually make decisions on, so a wrong number here is the worst kind.
Start on the explainerOut of bounds for now: our emails, our printed handouts and the signs hanging in the studio. If you spot something wrong in one of those, tell me anyway. It just does not pay.
Questions I expect
The money part, mostly
When do I actually get paid?
The first week of the month, for everything approved during the month before. One payment covering all of it, not a trickle of separate ones.
Venmo only?
Venmo only. It is the one thing I can sit down and do for a lot of people at once from my phone. The studio handle is @theclayhole, and to be clear, money goes out from me to you. You never send anything.
What if two of us find the same thing?
The earlier timestamp wins. I know that stings when you miss it by an hour. It is the only version of this that stays fair, and the alternative is me guessing.
Can I report ten things at once?
Ten problems means ten forms. The exception is typos, where everything you found on one page goes into a single report. That one pays by the paragraph, so a paragraph with four mistakes in it is a dollar, the same as a paragraph with one.
Do I have to sign in to Google?
Yes. The form takes a screenshot upload and Google will not accept a file from someone who is not signed in. Any Google account works. Your report arrives with the Google address it was sent from, which I only use to match it up with your membership.
What if I am not sure it is really a bug?
File it. I would rather read a hundred maybes than miss one real one. A report that turns out to be nothing costs you nothing and I am not keeping score of those.
Does a bug on this page count?
It counts. It would be funny and I would completely deserve it.
How long does this run?
Until I turn it off, and when I do I will say so right here on this page. Anything you submitted before that still gets paid.
Last thing
Go break my website
I am not going to pretend this is a big generous gesture. It is cheaper for me to pay you a dollar than to have a member land on a dead link and quietly decide we are sloppy. You are doing me a favor and I am paying for it, which is how favors ought to work.
Also I am competitive and I want to see who finds the most.
Open to current members and studio staff. First report wins. $500 per person per month. Paid by Venmo in the first week of the following month.