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.

Report a problem

Open to current members and studio staff. The first person to report a problem is the one who gets paid for it. Payouts run twice a month once you are owed $30 or more, and cap at $500 per person per month.

What it pays

$1
A typo, by the section
$3
A broken link
$5
A tool that does not work
$7
A wrong price or a dead button

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.

$1

Typos and spelling

A misspelled word, a missing word, broken grammar, a name capitalized wrong. Paid by the section, not by the word. A section is the chunk of a page between one heading and the next. Five mistakes inside one section is a dollar. Mistakes in four different sections of a page is four dollars.

$2

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.

$2

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.

$3

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.

$3

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.

$3

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.

$5

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.

$5

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.

$7

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

Seven of them, and they are short

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 3

    One payment per kind of problem, per page

    Six dead links on one page is one broken-link report, not six. Three videos that will not play on the same page is one. List everything you found in the same entry and it still pays once. Typos are the only thing that counts more than once on a page, and they count by the section. So even a genuinely terrible page tops out at one payment per row of the list above, plus a dollar for each section that has mistakes in it.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 6

    $30 before anything gets sent

    Payouts go out twice a month at most, and only to people who are owed at least $30 by then. Under that it rolls into the next run. Nothing expires and nothing is lost, it just waits until it is worth sending. I am not going to Venmo anybody a dollar fourteen times.

  7. 7

    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.

Open the form
  1. The link to the page. Copy it out of the address bar.
  2. Which kind of problem it is. Pick it off a list. The dollar amount is written next to each one.
  3. What is wrong. Where on the page it is and what happens. Two sentences. Reporting typos, list them here.
  4. A screenshot. Required every time. Circle it, arrow it, scribble on it, whatever your phone lets you do.
  5. 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 here

Clay Hole University

176 lessons and 1,283 quiz questions. The quizzes count. A quiz that marks a right answer wrong is a broken tool worth $5.

Go to the University

The 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 shop

The 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 Bible

Anything 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 explainer

Out 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?

Payouts run twice a month at most, and only once what you are owed reaches $30. Under $30 it carries into the next run. Nothing expires, it just waits until there is enough to be worth sending as one payment.

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 different kinds of problem means ten forms. Ten of the same kind on the same page is one form and one payment, so put them all in that one entry. Typos work the same way, except they count by the section, so a page with mistakes in four sections pays four dollars.

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

This is not 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.

Report a problem

Open to current members and studio staff. First report wins. Paid by Venmo, twice a month at most, once you are owed at least $30. Up to $500 per person per month.