Patty: I love how your childhood art experiences has shaped your life. Now you teach art at your own home plus travel to other homes to teach lessons. I know many of my readers would love to know more. Can you detail some of the challenges and benefits someone might face when embarking on this type of business?
Meri: Teaching private art classes throughout Los Angeles has turned into a great source of income, in addition to being something I truly enjoy.  Each class lasts an hour and has 6-8 students. Now that I’ve been doing private classes over a year, I have a pretty good system down, but it didn’t start easy.  I used to lug around tons of supplies and worry a lot about the projects and if I was prepared enough.  Like with any new experience there was a learning curve.  Now I am down to one tub of neatly packed supplies and my camera.  I know how to time classes and how many parts a project needs to have for each age group.  That was probably the biggest challenge.  My art classes are for kids 3 and up.  The three year olds for example need to move around every 20 minutes or so, which means I’d have to be prepared with three different processes for each class.  That definitely took a minute to perfect but now, with a year of this type of specific experience under my belt, it’s been pretty smooth sailing.  I would definitely recommend teaching art classes privately if this is something you are skilled in.  I have tons of ideas for process based projects on my blog and I’m working on a few ebooks to share more information.

Patty: I love your photographs on your blog. They look as though they are from the same camera filter. Your branding is fresh, clean but with an air of whimsy. Was your styling  intentional or did you just let it all happen?
Meri: Wow.  Thank you so much.  That actually means a lot to me.  My style just kind of happened but photography is my passion and I hope to get better and better at it.  I just try to stay true to myself.  I have always seen a lot of beauty in art and the process of art and craft and I hope my photographs reflect that vision.

The Life of a Blogger

Patty: What has been the most challenging aspects of running a blog?

Meri: Running a blog can be a full time job even if it’s not your full time job and you actually have another full time job.  I spend hours on my blog.  HOURS.  As soon as my kids go down I am practically running to my computer.  That’s mostly because I love it, but it’s also because there are so many aspects of running a blog that you take seriously.  Finding time to do everything and spend the amount of time I want to to make it grow and share great content, has been the biggest challenge.

Patty: Have you experienced any major changes that caused you to re-think your content or the way you blog?
Meri: I started taking my blog to the next level about two years ago, when I realized I could monetize it and people were actually reading it and enjoying my content.  That was a real aha kind of high for me and I jumped in both feet.  Before I would blog about anything that I wanted and I didn’t really think about my readers.  My instructions were pretty vague and I didn’t take into account that people are coming to me for real advise.  I also became a full time art teacher so my knowledge about teaching art was growing daily.  I felt like I had a lot more to offer people that I really wanted to share.  Also, I had two little girls that I started to expose to all these new art experiences.  Some worked really well, and some were busts.  I love the idea of sharing what works and what doesn’t with other moms so they can bring more art into their family life.  My perspective has shifted a lot since I first started.

Patty: Does blogging contributes to the success of your classes or the other way around?
Meri: My art classes work hand-in-hand with my blog.  The classes give me the content I want to share on my blog as well as an opportunity to work with kids, which I love.  I teach 4 private classes a week, including one art play group for toddlers and 3 classes a week for ages 3-6.  My blog has been great because it’s like an online resume.  If someone is interested in my classes I refer them to my blog to check out the kind of work we do.  It also works the other way as well.  I’ve had some people read my blog and turns out they are local to Los Angeles, so they’ve been able to join in.

Patty: Do you advertise or do sponsored posts to support your blogging efforts?
Meri: Making a living from blogging, or attempting to, requires a lot of creativity and openness to working on different revenue streams.  It’s really challenging to just do one thing as a blogger and make a financial impact.  I have advertisers on my blog and work with Amazon Affiliates.  I also have been blessed to work with some really great companies who sponsor some of the posts I write.  It’s exciting because I was doing this for years making no money at all.  I work so hard on my blog now, it feels really good to be getting paid for it.  I mean, of course we should all be getting paid for our hard work right?  I read comments sometimes online about people feeling resentful that bloggers are setting up affiliate links and making money off their suggestions.  It strikes me as really odd.  Most bloggers put hours and hours into their blogs, coming up with original content and doing the hard work that goes into that content.  It just seems to me like if you like what someone is doing, you’d want to support them so you can see more of it.  I couldn’t continue at the pace I am working now if I wasn’t getting paid for it.  My husband would kill me! He has spent too many nights looking at my back facing the computer.