Hi Everyone,

At the end of last week you most likely did get an announcement from Skillshare that I released a new Class. By the time most of you got to it, the Class - Gouache-style Effects in Procreate - an Autumn close-up - Painting a Toadstool Postcard - disappeared. More on that in a few seconds, but first the good news, it's back: https://skl.sh/3FmmF3G !

You may have seen classes appear and then disappear again in the past and wondered what this is about. Skillshare has a moderation team that checks if a class is in accordance with the rules and has the quality the platform deserves. In itself a good thing. Don't ask why they don't check before release, I don't know, that would be the logic thing to do. If you see a class appear and disappear again and then a few days or weeks come back - like mine - it means the class was closed by the moderation team due to an issue.

But... here's the problem, many teachers, including myself, have found out that some of the moderators uses it's own, unwritten standard to judge a class by. Even if a class is in accordance with all the official rules in the teacher handbook, a moderator may still close the class, because of the unwritten set of rules this moderator judges by. This is a huge reason why a lot of teachers I know have stopped teaching at Skillshare.

My lastest class was closed by a moderator judging with his own rules, refusing to open the class again. Long story short, it took a lot of effort and stepping in by others to overrule the call by the moderator. So, the class finally is back and you can take it.

Now why am I posting a discussion about it? Normally I wouldn't do this and let it go, but it has happened too often now. It's often a huge fight behind the scenes to get a class back online, taking much time and effort. Because of this and other reasons I've decided for the time being to not invest more time into Skillshare. I have one more class ready and then I'm going to take a break, as so many teachers have done before me. My classes will remain at Skillshare, but there will not be any new classes for an undetermined period of time.

Being a teacher at Skillshare takes a lot of time and effort and the demands are getting more and more. That would be fine if the revenue would also increase to compensate the time for creating higher quality classes. Unfortunately that is not the case. Over the course of a year the demands have grown, while at the same time the revenue teachers are given by Skillshare has dropped with 75%.

While I love teaching, I'm forced to reconsider my options. Online teaching has been my core business for 4 years now, but with all that's going on I need to make different choices. The latest incident in a line of many has tipped the scales for me to make this descision.

Spending 2 weeks each month to create new classes wasn't a problem, it was justified by the payment at the end of the month. No, I would never get rich from it, but it has been enough for the past 3 years. As said by now there's 25% left, effectively I work for 2 weeks a month on a new classes, but only get paid for 2-3 days work at the most. As you can understand no one can keep that up for a long period of time. I've hoped this year that things would get better, but it hasn't, on the contrary. If in the future I suddenly start releasing classes, you know things got better again.

I'm still here to look at all of your projects, answer questions and discuss with all of your once in a while. There will be one more class to complete the Gouache Painting series.

Well, check out this latests class now that it;s back, https://skl.sh/3FmmF3G and I talk to you all soon again!

Kind regards,

Benjamin

Benjamin A

Art Teacher, illustrator Art by Benjamin

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