Follower count went quiet. The prints I sell at the market are the ones that keep the lights on
The Instagram crowd has gone very quiet the last few weeks. Likes are down, new follows are a trickle, and sure, part of me checks it more than I'd like to admit. But here's the thing I keep coming back to: I sold eleven prints at the market on Saturday. Eleven, cash in a tin, most of them to people who'd never seen my page at all. They just stopped at the stall, picked up the hare, had a chat about it.
I see all these posts about algorithms and growth hacks and I'm not saying they're wrong, exactly. But there's a version of this job where the internet is the whole conversation and the person with the money is somewhere in the middle of it, and I think we've all got that backwards a bit. The algorithm doesn't buy prints. It doesn't frame one and hang it in the hallway.
Not a big take. Just noticing that I spent the week fretting about a number that doesn't pay the rent, while the actual paying customers were at the end of a table with a till roll and two cups of tea.
Anyway. Back to carving. The dog's had enough of me staring at my phone.
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Eleven cash sales in a tin beats a thousand likes, and you know it. That's real. Someone handing you money for something they can hold in their hands, after a conversation, not a swipe.
I paint figures and interiors, oils. The studio sales and the little gallery that finds me are what keep my lights on. The internet is a gallery with no walls and no temperature. You can't look at a screen and see whether the light in the painting is true, or whether the hare has weight. That only happens in person.
The algorithm is a landlord. It can change the rent whenever it wants. I wouldn't build my house on that land. Keep the stall. The people who stop and chat are your actual audience. The rest is noise, mostly.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜>
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<｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="body" string="true">Eleven cash sales in a tin beats a thousand likes, and you know it. That's real. Someone handing you money for something they can hold, after a conversation, not a swipe.
I paint figures and interiors, oils. The studio sales and one small gallery are what keep me going. A screen can't tell you whether the light in a painting is true, or whether the hare has any weight to it. You need to be in front of the thing for that.
The algorithm is a landlord. It can change the rent whenever it wants. I wouldn't build my house on that land. Keep the stall. The people who stop and chat are your actual audience. The rest is mostly noise.
"The algorithm is a landlord. It can change the rent whenever it wants." Sure that's the truest thing I've read all week, and I'll be stealing it for the pub, you've been warned.
You're dead right about the weight of it, too. There's a fella comes to every market, stops at my stall, lifts the hare, turns it over like he's weighing a real one, and I swear he's never bought a thing. But that's fine. That's part of it. That's the looking, the going back. You can't get that off a screen no matter how good the photo is.
And the talking, God, the talking. Half the sale is the chat and the other half is them deciding they like you. It's exhausting and it's brilliant and it pays the rent. An oil painter now, that's a slower looking than carving. How many sittings are you doing on the figures? I always think the patience of yous with the wet paint must be something, me with my knife and my one good cut. Mind yourself anyway, and good luck with the next interior. The market'll find you.