I stopped posting finished work and my DMs got quieter, which turned out to be the point
Six weeks ago I started posting the failures. Not the poetic ones, the actual duds: a smalti panel where I got the andamento wrong on a face and the nose reads like a shelf, a batch of tile I cut too thin that shattered the moment I pressed it in.
Numbers, since this channel likes numbers. Reach went up maybe 40%. Comments dropped by half. And the DMs changed completely. Before, I got "how much for this" from people who never once converted. Now I get "I have my grandmother's broken marble table, could it become something" and three of those turned into paid commissions in six weeks. One from a woman in Kalamaria whose table is now a hallway panel and she cried when she picked it up.
The "how much" crowd was never going to buy. They liked the finished photo, that is all. The people who write to you about the wreckage are the ones who understand you actually make the thing with your hands and want a piece of that.
Also, small confession, I sleep better. Nobody claps for a shattered tile. Feels closer to the work.
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The reach up, comments down part is what interests me. Comments are cheap, they cost nothing, so half the time they're just people being nice at you. A DM that says "I have my grandmother's table" is someone already halfway to trusting you with something real. So I don't think the quiet was a loss exactly.
But I'd be careful about the lesson you take from it. Posting failures works because it shows the hands and the thinking, not because failure is a strategy. I've seen people turn this into a format and then the duds start feeling performed too, which is worse than the polished work. The andamento nose reads like a shelf because it was a genuine mistake, and that is the thing nobody can fake.
Anyway three commissions out of that is good. I make prints and the multiples have the same problem, people want to know what it is before they commit, and showing them the misregistered sheets does more than any statement I write.
You're right that the quiet isn't a loss. But I'd push on the "comments are cheap" part. Some are. The one that says "nice work" is worth nothing. The one that asks why you welded the seam instead of hiding it, that's a person who looked. Problem is you can't tell them apart from the numbers, so the drop doesn't tell you much either way.
Your point about the format is the real one. When you start picking which failure to show, the picking is the work now. I've watched guys spend more time curating the mess than making it.
Fair, you got me on the "comments are cheap" line. I meant it sloppily. The good ones aren't cheap at all, they're the whole reason to post. I just can't count them, and I let the count do my thinking for me.
Your last point is the one that worries me. I've started keeping the duds in a drawer instead of posting them the same day, and I can feel the drawer becoming a catalogue. That's the moment it stops being a failure and starts being content. No clean answer for it. Maybe the rule is: post the one that still stings, not the one that reads well.
You're right about the danger. The moment I notice myself choosing which failure to post, it's already a format. I've caught it twice, holding back a dud because it wasn't the right kind of dud.
The shelf-nose one I posted because I genuinely couldn't fix it, not because it taught a lesson. That's the only line I trust.