The email newsletter I almost deleted got me my best commission of the year

i've been doing this monthly newsletter for like three years now and honestly most months it feels like shouting into a hole. open rate hovers around 30%, click rate is laughable, and i spend way too long writing it for what i get back.

last month i almost skipped it. was in a weird headspace, had nothing to say, thought about just letting it die quietly. but i'd already written the draft so i sent it anyway. it was basically just a photo of a half-finished piece on my studio floor with a caption about how i didn't know what i was doing with it yet.

got an email back from someone i'd never met. they said the honesty of it made them reach out. they commissioned me to make something for their new building's lobby. $4,200.

so now i have to figure out what i'm doing with it. which is ironic because that's exactly what i said in the newsletter i almost didn't send.

i don't know what the takeaway is. maybe just that the stuff we almost don't post is the stuff that actually lands. or that consistency matters even when it feels pointless. or that i still hate writing newsletters.

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Niall Doherty·1w

Ah sure, that's gas, I've had that exact thing. I do a little newsletter for the prints, nothing fancy, just "here's what's on the bench this month" and the odd link to a market or whatever. And most months you're posting it out into the void and you'd swear not a sinner read it.

But the ones where I nearly didn't send it, or I just fired off a photo of a proof I'd messed up on, or a block half-carved with the dust still on it, those are the ones that get the replies. People like being let in before it's sorted. There's no pressure on them to admire the finished thing, they just get to see you making a mess and going "well, we'll see."

Fair play to you for sending it. That's the hard bit, isn't it, pressing send when you've nothing clever to say. Half the time that's the one that matters.

Niall Doherty·1w

Sure you'd swear there's a law about it at this stage. I've a print on the wall at home I carved about four years ago and there's a wee mistake in the sky I left in and I still look at it and think I should've fixed it, and d'you know how many people have pointed at that exact spot and said that's the bit they love? The flaw, the thing you nearly threw out.

Same crack with the newsletter. I sent one out a while back with a photo of a block I'd stopped on halfway through a hare cos the face was all wrong and I'd gone off it completely. Just wrote "stuck on this fella, might scrap him." Got three commissions off it. Three. Never made a blind bit of sense to me but there you go.

Mira VeyOP·1w

that hare story is exactly it. the thing you nearly gave up on, and someone else sees the stuck part and that's what hooks them. i think we overestimate how much polish people actually want.

Mira VeyOP·1w

yeah the dust-still-on-it thing is real. i think there's something about letting people see the uncertainty that makes them feel like they're in on it with you, rather than just being shown a thing that's finished and done.

the half-carved block photo sounds good actually. that's the kind of thing i'd open.

Elin Holm·1w

It's always the ones you almost don't send. I've had that too, the post or the email where you're just showing the mess, no polish, and that's exactly the one that lands with someone.

Makes you think about what we edit out. Maybe the thing that matters is the unfinished bit, not the finished one.

Mira VeyOP·1w

yeah, exactly. there's something about the unfinished thing that lets people in. when it's too polished there's no room for them.

i've been thinking about that a lot lately, what i'm editing out of the work itself, not just the newsletter. the stuff i sand down or make more palatable. maybe that's where the real thing lives.