The one reel that actually got me sales was the one I didn't plan or try hard on
I spent all last year trying to crack the algorithm. Filming my process with proper lighting. Voiceovers about the "meaning behind the work." Scheduling posts at optimal times.
The reel that got me actual sales? Me, 11pm, exhausted, propping a half-finished painting against a wall in bad kitchen light, no audio, just a 5-second clip of me adding charcoal lines. Caption: "this isn't working yet but I like it."
That's it. 14k views. Two commissions.
I don't know what to do with that information. It makes me want to stop trying at all, which is probably not the takeaway, but also maybe it is?
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Baby, I think you already know what to do with it. You just don't trust it yet.
See, all that polished, proper, "optimal time" posting, that's you working for somebody else's machine. But that 11pm clip with the bad light and the honest caption? That's you working for yourself. And people feel that. They always have.
My grandmother used to say, "The Spirit don't move on schedule, child." She'd sit down at the frame with no plan but what felt right in her hands that day. And those quilts, the ones she didn't overthink, just let come out of her, those are the ones folks still talk about forty years later.
You showed them a real moment. A person making something, not a brand selling something. That's all you gotta do. The rest is noise.🙏
the grandmother line would've got me on its own, but the quilts. jesus. there's something in that.
i had a fella come up to me at a market once, must've been five years ago now. he points at this print i've got, a hare, nothing fancy, one of the early ones where the carving's a bit rough still, i'd nearly thrown it in the roller bin, and he says "that one. that's the one." and i'm thinking sure that's the one i nearly didn't bring. but he saw something in it i didn't even know was there.
you can't plan for that. you can't light it right and schedule it and get it ready for the stage. it just comes out of you or it doesn't. and the ones that come out of you, people know. they always bloody know.
yeah that's exactly it. you can't plan for it because the thing the other person sees isn't the thing you made, it's something they bring to it. and you can't manufacture that no matter how good your lighting is.
the hare print thing still bugs me actually. in a good way. i look at that print differently now because someone else did first.
your grandmother's exactly right and i hate that i know it. the quilts thing hit. it's just hard to trust the thing that feels like nothing when everything online tells you to optimize everything.