How’s That Workin’ For Ya?

A quick post about progress. Even the most minor step, or shuffle, forward is still moving forward. The rules don’t say you must always move with blinding speed in huge leaps. That’s not usually helpful if you are trying to find repeatable patterns in your success.

Newsletter?

Over the past few months, I’ve focused a bit more on growing my subscriber list for my art business. I have not put enough effort into it to expect great things. However, the latest edition was the first where I made any original artwork available to subscribers before the general public/website shop got to see or purchase it.

How it went

You know I’m not afraid to talk numbers and details about my business. I’m not ever sharing all the info, but I’m also not ever vague when I openly share. My subscriber list is tiny right now. I’ve doubled its size in the past four months, and it’s still tiny. With that in mind, 35% of subscribers opened the 2023-02 edition. 66% of those click on one or more links in the newsletter. 33% of paintings offered in it sold (one of three).

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What’s next?

An actual plan to grow the newsletter. I know you’re shocked to learn that you must plan things to make them happen. So, that’s what I’ll be doing over the next week. I’ve never wanted this to become something complex or time consuming. So, my planning and goals will take that into consideration.

Questions, Plans, and Goals

I haven’t brainstormed or written anything about this project before now, so what you’re reading is exactly what the first steps of a project like that can look like…because this is what I’ll copy/paste into my system after I publish this blog post. How’s that for an over-the-shoulder peek at art business operations?!

1. What do I want to provide in my newsletter? I want to give subscribers a sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes of my studio. Not the operations stuff. Those folks aren’t there for that. They want to see works in progress, how an artist lives, on-the-road photos, and perhaps my opinions on the places I travel to.
2. Who am I serving? People who want to see me more. They already like the art and want a better sense of what goes into it and who’s doing it.
3. What do I want out of this newsletter? Building a rapport with fans of my work sounds fun, but I’m private, despite what the efforts at #thatartistlife might indicate. I’d also like to sell more artwork, to be honest. That sounds obvious, Peter, but I know what you mean.
4. How often to publish that balances those goals with not wanting this thing to take too much time? How much time are you willing to dedicate? I think monthly is as often as I’m comfortable publishing. I don’t think I do enough interesting things to warrant anything more frequent, and I’m not interested in using filler content like articles from magazines and other websites to pad this thing out. I’m willing to put up to three hours a month into this.
5. Does your current system allow for growth and scaling, at least in the short-term? Yes, it’s a pretty good system and can handle things for the foreseeable future. It also can easily be moved and scaled if needed down the road.

The wrap-up

Well, there you have it. A quick and dirty brainstorming session to help me review and pivot my newsletter. Sometimes we don’t think of things like this as a “project”, especially if we have any background in the corporate world. However, I’ve found the need to expand the definition of the word as I manage my art business. And you know what? There aren’t any rules saying we can’t! We must all find the systems that work for us. Whether it’s project, time, or money management, read about many things that work for other people and smash together a system from all of it that works for you. Leave what doesn’t on the floor. Or sweep it up, so no one trips.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. I welcome constructive comments and polite discourse below. If you want to learn more about how I got the ball rolling on my art business, start here.