Sof's Mail Club is Dead

Last month, I decided to take on a challenge I had been putting off for a very long time. Starting an art subscription service has been in my dreams and goals for YEARS. In the midst of an Artist’s Way induced belief that anything can be done, but quickly learned that successful campaigns rely on many different factors, and this art club just wasn’t in the cards at the moment.

I made the art, ordered the stickers, shot the products, designed the promo, finally ready to make that little dream come true. I scheduled two weeks of content to let anyone who’s shown interest in my art that I was offering this new service. My “For You” page at the time, and still a little bit today, was inundated with so many different small artists who mailed HUNDREDS of enveloped filled with their art monthly. So many people seemingly interested in receiving art. This might still totally be true, there’s just a way TikTok has of convincing up that we should’ve started a small business a week ago and we’re just missing out on becoming instant billionaires. Unfortunately, that’s just not reality.

The truth is a lot of the success of these small art businesses relies heavily a cocktail of success for which everyone’s got a slightly different recipe. I’ve been selling my art now for about 8 years now on Etsy, so I thought it’d be an intuitive extension. Most of it was (the creation and listing of the product), but one thing I didn’t anticipate is how little I want to promote products. When it comes to social media, I enjoy experimenting, being intuitive, connecting authentically, and showing up whatever way feels best.

I love my Etsy shop because it can exist and it can be found without a sales pitch. I can exist and create and those interested have access to owning my pieces if they so desire, but I don’t have to constantly think of promotion strategies.

After launching and promoting my mail club, I only received TWO subscriptions. From people I love very much, granted, but still not what I was hoping for. Not the dream I was naive enough to buy from TikTok shop. If I was gonna have a mail club like the ones I saw and was dreaming of, I’d have to put in a TON more work into promotion across platforms. I would have to post multiple times a day, and work on gaining enough followers to post in more reach-friendly ways. Long story short, I decided that it’s not the way I would like to spend my time right now. Flopping never feels good, but trying and failing is always better than never letting yourself try anything at all.

As I’ve told a few of my friends, I will revisit the dream again in the future perhaps, if the stars align. For now, I love having the freedom and creativity to experiment and try new things. That in itself is a privilege, and something that I do not take for granted. I look forward to continuing to create and bring ideas to life, and we’ll just have to see what big project comes next. I’ll make sure to write about what goes wrong then, too.