This painter makes $100,000+/month with his newsletter. His process is dead simple: (This person’s paintings are great, which are important for the rest of this post). Aside from being a good artist, he’s also a smart marketer. We started working with him as a client recently, so I got a behind-the-scenes look at his process. Here’s his $100K/mo newsletter playbook in 5 steps: (1) Short-form video He’s really good at short-form video. His posts have gone viral, and he has north of a million Instagram followers. The format is constant a 10-30-second video showing the process + result. This increases watch time on the video, making it get pushed out further. (2) DM automation He automates Instagram DMs. He tells people: “Comment [word] and I’ll send you [lead magnet] when you join my email list.” In his case, it’s a phone wallpaper of one of his pieces, delivered in the welcome email. (3) Email He uses beehiiv to build his email list. At first, all he sent was the occasional sales email. But then, he started a simple weekly newsletter — behind-the-scenes looks, announcements, the philosophy behind his work… The newsletter is short and straightforward. Sometimes, it’s no longer than 300 words. (4) Drop strategy You usually see this with clothing and merch, but he does it with art. Instead of having all his paintings available at all times, he does limited, one-time drops. Each painting gets a set of high-quality prints, available for only 7 to 48 hours. After that, you can never buy it again. He sells the prints via Shopify for $100-$200 each, and his average order volume is $200+ (because people buy multiple prints at once). Each drop brings in $100k-$300k, and he does one probably every other month. It’s working so well that his prints are now reselling on eBay for 3x their original price, turning them into collector’s items — almost like a Rolex. (5) Paid ads Now that we’re working with him, we’re using paid ads to target his Instagram followers (1M+) and turn them into newsletter subscribers (50k+). Once we double his email audience, we’ll double his sales, because that’s where the vast majority of them come from. And that’s it. If you’re reading this and thinking ‘wait, that’s actually pretty simple,’ you’re right. This isn’t rocket science. It’s just a combination of: 1. Using social for discovery. 2. Using email for sales. That’s why you should focus on your newsletter. Converting people on email is way easier than on social. Personally, I don’t even bother with CTAs to buy on social anymore. The posts never get the same reach or retention. So build a following on social by posting engaging content. Convert your followers into subscribers. Then sell them on email.