My student has four months to go full-time, and the math says he has to post every day.

I’m about to help this artist build a $10,000-a-month business as fast as possible.

Meet Joseph. He’s a dark fantasy artist who sells enamel pins, prints, and tapestries. He just quit his job to become a full-time artist, and in four months his financial runway runs out.

When we crunched the numbers, we kept hitting the same wall. Any realistic world where Joseph actually reaches his goal requires him to post every single day.

Nobody wants to hear that from their mentor. So here’s the math we did, and the system I built so Joseph can post every day without burning out (and without being on socials 24/7).

(I also wrote up the first part of this conversation with Joseph in my newsletter.)

How many views do you need to go full-time as an artist?

If you know your monthly views and your revenue, you can reverse engineer how much content you’d need to post to hit your goal. That’s assuming your content doesn’t improve at all and there are no outliers.

Say Joseph makes about $200 a month across roughly 10,000 views on Instagram. A view is worth about 2 cents to him. Then we run it backwards.

That’s impossible. Nobody is doing that.

But that’s the reality if nothing else changes. Lucky for us, we can change some things.

The two levers: more views, or a more valuable view

Lever one is views. Joseph could post better (higher quality, a couple of viral videos). He could post more, but 200 Reels a month is already so much.

He will get better, and at this volume it’s a statistical impossibility that he won’t have outliers (some Reels flop, some do 10, 20, 100 times better).

But I don’t want outliers to be part of our strategy.

Lever two is the value of a view. And there are a bunch of ways to raise it.

Better calls to action

Right now Joseph’s calls to action aren’t great, and they’re not consistent. A call to action in every single Reel and post would help sales a little.

I’d also lower the friction. ManyChat is great for this (comment a keyword, get sent a link automatically). Joseph could send people straight to the product page for a specific pin or print, which dramatically boosts checkout rates compared to a link to your whole site in your bio.

Raise average order value

If we raise Joseph’s average order value (AOV), all the math gets way easier. If a view is suddenly worth three times as much, Joseph only has to post 60 Reels a month. Two a day. Way more doable.

That’s the goal: triple the value of a view. Here’s what I’d do if I were him.

His enamel pins are gorgeous and very high quality. He has a whole collection of Greek goddesses and mythological figures, all about $30, and I’d bet his AOV sits somewhere around there.

Bundles. Say he offered all nine pins in the Greek mythology collection for something like $175, with its own sales page, a ManyChat automation that sends people straight to it, and calls to action pointing there. Smaller bundles work too, like a pin plus a print for around $67.

Anything under $100 is pretty close to an impulse buy on socials. Over $100, people start thinking a lot more. So I’d keep most bundles under about $100, except that very special all-the-pins bundle (which would be a good thing to promote to an email list).

Order bumps. The “hey, want to add this too?” at checkout. An average take rate might be anywhere from 5 to 15% or higher. That’s free money. I don’t know how else to say it. For a pin, the bump could be a print or another pin. For a tapestry, a higher-priced print or a matching pin.

Upsells. After checkout: “People who bought this also got value out of this. Want it?” A certain percentage will take it.

Email. If Joseph was super smart with ManyChat, he’d collect emails in that same flow. Even if someone doesn’t buy, they might join his list, and an email subscriber is worth exponentially more than any social media follower. (More in email marketing for artists.)

Even with all of that, Joseph has to post every day

In the luckiest of worlds we triple the value of a view. And we’re still left with posting probably every single day.

To be so clear: every business is different. Most of you are not under this time pressure. You can spend 18 months doing all of this.

But Joseph wants to do the hard thing. When I showed him the volume this goal would take, he pushed all his chips forward on the poker table and said, “Let’s do this.”

(If you’re weighing your own timeline, do the math on your art business first.)

And it can be done. One of my students, Sketches of Shay (a YouTube artist), bought my workbook, and then we hopped on a 1:1 call about YouTube sponsorship strategies and ways to scale.

(More stories like that on the student wins page.)

What makes posting every day so hard?

I think there are three things.

1. The effort. Ideate, script, film, edit, post, write a caption. Every day, forever? The context switching of that life sounds miserable, and it would take so much time away from your creative work.

2. The pressure to only post new work. This is what makes Inktober, Peachtober, or Mermay so hard: something new, every single day. When I talk to people about posting more, they think they need something new to share every time.

3. Running out of ideas. This is why the creators behind those challenges release prompt lists and limit them to a month.

So what if we give Joseph something like a prompt list? Some restrictions that make the impossible feel a little less impossible?

How to make posting daily doable

Solving the effort problem: simple formats and batching

Artists make content unnecessarily difficult. You don’t need fancy editing. (I know I have fancy editing, but that’s because I’m a sick freak and I like it and I can afford to do it. Joseph kind of can’t right now.)

So Joseph sticks to two simple formats.

Talking-head Reels. Come up with a hook, record for five minutes, edit it down to 45 or 60 seconds, post. Start to finish, ideally about 20 minutes. Topics: his story, the meaning behind his work, the mythology and folklore that inspires it. Lots of bond content, basically.

B-roll plus voiceover. A couple of hours a week recording B-roll: style the products, wear them, take them outside, put them on a friend, grab process clips and packing-orders clips. Then he talks over it about his story, his work, and the real desires of his customer (their inspirations, hobbies, passions, goals).

It’s possible to be wildly successful without fancy gear or fancy editing. It’s all about the messaging and how well you actually understand your ideal customer.

Then, batching. Joseph plans his concepts for the week, records all the B-roll and talking-head stuff in one big chunk, then does all the editing in another.

I can make a Reel start to finish every day. But I’d much rather do a block of writing, then filming, then editing. I think batching will be the one thing that makes posting every day truly doable for him.

Solving the new-work problem: let it go

We just kill the desire to only post new things. There’s no way Joseph has a new piece every time he posts. The good news is he has an entire library of products, and if he’s talking about his story, his customer, and the folklore behind his work, he can show his art, but he doesn’t have to. That’s why talking-head Reels are so valuable.

Solving the ideas problem: brainstorm for one product

Eventually Joseph will run out of all the obvious stuff. So my advice: never brainstorm content in general. Brainstorm content for just one product. You get a ton of ideas, plus a really natural call to action.

Joseph has a pin of Artemis, so let’s brainstorm just for that.

• Who is Artemis? What is she famous for? What’s Joseph’s favorite story?
• What she means to Joseph. Why did he make art inspired by her? This could connect to his personal life or stay vague (also fine). But a little vulnerability is sometimes really, really good for your business.
• The design itself. Why that portrayal, that symbolism? He could compare his pin to historical portrayals of the goddess. (Short-form is short. Make a quick point, hold attention for 25 to 45 seconds, end the video.)
• Who Artemis is for. Super, super important. “If you’re struggling with this, her story might help.” Artemis-inspired outfits or D&D characters. Or round up Artemis-coded characters in TV, movies, and games: “If you love these characters, you’re going to love this pin.”

A couple of minutes of brainstorming and that’s a week of content if he makes two pieces for each idea. Do it for each product and we’re off to the races.

Notice I keep saying easier. Posting every single day is just going to be hard. There’s no way around that.

The math gets easier from here

All of this assumes Joseph’s views stay exactly the same. That won’t be true. He’ll have some flops, for sure, but post that much while working on your hooks and your audience, and you get better.

I think it’s very likely Joseph has a Reel with over 100,000 views in the next two or three months. At this volume it’s almost guaranteed. And that would make all of this math a lot easier.

If you like Joseph’s work, go give him a follow on Instagram and help us make this easier for him.

And if you want more on the views side, start with why you aren’t getting views.

Talk soon,