When it comes to copy, be a “Sell Out”

As with most places where rich tourists tend to flock, Park City, Utah has a lot of art galleries.🖼

My wife Laura and I always try to take at least one day during our visits walking up Main Street and going in all of them…

And that’s exactly what we did a few weeks back.

We went into 12+ galleries and looked around…

And while there was some cool art…🤩

One artist really stood out to both of us.🧐

His name is Ben Steele, and here are pictures of two of his paintings that I really liked.

The photos hardly do it justice – but the colors are insanely vibrant…

And I just really like playfulness in art, which Ben’s style is all about.

Now, these paintings aren’t “cheap”…

The Pop Art one, called “ca$hing in” is $21,000…

While the other one, appropriately titled “matisse’s pieces” is $10,500.

Between the two of them – I probably like “matisse’s pieces” more…

Which is good news, since it’s about half the cost of the other LOL…

And while not cheap, I’m still considering buying that painting.

There’s just one problem…

The artist, Ben Steele, isn’t doing very much to market himself.

If you find him on Instagram, his account is fairly active…

And you can see a lot of his paintings…

But he has less than 800 followers.

And meanwhile, there’s not a lot of news articles being written about him either.

The reason this gives me pause…

Is because, while I’ll only buy art that I really actually like and want to display…

One fun way to rationalize these big purchases is by telling myself that the value may go up in the future.

And sometimes it does.

A few years back, we bought a piece of art by a guy named Dolan Geiman at an arts festival in Park City…

And while we paid something like $5,500 for the piece…

Similar works of his are now going for $28k or more.

Here’s the thing about Dolan, though:

He markets the crap out of himself.

Well, actually, his wife does the marketing.

She’s his full-time PR Agent and publicist…

And she makes sure he’s consistently getting news articles and features written about him…

Which, in turn, has led to a substantial increase in the price of his art.

And I see this regularly in the art world…

There are a TON of talented artists out there…

But the ones who succeed are those who aren’t afraid to market themselves.

I’m sure they sometimes have qualms with this…

“Am I selling out?” “Is commercializing my creativity wrong?”

The classic questions…

But ultimately, the most successful artists are able to get over themselves…

Put themselves out there…

And they tend to benefit a TON as a result.

—

So why share this?

Because it’s the same thing with copywriters.

There are a TON of good copywriters out here…

But so many of them suck at self-promotion.

They get uncomfortable…

They feel guilty when talking about themselves…

And as a result, they stay stuck charging much lower rates and struggling to make sales.

So, when it comes to your copywriting career…

Act like a successful artist…

“Sell out” a little bit…

Get your name into the public…

And you’ll tend to find that rewards will follow.

 

– SPG

P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link