Marketing without Instagram: does it even work?
Behind The Scenes of Business
Dear Reader,
Last weekend I taught one of my favorite workshops ever about self publishing. I quickly realized it should have been an entire semester long class, but we managed to get a lot done in a three hour period. If you missed the live class you are welcome to purchase the replay.
If you want to join the waitlist for Mapping Your Creative Business (open to fifty students) August 9 + 10 drop your email here.
If you’re in Northern Michigan, tomorrow Friday July 25 I am at Cedar North 9am-1pm hosting open gallery hours for my show The Quilt As Archive.
Today I am here to tell you just how many spots I sold for Witnessing Practice (my class about self publishing) without any social media, how much money it made, how many people appeared live, and how I over prepared for a three hours class.
You will also get links to all my sales emails if you want to study them and use the formats for any of your own sales emails. They worked really well!
Welcome to Behind The Scenes of Business : A Series for paid Subscribers of the Monday Monday Newsletter.
Not a paid subscriber? It’s $5/mo or $35/year! I’d love to have you.
WITNESSING PRACTICE: A LITTLE REPORT
⋆⁺₊⋆ Total Sign Ups: 171
⊹˚₊‧ Live Attendees: 67
₊˚⊹ Total Income (before taxes, fees, and redistribution): $8109.50
✦ Featured two weeks in a row in Monday Monday
✧ Sales Emails Sent via Flodesk : 7
Here’s what they were titled:
1. Ready to turn your private practice into a beautiful small project?
2. ⌘ new document, old desire → ✷
3. → Notes, voice memos, scraps: they count
4. → A soft yes is enough
5. What you notice is the work
6. Your website doesn't have to be a performance
7. Today's the day: Witnessing Practice starts soon
These emails went out through Flodesk to around 6k people — a separate list from Monday Monday where the class was announced to around 27k people. Flodesk is where I keep past students and folks who’ve opted into free offerings like The Creative Ideation Portal, The Pilates Warm-Up, Weaving in Your Values Toolkit, and Note Taking Tools Guide. You can always unsubscribe from sales emails without leaving this newsletter. (And I mean it — no hard feelings, ever.)
I’ve been paying closer attention to how different groups move:
Flodesk readers tend to convert.
Monday Monday readers tend to read.
There’s always overlap — but lately I’m learning how to speak to each group in ways that feel accurate, intimate, and aligned. Not everyone needs the same kind of nudge.
To my own surprise, I’ve started to love writing sales emails. What once felt like a necessary evil has become a tiny form, a sacred puzzle in its own right — a practice in restraint and invitation. Each one a little portal. Each one a way to whisper to someone on the edge — the way I once was — and say:
You’re not alone.
You don’t have to figure it all out the hard way.
Here are some prompts. Here is a shape.
Here is a small way through.
One of the most meaningful things about this round of Witnessing Practice was promoting the entire class without using social media. As I return to a phase of being fully off all platforms, I still bump into that old fear:
Will my business work without Instagram?
But the answer keeps being yes.
It works because I keep working it — through my writing, my teaching, my email list, and the steady practice of showing up again and again, not to broadcast but to build. Not to chase attention, but to care for the attention already being offered.
Now for a little self-assessment:
I’m learning to better pace what I teach. In my excitement, I often generate enough material for a semester-long course, even if the class is only three hours. I know how to weave things together and leave people with a meaningful arc, but I sometimes feel a pang that we didn’t get to every thread. It’s a good problem to have — to be overflowing. But I want to get better at timing, too.
Still, I’m listening closely — to what students need, to what they can afford, to what they are longing for in these times. Not everything needs to be college-priced. Not everything needs to be semester-long. (Though maybe sometimes it does — tell me if I’m wrong!)
It means so much that 171 people said yes.
That 67 showed up live.
That we could be together for a few hours of real-time dreaming, building, witnessing.
What a thing — to make a class from your own life, and find that others wanted to enter it with you.
P.S. If you missed this round of Witnessing Practice or are dreaming into what’s next:
Mapping Your Creative Business runs August 9–10 — a 2-day creative planning retreat on Zoom to get your final quarters of 2025 into rhythm.
More soon ⊹ but if you already know you’re in, registration’s open [here]. If you want to keep getting the sales emails for class, drop your email here.
Thank you for being a paid subscriber of Monday Monday. I put so much work into the weekly email and into this series, you keep it going!
I hope you have a beautiful Thursday
Want to include a classified ad for August? Click here to read more
Are.na
Email : info@codycookparrott.com
Website : https://www.codycookparrott.com
Writing Group : Landscapes