This month was full of work.
The big news: people are starting to notice us
The most important thing this month: a lot of warm feedback started coming in. In the early couple of months, when I wrote to makers offering to send them a questionnaire and publish their story, they simply replied, “Sure, let’s do it.” Now more than half of them say they love the site and find the stories fascinating: amazing people and impressive work. They write – literally – “it’s an honor for me to be featured alongside such makers and stories.” This is very encouraging, and it helps a lot.
Makers have started passing tinyfound along to each other. This month I began reaching out to makers with large audiences – 100,000 followers and up – and on the very same day, one of the three agreed. And Diederick Kraaijeveld, an artist from the Netherlands, came to us on another maker’s recommendation and replied within two hours.
And one more early sign: my guest piece about the crafts of the French Riviera ran in the Adventures & Ateliers newsletter – with a recommendation to subscribe to tinyfound. It’s tinyfound’s debut in someone else’s newsletter.
This month in numbers
14 stories + 1 roundup (12 stories in September).
Subscribers: 260 (266 in September). The number isn’t growing yet, but people are reading the emails more closely: the latest digest had a 34% open rate, and 14% of those who opened it clicked through to the stories.
Pinterest: 13,400 monthly views (3,200 in September) – four times as many. More on this below, under channels.
What changed in the project
When I started, the core idea was to show how makers promote their work – with numbers, channels, wins and failures. That part of the stories is still there, but now I want to put the maker front and center. To show what stands behind their work, the road they’ve traveled, what matters most in what they do. What changes in their lives pushed them toward creative work. And to show that many people can leave the office (and should!) and take a different road – their own.
The reader has changed, too. The stories are now for people who buy handmade things and want to know who made them, and for interior designers.
The format of the stories changed a lot to match:
I had to rework the questionnaire twice so the answers would give me the material I need. I managed to make it shorter without losing anything in the quality of the answers.
Every story now opens with a section for search and AI – short answers to the key questions about the maker. I think it turned out both useful and interesting.
At the end there’s a standard links card: website, shop, social accounts, and the galleries that carry the maker’s work.
I moved about 16 stories from earlier months into the new format.
Almost all the core texts on the site and on social accounts got edited, too – especially the ones visitors see when they arrive.
Several times I rewrote the outreach text – the message offering makers a story about themselves and their work. It’s a short text, and every line and link in it matters. And I’ve switched 100% to reaching out through the contact form on the maker’s website. Yes, this way I miss a lot of interesting people, but after 10–20 emails my inbox quickly gets caught by filters, and my emails end up in spam. So for now, contact forms take priority.
tinyfound stories in AI answers
The new format is already working. I ran five searches in Google AI Mode for makers featured in our stories – in all five, tinyfound was among the sources, and in two it was the main source. The most encouraging part: the AI retells facts that exist only in our stories – for example, the family story of FurnitureByBukmedis and the old sawmill. And for Nastawka’s ceramic sinks, tinyfound comes up as the top source, above Etsy.
FurnitureByBukmedis: an AI answer citing tinyfound
Nastawka: tinyfound as the top source
These are just two screenshots; the others look similar. Google AI Mode, US, English, incognito window.
Promotion channels
Pinterest: 13,400 monthly views (3,200 in September). What works best is photos of the pieces themselves with simple titles: the top pin of the month is “Hand-turned stone decor from Latvia,” with 808 impressions. The audience is exactly ours: two thirds are interested in architecture, interiors and gardens. Clicks through to the site are still few – I’m working on it.
YouTube: 35 Shorts, 13,000 views.
Instagram: 40 Reels and the start of a veeery slow rise in followers. Instagram is one of the main channels for promoting and presenting makers, so I’ll be putting more work into it.
LinkedIn: +115 new connections this month, 390 in total. LinkedIn is on the back burner for now: it’s worth working on, but only once my connections get close to at least 1,000.
Launched Bluesky and Threads.
Mutual recommendations on beehiiv (Recommendation Network).
Directories and aggregators: Lettergrowth (a newsletter directory), InboxReads (a directory for promoting newsletters), Flipboard (an aggregator and magazine).
New formats
I launched a roundup, “One move that didn’t work.” It’s built on lightly reworked material from earlier months’ stories, and it turned out interesting. When these episodes sit side by side, you can compare them and draw conclusions. I plan to keep it going: one issue a month.
I also decided to do another roundup, “Behind the piece”: short sketches about the events, feelings and stories behind particular pieces. Only two people responded, so the idea didn’t take off (yet?).
Personal
The more I talk with makers, look at their work and read their stories, the more I want to “escape” into some craft myself and live by making things with my hands. I’ll write more about this, and I even have a guess about what that craft might be.
But for now, it’s a secret.
