May 12, 2017
Not that far now from launching the new store.
Oh yes, hi. I guess a little background is in order.
I used to sell my humble creations on Etsy for a long time. To be honest, 6-7 years ago, creating little objects (well, and playing MMORPG) were the only things keeping me sane while I was going through breast cancer treatment. So I was fairly active and created quite a bit of stuff.
I do have an extensive background in art (about ... oh, 8 years of Fine Arts schooling?) and all my life I watched the world with an eye that saw beyond the appearances. Creativity is an excellent remedy for depression, did you know that? So yes, anyway, back to the story, once I got past the chemo and extensive surgeries hurdle I went ahead and actually was a vendor to some local venues.
Then I had to take a break - about 3 years or so. I was going through some really hard time in my life and that practically drained me out of any creativity. Don't get me wrong, I tried. But anything I tried to do looked awful. I've put my Etsy store on hiatus, got whatever pieces I still had made already in consignment in a local store and that was it.
When I finally got out of the funk, when going back on Etsy, I had the bad surprise to discover that they had just implemented some new rules. That I was absolutely wasn't going to agree with. Not only that, but it was an ultimatum: you either do what we say, or we'll close your shop. So I just closed the shop myself and started trying to figure out where to go from there.
I had two choices: either make my own website, and go again through all the work a new website entails - SEO, advertisign, promoting, etc; or find something kind of similar to what Etsy used to be.
Sure, making my own website wouldn't be a problem. I am quite cognizant of what that entails - as amatter of fact I used to do that for a living, back when there weren't any "make your own website in minutes" providers. The con would be 1. wasting time on the website itself and on all the SEO work and 2. investing a lot in advertising and promoting it. I would rather put my time into making stuff than into making a website successful. Also, the vicious circle - in order to make successful a website that sells something you need to have the something to sell. I'm only one person. I can't do both. As for the no. 2 - I am a disabled cancer survivor. Disabled is the word - living on disability doesn't leave you much in terms of advertising budget.
So I went on the Etsy forums to see what others were doing. And after spending a day on there, reviewing various websites, I ended up on Indiehome. Not sure if I'll stick around there though. I'm not happy with too many of their features. Honestly, just loading an ezcart on my own hosting would be about the same thing. I might end up selling from here
So it's a new journey. I still have to get a good webbing presence established (yanno, all those things called facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest) but I hope in about 10 days to get there.
In the meantime I am in a frenzy of creation. It's like my mind is trying to catch up on 3 years of not creating anything.
And yes, I do intend to post tutorials. So keep in touch. More things to come.
