I am not the more techy savy person but as I navigate the web for ways to grow a small home crafting side hustle I still have had to learn so much about techy things. I had an esty shop until they made things so complicated and took so much of my profit that I closed that down long ago. Then I had a Zibbit site to sell on. This was a crafting based website similar to etsy but did not have the numbers to last long. It closed a few months after I started my shop there. Not a good experience as I had just got everything set up to start making sales. Then I went to GoImagine to sell online. I liked this company as they used a share of all our sales to donate to different childhood charities. One year after I opened that shop I received an email that they too are closing up shop. Next week.
So, I am now moving everything to a shopify account. I avoided this site mainly because I was looking for cheaper options. Now I understand that you get what you paid for. I have high hopes for this website domain for us. As I slowly move our inventory over I am learning how it works and ways to make our shopify pages look the way I want. Joe is doing the back end technical stuff that clearly still mystifies me. Working online takes about from my crafting time yet it is something I can do at my day job thus giving the appearance that I am working which I am. It's called job stacking. I do worry about managing sales as we never get a lot of online sales. We do much better with in-person local shows but we haven't had any of those since December. I need to spend some time going through our inventory at home and re-checking the two local shops as well. All part of making sure the online numbers are correct.
Hopefully, by the end of this weekend the new-to-me shopify store will be up and running with accurate numbers. Then I need to go back to planning everything I want to make and sell this year. I do not follow trends so much but tend to make what I am interested in and what I have supplies for. A few weeks ago I unearthed 7 or 8 totes of fabric in my house so I need to use that up for various projects. The fabric ranged from old quilt supplies to clothes to thrift store finds. I have way too much that needs to either be used up or donated. Lately I have been making a variety of tote bags and drawstring bags as sewing goes much faster than knitting or weaving. I do have a small stack of woven material to work with as well. My issue is that I am a morning person and most mornings go to the day job. So, by the time I get home I am too weary to start sewing or the light in my craft room has shifted which makes it challenging to sew. I really need to rearrange and update our lighting in there. We don't have any in-person shows for another 6 weeks so I have time to build up our inventory until then. I plan on pulling back inventory from our local shops since neither of then seem to be selling well lately. We expected that with winter but with spring around the corner it is time to shift gears again. I struggle with making things early enough for the ever shifting seasons. I would rather just make what I like than follow seasonal trends. I have never been a trend follower. One of the stores seems to me to be a little fancy for our hand made things so I think that contributes to lower sales. I do love the little store and hope as it gets to its one year anniversary of being open in a few months perhaps sales will pick up. The other local store is more akin to our in-person shows and we sell ok there.
Until then, I sew and weave and knit and work on the online store. My prayer each day is that we are doing what we are suppose to be doing for our lives and can build a following with our work to one day leave the day jobs and live a better lifestyle for our empty nesting years doing what we love to do together.