Update on opening a storefront! (+ my experience working towards opening a shop)

     Hi patrons! I thought I'd pop in and keep you guys updated with how things are going as I slowly chip away at opening a store. I've been working on adding listings and organizing the layout for most of the day, so I figured this is a good time to do a little update since I'm actually surprisingly close to being able to ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 𝑜𝓅𝑒𝓃 𝒶 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝑒𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓃𝓉 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ !

     As I've been doing with most of this process, I want to let you guys know a lot of behind the scenes as far as this process goes! I've never done any kind of "website building" for my own personal use, and the entire concept of finding a website to use, photographing stock, designing a layout, organizing pricing and shipping, etc. is really overwhelming - so if putting this info out there has a chance to help you guys out at all, I'm more than happy to!

     I'm actually gonna break this down into a few subjects, because I have quite a bit to say on this topic, and organizing the information makes it easier for everyone 😂

✿ Choosing a website 

     As far as choosing a platform to host an online store, there's a LOT of competition. Etsy, Storenvy, Shopify, Big Cartel, Squarespace... the list goes on and on! Thankfully for my own sake (for the most part) I had actually decided pretty early on that I wanted to host my own shop through Big Cartel. Each platform mentioned above, as well as countless others, have a lot of pros and cons, so I definitely recommend doing your own research if you're interested in opening an online storefront of your own. 

     I personally decided to choose Big Cartel because they are based off of a flat monthly fee, and their interface is really easy to use! Big Cartel is also nice to play around with the concept of opening a shop, as you can stay on their free plan as long as you have 5 or less items listed. This was really nice for me, personally, because I was able to play around with customizing the layout of my store without the time constraint of a free trial that a lot of other sites have.

     Even though I had decided pretty early on that I wanted to use Big Cartel, I actually hit a huge mental roadblock when I realized I would have to specify individual costs per products. I don't really know why, but I guess I figured every site worked like Etsy, where you give the weight of the item, and the platform itself will calculate the cost of shipping in place of the seller... and that's not how Big Cartel works! (in fact, that's not how most places work lmao)

     I had a little bit of a mental breakdown and kept going back and fourth between using Etsy or Big Cartel... but in the end, I decided on Big Cartel. Etsy itself is a great platform to start off on, and really simplifies a lot of things as far as e-commerce goes, but Etsy charges you a LOT of fees. $0.20 per listing (+ an additional $0.20 per quantity of said item that sells), plus 5% of the item, plus 5% of the shipping. It's not a lot for a small amount of orders, but over time that really adds up.

     Plus, one of Etsy's main selling points is that they're a huge marketplace, so it's good for those who are first starting off. Etsy's search engine means that there's a good chance people who have never heard of you before will see your stuff! Which is great for small artists who are starting off, but for me, I'm more so depending on my following to be the traffic for my shop. 

     So... long story short, I chose Big Cartel! I'm currently on their $9.99/mo plan, which allows me to list 50 individual products, as well as a lot of other benefits over their free plan. In the future, I'll probably end up upgrading to the higher up plan, but for the time being, this works well for me!

✿ My experience with Big Cartel so far

     Obviously, I haven't launched my shop yet, so I can't say how well Big Cartel works with most of its functions, but I figured I'd share my experiences working with the site so far!

     Customization: Big Cartel offers a pretty good variety of shop templates to choose from, and from there, it offers a decent amount of customization. Most of which is colors, fonts, items per page, and other small things, but from what I've seen, the layouts also allow you to throw in some graphics in pre-designated sizes. You're also able to manually go in and mess with the HTML/CSS of the layout itself, which is nice if you're familiar with coding! 

     While it is nice that there's around a dozen layouts, I honestly feel like the customization is kind of lacking? The templates are pretty strict in what you can and can't do/change, so you're pretty much stuck with choosing a color scheme and maybe a home page graphic. This is nice in the sense that it's not as overwhelming as working with a site that lets you customize each and every little thing, but there are certain aspects I like from different layouts, but there's no way to combine them unless you're comfortable coding (which I am obviously not haha)

     Pricing: Like I mentioned earlier, I'm currently on the $9.99/mo plan with Big Cartel. I actually upgraded from the free plan to this one today, as I didn't want to have to sit on a closed shop while paying $10/mo for however long it was gonna take to get my butt in gear and work on opening a store. I personally think that this is really fair pricing!! I personally feel a lot better paying a flat fee rather than a fee per item. There are still transaction fees from Paypal/Stripe, but Big Cartel doesn't take any kind of transaction fee. 

✿ Oh god I'm really close to being able to open my shop

     I mentioned in one of my last posts that I only had a few things left to do before opening my shop - ordering shipping supplies, and setting up my website - and somehow... I've done those things? Really all I have left to do is calculate shipping costs for each product, but I can't do that until I receive the mailers I ordered (which will be coming this week!). 

     It's kind of surreal to think how close I am to officially opening a store!! I've been talking about it for a long time and I'm like... right there pretty much?? I literally wouldn't have been able to do this without you guys supporting me here on Patreon!! Buying shipping supplies, printer ink, sticker paper, and everything else has not really been cheap... so having this extra pool of income has really helped speed along this process for me, so thank you guys so so much. 

     Realistically I'll be able to open a storefront as early as next week, but I am not mentally prepared for that so I'll probably give myself until next month to worry about that 😂 (and this is 100% subject to change,, god knows what'll happen between now and then aaa) Of course, I'll let you guys know a date and time when I actually plan on opening my shop! 

     This ended up being a lot longer than I expected, but I hope the info was helpful! I know a lot of you guys are artists, as well, so I am always happy to throw out my personal experience with this kind of stuff in case you're in the same boat as me. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! 

♡ Chrissy