eCommerce 1.0

I have my own website, something I’ve run for my local pictures for several years now, its not that expensive and its essential to have an online presence. You could now just do that with social media, an Instagram account, Pinterest board and a Facebook business page – all for free! But I also like to have my own domain and web page, probably a bit old fashioned these days but there you go

I could also turn this into an eCommerce store but I don’t want to, for several reasons, the constant upkeep and constant threat of being hacked put me off. I work in IT all day and don’t want to spend all night or the weekends doing that too, and the thought of being hacked when money is involved is a lot more scary than just having your WordPress site hacked which would be an inconvenience but not as costly!

So I thought I’d leave that worry and hassle to the pros, ie. ETSY. With an ETSY store although you have to pay fees of course and these can mount up, its still a lot easier and a lot safer than running your own commerce store. This I may branch into later and have a look at some of the off-the-shelf packages available but for now I’m going to use ETSY tools and live under their online protection. ETSY also actively promote their stores and users, they are well know and naturally draw a lot of customers to their site so al this is working for you, doesn’t harm to advertise yourself and use social media etc for that, but but in promotion is a handy feature

Many online sellers start with an ETSY store for the same reasons above, and for now that’s what I’m going to do. Many also branch out or create alternatives to ETSY, although a good stable platform you never know what’s going to happen in the future, you don’t know if they’re going to raise costs even more, have a hack or data breach that puts customers off, or change their terms and conditions and force you to close your store. So ETSY will be a start, as stated I also aim to sell locally again and may later use an eCommerce solution, a more “off the shelf” one that can be integrated into my existing website and provide some security and card processing options that I cannot currently support

So I’ve started an ETSY store, the is for my images and other local products. It didn’t take long to setup and I used an online banner and icon making website to knock up the shop branding. I’ve added my terms and conditions, a bit of “about me” details and it was al pretty easy and straightforward. I’l not go through the process here as there are many online tutorials and ETSY has a few FAQ, instructions and videos on how to setup your store. There are also plenty of free online banner makers and of course sites like PlaceIt or Canva have handy templates. I found many resources, as well las ETSY itself of course for locating the correct size, format and max size of banner, logos, icons and other branding images