So this amazing shop here is now hibernating. It was a heart and passion project of mine since it was always my dream to put my illustrations, typography designs and hand letterings on tote bags on posters.
But I was not aware that POD is a marathon. That it takes a long time to become visible online and that people are not very prone to just buy a tote bag or a poster whenever they see it.
As pretty as tote bags and posters are, they don't solve any urgent problems for the buyers. And most people tend to buy from pain points and when they need problems to be solved. Well, my POD products don't do any of that.
They were just my motivation to be creative and to keep creating...or to get back to creating if I did not create in a long time. But now that amazing shop stays online as a relict of what I am capable of, as proof of my design and copywriting and storytelling skills, as proof that I could set up a shop by myself with all the tech stuff like configuring DNS records and such.
It did not really make any sales but it is ok. It was my therapy project and I won't take it offline and neither will I see it as a 'failed business'. And who knows, maybe it will leave hibernation mode once I don't live in Germany anymore. But for now it is hibernating.
My first shopify attempt will one digital product - that even made one sale within the first week of being online - I took offline once I realized I had no time to work on that shop besides the crazy amount of freelance teaching I did. I was burned out, with panic attacks, overworked and of course in that state I was unable to keep on creating digital products for the shop.
Well, maybe that was a bad thing - once the freelance teaching income was destroyed, I was left with nothing. The company I freelanced for for a long time, did not give a f*** about me anymore. I found this incredibly painful since I invested so much time and energy into working for and with them and once shit hit the fan, I was just replaced with cheaper teachers who did not have the hourly wage and seniority I had.
And that was also a reason why I decided to never freelance again. In general my experiences with freelancing were bad ones - with the language schools extremely bad and the freelance gig with that US company I freelanced for for more than 7 years also ended badly.
So my next business venture will solely be digital low-ticket products that solve some kind of problem for the buyer. But I won't do anything that goes into marketing, copywriting, design and coaching territory. Only wellness and food because that is what excites me as well - and I hope it will excite me as much as designing posters and tote bags did.
Thank you so much for reading and following along!
With love.
Your fave babushka Phyllis 😘🪆
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