Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes(Turn and face the strain)Ch-ch-Changes

Don't want to be a richer man

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes(Turn and face the strain)Ch-ch-Changes

Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

Oh yeah! Definitely a period of change for me.

I've always liked change, my birth numbers mean "Create, create change".

Which pretty much means I either rock the boat and be a lightening rod creating change around me or I'm sitting in a change booth in a Las Vegas casino.

As I'm not in Las Vegas or any kind of casino then I'm stuck being a boat rocker.

I've had to change aspects of my personality lately just to survive and now I'm actually at the point of enjoying the changes. Of course the biggest one was to quit being a doormat, helping anyone who asked without even demanding it be a two-way street. Apparently you have to demand or people will just assume you are their utility.  Deciding once and for all I'm not on the planet to be used, that what I know and my time are valuable commodities has been a hard fought battle but it is now won.  Just gonna have to be a different (wo)man.

I embrace change. I cut my hair off, dyed it blonde. I moved the furniture in my house into a new layout. I changed the things I have around me. I changed my interaction with people. I changed aspects of my business. 

But the biggest surprise for me and maybe the most difficult change was my store. I've always been a cheerleader for Artfire, always loved it, it served me well. I was happy enough to be patient and wait for them to do the upgrades I needed to keep my business current.

And then this week they changed it.

And it wasn't good.

In fact it's downright hideous and unworkable.

Not all change is good.

Artfire has always told us how branding our stores, creating something customers easily recognize is extremely important. And yet this week they took that away from us and we aren't getting it back. I won't be allowed to use my lovely new banner that matches my blog and FB page....ya know so I'm branded. Masses of tools and abilities have been removed.  It's a nightmare.

So I was going to have to embrace a whole lotta change and at the end of it my price was going to jump from $10.95 a month to $40 (or even $60) a month AND I wasn't going to get the upgrades I needed to keep my business competitive.

Well...if I was going to have to embrace that much change and not get what I needed it was time to go shopping for a new venue. And I found one!

After lots of comparison shopping, reading reviews, etc. I decided Indiemade was the right place for my store. So you will now find me:

HERE

The best thing about the new store, and there are many great things, is it has instant download which not only allows my customers to control when they get their product (it doesn't matter if I'm snoring away at 2am) but also frees up my time to work on more tutorials. Double YAY!

I think the next best thing is it allows me to create a newsletter and have my customers sign up for it right at the store. I've wanted to do a newsletter for a while now but was overwhelmed by it....but here it's pretty simple.

Another great thing is it lets me track my customers' purchases....before if you asked me "Did I buy this already?" I couldn't tell you without spending lots of time searching through e-mails. Now I can just look you up. And if your hard drive crashes (it happens all too often) and you lose all your tutorials I'll have a record of those you bought through the store so we can get you stocked back up. 

I will also be able to at least have a page of my free YouTube video links if not have them play right there, I still need to research this, but just a page with the links is a huge improvement.

I catch myself giggling and laughing a lot the last couple of days as I get my store up and running....it's exciting and I feel like I'm stepping out of the stone age into the space age. Of course, it's a huge amount of work because I have to basically cut and paste every listing and photo from Artfire to Indie because nasty Artfire won't allow people to leave easily....they won't let you create an item CSV for export. Oh, they are happy to use the exported CSVs from Etsy and the like but they won't make it easy for you to leave.

I have 30 listings in my store this morning which means I have about 100 more to go....but the store is usable and reports are that it works wonderfully. My photos just look like crap and will need to be changed but priority is getting all the tutorials listed.  

While this is all going on:

Artfire.

You can purchase tutorials at the Artfire store as a BOGO....so buy one and get another (same value or less) free by letting me know your free selection in the  'Notes to seller' using the 'contact seller' button or messaging me on Facebook.

Purchases will come the old fashioned way within 24 hours.

Indiemade.

As I can't really do a BOGO there because there isn't enough choice yet I've created a coupon INDIEMIKKI which will get you 50% off....and of course, you get instant download here :)

I had hoped to get back to some tutorial writing this week but obviously best laid plans of mice and men....  But at least this all didn't happen in the midst of my depression when I wouldn't have been able to handle it and would have crawled under the bed permanently. I definitely feel I am on my way back now. 

All this change is a good thing. 

I'm getting my laugh back....and smirking quite a bit too (cos I know someone who would have been in my message box 24/7 wanting help with all this).

And that, I believe, is Karma!