Down the tech rabbit hole - setting up a Folksy shop

OMG (again). The Folksy shop is...getting there. Here’s how my week has gone with this.

Finally finished off things like colouring bases and gluing felt on, then sealing all the new pieces. Dump all the stuff off the work bench to set up a photo area and mess around getting decent images of everything. All good. Nice to all that done.

Make a list of things needed to get the shop rolling. Number one is signing up for PayPal. Not a fan of this lot but I don’t have a choice here. Okay, grit the teeth and get on with it. They need to send a test amount to my bank and I have to give them the code to show it worked. I don’t bank online. Never100% confident about that security-wise but hey ho. Gotta do it.

A short rant

I am slowly being dragged into using companies I object to because that’s what life is now. The options to use indies disappears as soon as they get successful enough to be acquired by the megas. Hate PayPal but there was Stripe if you wanted indie. Now owned by PayPal. Who also now own iZettle card readers (which I would’ve used but now...). Instagram now owned by the odious FB. YouTube ruined by Google. And now I see Virgin Media is merging with O2. Please O2, can you fix Virgin’s crappy internet, which has been on/off/glacially slow for the last week or two. 5G my arse. Rant over.

Anyway.

Too many questions

Bank registration involves weird security questions. It doesn’t like the answers. Okay, I’ll def have to call them now. My dumb phone croaks at 2 bars of charge. And my smart phone, that mostly only gets used for taking pictures and Instagram stuff, doesn’t work since I haven’t texted or called anyone on it for months and the number’s been retired. I was going to change to a cheaper PAYG anyway. Finally get some charge on the dumb phone. Call the bank. They are suuuuper busy. On hold for 20 minutes so I put all my statements in order while I wait. Nice lad sorts everything out and I’m back to PayPal. Get a page with a bunch of unanswerable questions about a merchant account which I haven’t asked for. No idea what that’s about so I cancel and finish the rest of it. Seems okay. Phew. Done.

On to Folksy. Sign up via the Basic seller’s account option then realise it just gives you a simple account and you have to click another link to be a seller then tell them again which one you want. Fine. Do that. Then it gets confusing. There seems to be more than one place for putting ‘about’ type information. The same text shows up on another page under an optional bit about posting and packaging. They seem to know about this and are going to be tidying that up. I put the postage thing in since it’s nice for customers to know and redraft another ‘about you’ bit.

Time for banners, avatars and product images. Nothing I have fits their size parameters. Much testing ensues with a bunch of online image editors to try and tweak things to fit. That takes a while…

I realise I haven’t got any product descriptions for the new work. Read their tips on what’s needed and do a bunch.

Pfff. This is all a lot of work. I mean a. lot. Takes ages.

This is my proto logo - a scribble I did years ago and tweaked a bit. It has potential but I don't have time to spend on it right now. It's acting as my avatar at the moment - with the top foot chopped off no matter what I did! I think I know how to fix it now but...later.

Another day...

Tuesday, I get up ready to tackle the rest of the product details and tags. Fine. Back to images again. Finally manage to sort a banner and avatar. Not perfect but will have to do for now.

But products. There's a blog page saying all images having to be square and 642 x 642 pixels. All my pieces are portrait. How do I make them square? And tiny? Without having to take them all again from 15 feet away. I get 2 out of the intended 8 products squared off and correctly pixelled (not a real word – don’t care).

Go back to shop instructions for listings and it says the square ones are only for thumbnails and 1000 x 1000 or 1200 x 1200 etc. is fine – so long as they’re square, and the rest of your pix can be any shape. Right. Okay. It’s past dinner time and I’m done for the day. Can’t face any more messing around so I’m drafting this while I eat.

The end is in sight though. Can I get my images fixed? Can I face having to take them all again? Will my brain fall out before I get this shop live? I want this done. Just had a look at some other shops that have tall things and it looks like their thumbnails just chop bits off. Ohh, I’m just gonna do that! Life’s too short for being obsessive at this point. As Seth Godin likes to say ‘just ship it’ or something to that effect. Waiting until something is perfect means waiting a long time and I’ve put this off long enough.

Okay. It's Wednesday. Last day to sort stuff before I'm back in the office for two days.