Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. I think that’s because I’ve been trying to focus on my photography, so I haven’t spent much time thinking about other things. Since I posted last, I’ve learned a ton about digital photography and how to use my DSLR properly. I’ve also completed an online course on landscape photography and I’ve been working my way through another online course on night photography.
In my last post, which was actually a post from ArtisticImposter.com, I talked about how I had recently begun uploading my art and photography to DeviantArt and Fine Art America. Since then, I’ve also created an account with 500px. I’m finding that I get a lot more attention on 500px than on the other two sites, but 500px doesn’t offer a print-on-demand service like Fine Art America and DeviantArt do.
I’m also considering upgrading my online store. I’m currently using WooCommerce, which is essentially a plugin to my existing WordPress installation. I like it because it gives me a lot of flexibility over the design and I can modify the PHP to tweak it when I want to. Unfortunately, it lacks a few features that I want and I haven’t been able to find a WooCommerce plugin which adequately provides those features. My working knowledge of PHP is not extensive enough to create my own plugin to add those features, so I’m stuck.
One thing I’ve done recently to fix some of my store’s issues is I’ve redirected all of the product pages to their counterparts at Fine Art America or DeviantArt. This doesn’t really add the features I want, but it eliminates one step in the purchase process. The fewer steps in the process, the more likely customers are to buy things.
I’m looking into migrating the entire store to Shopify, but I’m not entirely sure it would give me the features I want either. I’m also having a hard time justifying the cost. The cost of creating a basic Shopify store is six times the amount I am paying for my web host, which is running five different websites. If I can make enough sales the cost would be worth it, but my current sales figures don’t support the numbers. Using Shopify would open up a few sales channels I’m not currently utilizing well, so there’s also a chance that it could increase my sales. Tough decisions.