When you look away, things fall apart
It has been a while since I looked at my side hussles. Life gets in the way. Far too many hours of work had resulted in a tiny monthly income. When this slow drip of money all but dried up, it barely registered.
On a rare day off, I decided to have a look at why. Oh dear. It was bad.
One site had decided I was no longer worth having as a customer and closed my account. Thier name is not mentioned as I don’t want to give them any press. They did not give me a regular income, but when they paid, it was always worth it. They wanted to charge fees to simply list a Print-On-Demand (POD) design. Not worth it, so goodbye.
Then there is Redbubble, my preferred POD site. Firstly, they added fees. Fortunately, these fees are applies to sales, not for listing. Instead of increasing their standard markup, which would have made products more expensive, they dipped into the artist profit margin. Ouch. Given that my designs are already on the site, it is just tough luck for me.
Secondly, there is copyrite. If someone reports a design as a breach of IP, even if dishonestly, the site needs to act. If you are absent from the wheel, you can not engage in this process. Your designs are delisted. Any links to those designs die: published, shared, or advertised. So many dead links.
Then there is site design. If you link to a POD site, to design categories, collections, or specific designs, those links may no longer be in a valid format. More dead links. Many more.
Meh! Dead links? Remember I wrote that Link-Building Tool? That too was broken. If a site changes their page format, my tool becomes useless.
Back to the grind
I am not complaining. My sleaves are rolled up. I am plodding along, fixing my link tool, editing and deleting web pages.
This is an opportunity to clear out some of the dead wood. Shuffle some things around. Think about a new direction. Will this make me more money? Probably not. Could this form a fresh foundation? I hope so.
