Websites for Creatives

TL;DR: I'll build a good looking Shopify website for you, with the right privacy settings to keep you and your customers safe, for $100. This is on offer for creatives only - I'm not willing to help drop shippers or other people doing exploitative businesses. Send me an email at websites@cobza.ru if you're interested.

I recently made a website for my spouse, artstar.supply, through Shopify, so they could sell their hand-spun yarn and other goodies. Website making is really, really hard, even when you have a fancy website builder, and using a service like Etsy sucks. 

A clean front page, that updates automatically based on the products that you have in stock.
A screenshot of a desktop-sized webpage, covered with images of handmade products.
The mobile version of the site looks and works just as good as the desktop version!
A screenshot of a mobile-sized webpage, covered with images of handmade products.
A catalog page showing everything you have for offer - with great sorting options to let customers find what they want by price, popularity, etc.
A screenshot of a desktop-sized webpage, showing a nicely organized catalog page.

Services like Etsy suck because you can never own your site, and you can't choose to be ethical with them - Etsy tracks the absolute pants off of your customers, and sells their data. On top of that, they spam your customers to leave you a review, and don't stop unless the review contains words, too. This all leaves a pretty bad taste in your mouth, if you're anything like me. I don't like being bullied, spammed, or tracked when I'm just trying to buy cute stuff on the internet.

I tested out two or three different "easy to set up" services like squarespace (which absolutely sucks, in my opinion), and decided Shopify is just the best option for selling your stuff, and for making the money parts easier (Shopify lets you collect taxes based on the shipping location, and do a bunch of other stuff that makes it easy to be a small business). Shopify was still too overwhelming for my partner, so I did it for them, and I think the result looks great!

I'm offering the same service to other creative types: I'll set up a pretty looking Shopify site for you for $100 USD. It's not great money for my time, but it's something I'm good at, and something that I think would really help enable other creatives sell their stuff - without all of the overwhelm that comes along with figuring out how to make the site look the way you want, and without having to set up non-creepy privacy settings for your customers. I'll also set up your information pages: your return policy, your "Do Not Sell My Info" page (legally required for all California customers, with a few more states passing similar laws this year), and I can get a great and easy to remember domain name for you (like artstar.supply!) 

What I'll do for you, for $100:

  • Make a nice looking site
  • Hook up a domain name for you (like artstar.supply). If you don't already own one, I can get it for you too, but the cost of the domain isn't included in the $100.
  • Set up your site so you won't need me again. This means that the site's front page will automagically update when you change your products, etc.
  • Set up sane and safe defaults for pages that you probably should have (privacy policy, returns, contact, "Do Not Sell My Info", etc.
  • Walk you through the parts of the Shopify interface that you will need to learn to add products on your own. Again, the goal is that you don't get stuck paying fees to me over and over again!

Limitations to what I can or will do:

  • I won't make a website for just anyone. If I think your business is exploitative, wasteful, or enables either of those things, I may not be willing to help you.
  • I cannot offer unlimited changes to your site - after just a single full workday, I make less than minimum wage to build your site. I do want to make a site you're really happy with, but there will always be limitations to building a site through a service like this. Completely custom sites are very, very expensive - they typically cost thousands of dollars to create from scratch.
  • I can't guarantee a specific domain name. Domains can be expensive at times, so I can't include that cost in my fee. I will not buy a domain on your behalf without you first knowing the full cost to you for that domain, and approving the cost).

If you're interested, send me an email at websites@cobza.ru