Even If Your Selling Site Disappears Tomorrow, Your Shop Does Not Have To
The Independent Maker's Self-Defense Notebook - A Story About Borrowed Places, and a Little Place of Your Own
*Isamu Hibari / Alaudae.JP*
To Begin: Today Is Not a Scary Story
In this series, we have talked about protecting [your ideas](URL), [your photographs](URL), and [your shop's name](URL). The last article got a little heavy with systems and rules, so today, let us relax our shoulders. There will be no talk of law at all.
Today is about the places where you sell and show your work: marketplace sites like Etsy or minne, and social media like Instagram.
They are wonderful, convenient places, are they not? Customers are already there, payments and shipping messages are all taken care of. For small makers like us, they are indispensable.
There is just one thing I would like you to keep in a corner of your mind.
Those places are borrowed places.
Think of It as Renting a Shop in a Shopping Street
A marketplace or a social media account is like renting a corner shop in a busy shopping street. Lots of passersby, a sign put up for you. A place to be thankful for.
But a borrowed place carries a borrowed place's uncertainties.
- If the street's rules (the terms of service) change, you can only follow. Even when the fees go up
- Your shop could be closed by some mistake (account suspension). That is not zero. Sometimes without ever really knowing why
- And in the long run, the shopping street itself could close down (the service could end)
I do not want to frighten you. Truly, most people keep using these places without any trouble at all. But just imagine, if something did happen: the customer reviews you collected over years, your connections with your followers, your photographs, all of it lives inside the borrowed place. Does that not feel just a little precarious?
So, One Little Place of Your Own
The answer is simple. Apart from the borrowed places, keep one little place of your own that nobody can close.
It does not need to be anything grand. This is not a story about building a proper online shop. For example:
Even one free blog is a start
A place for photographs of your work and the stories behind them. That alone puts a record of you outside the borrowed places. It also becomes a home for the dated records we talked about at the very start of this series. Two birds with one stone.
A step further: your own domain (your own address on the internet)
For a little over ten dollars a year, you can have an internet address that is yours alone. This address does not belong to any shopping street. Even if you move house (change blog services), the address travels with you.
Keep your customers' contact details in your own hands too
This may actually be the most important one. If your connection with repeat customers and fans exists "only" inside a marketplace's messaging system, then when the place disappears, the connection disappears with it. A newsletter, an official messaging account, any form will do. Grow, little by little, a way to greet your customers directly.
Not a Move. A Little Cottage
Hearing all this, you might wonder: should I quit my marketplace? No, no. Not at all.
A busy shopping street has charms only a shopping street can offer. Encounters with new customers happen where people gather. There is no need whatsoever to leave.
The image is not a move. It is a little cottage. On ordinary days, you enjoy running your shop in the street. And bit by bit, you carry copies of your work records and your dear customers' contacts over to the cottage. If anything ever happens, it becomes your shelter. If nothing ever happens, it becomes something just as lovely: a quiet study where the history of your work piles up.
As it happens, I chose a slightly unusual path myself. I was not in a position to have a physical shop, and I did not want to depend on borrowed places either. So I built my own shop, with my own hands, on the internet. Not a stall in the shopping street, but my own shop on my own plot of land, you could say.
Honestly, it takes work. Sweeping the shop, locking up at night: it is all my own job. But the reassurance that "nobody can close this shop" is something I would not trade for anything.
Of course, you do not need to go this far. A lively shopping street, plus a little cottage: that combination is quite enough. I only mention it so you know that the path of building your own shop exists in this world too.
One Small Step You Can Take Today
You do not need to do everything at once. Just pick one that feels possible.
- Save the original files of your work photographs onto your own computer or an external drive (do not keep them only inside the marketplace. You can do this tonight)
- Add one gentle line to your shipping messages: "I also keep a blog," or "You can also reach me by email." One thread at a time, outside the borrowed place
- Open one free blog and post just one favorite piece. Then save that page to the Wayback Machine (the internet's preservation library), our old friend from this series
None of these costs money. All they cost is the time of one cup of tea.
Closing
Treasure the borrowed places, and keep one little place of your own. Just that frees you from the small worry of "what if that place disappears tomorrow."
And when the worry is gone, making things becomes even more joyful. Wishing you happy creating today.
