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Problem #30: Caught in a Web
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This week Kristian takes center stage as he and Tracy talk about creating a web presence for your brand. Tracy admits all her failings in this regard, and Kristian gets on his soapbox about not using social media as your company's primary residence on the web. We offer some tips and action items to provide focus to your efforts and maybe make this difficult endeavor a TAD less daunting... but no promises!
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Transcript
Introduction to Designing Problems RPG Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the Designing Problems RPG Podcast, where we explore RPG development and all the intentional and unintentional problems we create along the way. I'm Christian Serrano. And I'm Tracy Sizemore. We're your hosts for this sticky predicament.
Problem 30: Caught in a Web - Maintaining Online Presence
00:00:19
Speaker
And this week, we're going to talk about problem number 30, Caught in a Web.
00:00:45
Speaker
All right, Christian, i'm I'm the one who's we're role reversing today.
00:00:52
Speaker
So what we're going to talk about today is all the stuff that I know I need to do but haven't done.
Meet Christian: Expertise in Web Development
00:01:00
Speaker
And you're the expert here because you're like a web developer in real life.
00:01:05
Speaker
like Yes. Not just playing one on TV. No, yeah. Web developer, designer, content strategist, the whole thing. Wow. Yeah. So you're doing all the stuff that I just don't to do.
00:01:18
Speaker
no. Let me be clear. don't do this for Immaterial Planes website at all.
00:01:24
Speaker
ahve done most of it but there's some things we're like we'll get into it but there's things where you know you're just so busy you know doing the things that it's like by the time you're done doing the thing last thing you want to do is you know write up a post about it or whatever maybe you do i don't know but um but we'll we'll get into it yeah but the yeah the the the whole idea is just that we're clear we're going to talk about Your presence online, on the web.
Importance of Owning a Website for Branding
00:01:52
Speaker
Yes. um As a designer slash company, when you're trying to send your stuff out there and be a presence and be a destination or be ah a known Right.
00:02:08
Speaker
right with stuff that you have to sell or or share with others and we're goingnna ah ah'll hand it over to christian but the the short version is you need your own presence yeah am i right christian Absolutely. And so the thing is, that it it is a non-trivial part of establishing your brand. and And what I mean by that is it it does take a considerable amount of effort or resources to put up a website.
00:02:37
Speaker
There are tools to do it quickly and easily, but it's not just about just building it. Then you have to like maintain it. You have to update it you know If there's updates, like if you're using WordPress you know and there's an update, like a security thing or whatever, you know you got to keep it current. ah Plugins might break. you know Maybe you're on a platform that they take care of it all for you and you know you're just like plug and play kind of you know drag and drop, whatever it is.
00:03:02
Speaker
um There's all sorts of things. But the point is is that it i I don't want to deny the fact that it does take a lot of work. So, and which is why there's so much friction to doing this, but it is important to do it.
Websites as Branding Beacons
00:03:18
Speaker
And the reason being is because your website, it's, it's your, it's your brand, it's your presence. And it's also, it's basically like a beacon, if you will, like where people can find you and find your stuff, find the things that you do. It's where you have the space in the breathing room to put out there what you want people to know about you and your company or whatever it might be, or your products.
00:03:45
Speaker
I have seen individuals and small publishers make the mistake of relying heavily on social media. Mm-hmm. Social media is a wonderful tool.
00:03:58
Speaker
It's a great way to get the word out. It's a great way to engage with audiences. It should not be the home of your content, though. Mm-hmm. Primarily because you're borrowing that space.
00:04:12
Speaker
You don't own that. Yep. Right. You, you, you're limited in the type of content you can put on there and the way that content is shaped and formed.
00:04:23
Speaker
and Yeah. The longevity of that content. The longevity, the discoverability, and we'll get all, all into this. Right. ah you know, the website is a space where you emphasize your branding, not have to share the space with everybody else's branding, not have to compete for space with everybody else's branding.
Role of Social Media: Directing to Your Website
00:04:46
Speaker
And ideally, when you when you create that home base, that website, that place that's yours, your place on the internet, then everything that you put out there on social media or wherever should bring people back to your site.
00:05:01
Speaker
right? The social media platform should not be the destination. It should be the conduit to bring you to your website, which should be the destination. That's not to say, you know, you can post content out there that's just for that platform. You're interacting, you're engaging. Like I said, it's a great social interaction tool, you know, so on.
00:05:19
Speaker
But the idea is that you want to have a space where you own your content, you control it. You can write, structure, do whatever you need to do, You know, you can have, you can, you can have it as the platform where you put out your news and so on.
00:05:34
Speaker
So any questions about that? Well, it's just so daunting. Like it is, you know, I, I, I messed with having my own website ah many times for many reasons, you know, for, for like, at at one point I was going to do, cause I was a MFA graduate from a theater design program. I had a whole lot of lighting design,
00:05:58
Speaker
experience and I had a portfolio. I had pictures you know and all that stuff. So I needed put a portfolio site up. This was back way back in 1999 when I'm looking at this. And it was, my best.
00:06:13
Speaker
i was i was just an idiot and an amateur and i did my best and i I didn't know how to do it. And at that time, the tools did not exist the way they exist now. No, no, so definitely not. So I was just, I was HTML.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, it was encoding and coding. Oh, yeah I hated every second of it, Christian. And not only that, but not only the coding, which is, you know, you can learn it, I guess, but geez, I don't want to learn it. I've got other stuff to do.
00:06:45
Speaker
But it's the...
Tracy's Website Management Challenges
00:06:47
Speaker
the management you know, the C panel, the management of your domains, the management of your accounts, the the multiple different logins you have to have for your content management system, whether it's WordPress or back in the day Joomula whatever the heck they use now.
00:07:04
Speaker
And your login for your account for the web hosting, blah, you know, GoDaddy and the myriad, the hundreds of different options that are out there that you have to mess with DNS records and Oh my God. I hated it.
00:07:21
Speaker
Remembering to renew your domain name yeah registration. Like, you know, I've seen sites that go down and the person loses their domain because they forgot to register their domain. It's, it's, and and I still feel that today.
00:07:34
Speaker
Like it is easier. It is easier now. I mean, I've got, i think I use dream host now yeah and it makes it very easy because you, I don't have to go into my website to log into my admin website.
00:07:49
Speaker
WordPress. I go to DreamHost, DreamHost logs into my WordPress for me. That saves me one step, but it's it's a huge step, Christian. yeah Because otherwise it's like, well which login is this? And how do I, oh, I just hate it.
00:08:06
Speaker
you know, the fortunate thing, we have things like password managers and so on. Yes, and I use one. I do use one. But sometimes things do get, you know, messed up or whatever, you know. You have two two passwords. You don't know which one's the right one.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. yeah yeah The constant vigilance of hackers or denial of service attacks or any anybody that's messing with your… Your PHP scripts or whatever, yeah you know all of a sudden, you know this critical script that I don't know anything about because I don't know anything about web development and is replaced and my whole website is totally screwed and my database is messed up now and I have to start all over again.
00:08:46
Speaker
Like I've been through this. Yeah. And it's exhausting and I hate it. And I want i i think of of of the really high profile, like high security web requirements out there for like banks and other places that really have to just go all out.
00:09:06
Speaker
And I just feel horrible for the people who have to make these systems. They make good money though. yeah Oh yeah. But oh my God, what a nightmare. Yeah. All that is.
00:09:18
Speaker
And all I want is a website that like you said, establishes my presence. And that's to say nothing about the graphic design of it. Oh yeah. And, and like you say, the user experience of it, right? yeah The, however, however the but technical term for that is, which I still don't get.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's the user experience of the people visiting your site, but then there's the user experience of managing the site. Yeah. Right? Like what platform you're using, that can make a difference and, and and you know, either increase or decrease friction whenever you do want to make an update, you know?
00:09:51
Speaker
And then search engine optimization and all this stuff. like I think I've got like Yoast on on my on my WordPress and i hate I hate it so much because all it tells me is like, you know, you're doing all this wrong.
00:10:04
Speaker
You're not mentioning the title of the webpage enough. You're not, like your sentences are too long. You're blah, blah, blah. I'm like, this is not optimized for reader experience. like, oh my God, I hate you so much.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I get caught up in it and I and i shouldn't, I think, but I don't know. i don't know anything, you know, and I'm just trying to make a website that works. That's where things like, you know, usability, content design, content strategy, all those things come into play.
00:10:32
Speaker
And there's a reason why those are fields unto themselves, you know? um Yeah. you You can scratch the surface on some of those topics to get a sense of the things you need to be mindful of. But when you're juggling things,
00:10:46
Speaker
you know, a crowdfunding campaign, the last thing you're going to try to remember is, is my sentence, are my sentences too long? Am I mentioning the title enough? Am I, am I using subjects with headings so that, you know, it's weighted as content goes and, you know, do I have yeah the right blah for the, like its it's filled out in the right option for this particular page to get this?
00:11:09
Speaker
God. Right. Making sure you have your social metadata and the headers so that, yeah, exactly. So I get it. I get it. It's still important, Tracy. I know. I know.
00:11:20
Speaker
I know it is. It's one of those things. Yeah. I can learn a whole lot of things. i can I learned InDesign. I learned Photoshop. I learned how to do all this stuff.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah. But this one feels like a bridge too far to me. Yeah, yeah. no That's fair because there's a lot more to it. It's not just opening up Photoshop, making a picture, and exporting it. it's yeah This is a living thing that you know is...
00:11:46
Speaker
Yes. yeah it's it's exposed to the outside world it's you know all those things so you know and and to your point it's you know if you're fortunate enough to know how to build a website like i am that reduces friction but you know i'm doing that all day at work last thing i want to do is come home and do it more You know, or like, I know, and this might be an ADHD thing, but like, I know how much work something is going to take. And so I look at it and it's just this wall of awful that I have to climb to like kick myself in the rear to do it.
00:12:19
Speaker
Like, oh God, I got to do this thing now. Okay. Let we go blah, blah, blah. Can we run it? mean back up my site, do the updates, make sure my plugins are still working, you know?
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. It's just this. So. This is horror for Oh, that plugin's not supported anymore. Let me, you know, what do I need to change to, you know, if I'm going to replace it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:12:45
Speaker
But the other thing is you don't, you don't have to get all the fancy plugins and things like that too. Like if you are using WordPress, for example, you can keep it simple. So for example, I don't use a custom template.
00:12:58
Speaker
I use one of the default templates that comes with WordPress and I just make sure it's updated and current. i I know enough CSS that I can go in and I can customize it the way and I want to. So that's, you know, and that's an advantage I have.
00:13:11
Speaker
But I find that, you know, especially when you're using something like WordPress, the less you do, the simpler it makes your life. You know, just keep it basic. Yeah. Now, if you don't have the skill set to do all this stuff, like that's when, you know, you might start growing your team, so to speak. You might have to get somebody who does know how to do it and either pay them or bribe them or blackmail them to help you, you know, manage your website. And then you can focus on, you know, posting the content while they focus on maintaining the site itself, which is, you know.
00:13:46
Speaker
So let's say... Let's see all that, all those stressors that we just talked about of managing managing and maintaining a website or let's, let's, let's remove those from the equation for now.
Social Media vs. Website Content Control
00:13:56
Speaker
Okay. I'll pretend. Let's pretend. Right.
00:14:00
Speaker
There are, there's still, there's distinct reasons and advantages. I've, I've talked about some already. Okay. um But again, you know, social media posts, know, they feel quick and easy, right? They're kind of a low hanging fruit. I'm just going to, you know, post this on Insta or whatever, you know, and X or Blue Sky or Mastodon, whatever it is, Facebook.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and and, and, and there is a little bit of a dopamine hit cause you get it, you get instant feedback, right? You get the likes, you get the, you know, retweets, you get the, whatever it is, you know?
00:14:31
Speaker
So it's like, oh, that's, I'm winning. I posted content. I'm winning. ya You know? Um, But like I said, the benefit of putting it on your site is that you own that content. You have control of how it appears, where it appears, you know, like what you put into the body of that content. You know, you're not restricted to, say, so many characters and one image or whatever it might be. or Yeah.
00:14:57
Speaker
You know, or all of a sudden it's fallen off of everybody's feed because, you know, it's no longer discoverable. Because a day has gone by. Right. You don't have to have an account to log in you know, to read the post like no like X requires now.
00:15:12
Speaker
And it's it's publicly discoverable via search engines and such. Right. and and And that control is important. um And if at some point you want to change to a different website platform, you can take your content and do that.
00:15:26
Speaker
you know, and you just bring all your content with you. Or if you just want to update the design or the presentation, whatever it is you can do that. One thing I will say is if you if you search on cluster, it goes to my website as the top result.
00:15:40
Speaker
Right. There you go. And so that's, I've got that going for me. It's just the site itself is lacking at this point. But I've i've got the pointers going. But you did a good job of building it up at the beginning.
00:15:52
Speaker
I tried. Right. Like the glossary thing that you did, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, so there's a good amount of content there that is valuable if you're visiting the site. Oh yeah. I think there is. I think it's organized terribly, but I think there is a lot of good content there.
00:16:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. But it's discoverable. and So, yes. So, yeah. So, and and the other thing I want to mention too, is like, you know, make the space to on your site to have a blog posts and things like that so that people have a reason to visit or, know,
00:16:21
Speaker
even better yet, have an RSS feed. If your site supports that, please, by all means, have an RSS feed. I know a lot of people don't use RSS anymore. There are still a significant number of people who do.
00:16:33
Speaker
It's also a great way to still have your content syndicated. um The Silver Jools Media Network feed pulls in RSS feeds, for example, and redistributes those posts so that people can find them. But...
00:16:49
Speaker
but um Yeah, there's platforms that still even consume RSS feeds and for the purposes of discovering content. So do not undervalue you know the point of an RSS feed.
00:17:03
Speaker
What I like to try to do, but what I used to do when I was more vigilant about posting my content, was having whatever announcement or whatever it is that I'm posting on the website itself.
00:17:16
Speaker
Right. All the information. I can have images. I can have headings and structure. I can make it easily skimmable. And then sharing that through social media. Yeah.
00:17:27
Speaker
Rather than trying to do like the multi tweet thing and you know, all that and where it turns into a big mess of like who's responding to which tweet in the thread and or whatever it might be. Right. Or just a buried in a sea of comments. You know, there's additional information, whatever it might be.
00:17:45
Speaker
And the idea is that, again, you're bringing people back to where you can control the conversation and you can control the content, right?
Aligning Social Media with Website Content
00:17:55
Speaker
And so, you know, you're you're using the social media still as that valuable tool for communication and community engagement and all that kind of stuff.
00:18:02
Speaker
But just link right back to your post, you know, instead of trying to make the social media the platform where you put your post. Because other thing too is I've seen people get locked out of their accounts.
00:18:13
Speaker
Oh, yeah. yeah And then like, that's it. Your content is no longer your content. It's gone. Yeah. It's gone. Right. Yeah. The other thing that, that here's just one of those, another added, you know, stressor is when you share a post from your website,
00:18:33
Speaker
How do you know what the social media reads to get the image that it's using and all that other stuff? There are tools for that. stuff I don't know it. I don't know that stuff. It's so frustrating. So there are there are tools for that. There's plugins in WordPress, for example, for social media. Like it'll actually, it'll take your title. You can put in a summary description.
00:18:55
Speaker
It'll take all those things and and it'll create the social media um header tags or head tags, like the meta tags is what I'm looking for. So it'll create all those meta tags, you know, it'll take your feature image that you put in, it'll put that as the feature image.
00:19:10
Speaker
Yeah. There are also tools. You can Google this. but it's It's really easy to find. Facebook and Twitter and probably other platforms have tools where you can put in your URL and you can see what it's going to look like.
00:19:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And then Facebook, for example, also, like if you update that content, you can actually tell it to refresh it. And it'll actually go and recrawl it and update whatever it cached as, you know, the snippet.
00:19:40
Speaker
Because that was the other problem. is You... you you you know You have to get that link right the first time when you put it in Facebook because it seems to just like, yeah okay, this is it. to finish We've got the image now. We don't need anything else. and And you realize it's wrong and you're just like, no, Facebook, wrong. yeah Even if I go back in and try it again, it's just going to the old image. Yeah.
00:20:02
Speaker
but So there's a tool. I think you still have to have an account ah to to do this. um I think you have to be logged in. I can't remember now. but um But it's basically a tool that allows you to crawl it and and even say update it.
00:20:17
Speaker
And it'll also tell you if there's errors. ah If there's like mistakes, like, okay, you know, we're not finding this value or this value, yeah you know, whatever it might be. um So it's really valuable. um Twitter card is the thing that that X had. i don't know if they still have it. I assume they do.
00:20:32
Speaker
um And then, yeah, and there's, you know, different platforms have different things, but yeah but most of them use... Open Graph, which is what Facebook uses, and um and Twitter.
00:20:45
Speaker
I forgot what their meta tags are called, but yeah. um And then the rest is just standard metadata stuff, and you know like your your title, your description, things like that.
00:20:58
Speaker
and And then you know what you have in that content can be eye-catching. It draws people in yeah gets people to go to your site. yeah So yeah, it it is important in that regard. yeah. so yeah, I, I think, you know, like I said, I think there's value to to, you know, being able to structure your content the way you want it to be and having the message be what you need it to be and not being restricted ah to whatever the platform is allowing you to do. Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
You know, and, You know, one could argue with restrictions there's cre you know comes creativity, but sometimes you just have a lot to say and you need the space. and And that's what having your own website affords you.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah.
Christian's Web Design Services for Small Publishers
00:21:39
Speaker
And if you can organize it in those... you know, bite-sized, sizable chunks that yeah that are easy to absorb for you know, people. That's that's the part that i that I don't know how to really do and in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and, you know, is is a good user experience that has all the images that I want and all that stuff. I don't know.
00:22:03
Speaker
So yeah yeah I need to do it. And I feel like I'm going to have to find somebody to help me do it because it's so exhausting. Yeah. You know, it's it's funny, for a long while, I actually wondered if there would be, if it could be a a decent business venture to offer web design and maintenance services for for small publishers.
00:22:29
Speaker
because I know that this is a pain point you know for people who they just want to make RPG stuff. They don't have the time the skills necessarily to do this, you know, or something you know, they, they accidentally break something or there, an update happens and something breaks and they don't know how to fix it. Or they forgot to, you know, register their, their, know, or renew their, their domain name registration, and then now they lost their domain and, and,
00:22:58
Speaker
And I think there's value to it, but then I also wonder, like, can people, you know, can they afford it? yeah Like what what would somebody charge for that? And, and you know, is it, is it, ah you know, practical basically, but, um but it's a very real struggle, you know, and I get it and I appreciate it. And like I said, I'm lucky that I, you know, do this for a living.
00:23:18
Speaker
ah so it you know, makes, makes it easy for me to do and to manage it. But since you do it all day, you kind of don't want to do it for your own business. Yeah. It's like the cobbler's children have no shoes is the expression. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah. all Right. Right. Yeah. i Same, same, right. I've been
00:23:40
Speaker
doing CAD for 20 some odd years, right I'm a professional at it. I do it. and and And the last thing I want to do is do it for recreation. Right. Yeah. I just don't want to do it.
00:23:52
Speaker
So... o It just doesn't get done. But um yeah, it's the same thing. Yeah. so yeah um So, yeah. tell me some of your pain points or or do you have any questions about you know ways to do things or what might make it easier? or Well...
00:24:14
Speaker
So, i i like I said, i think i've got I think I've got a good start because when when you put HonCluster in the search engine, HonCluster.com is the first thing that comes up. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes up. but And that's super gratifying. Like, okay, yeah all all people need to know is the name and they can find it.
00:24:31
Speaker
Right. And so that's that's that's a great start. Well, I had some things I was actually wondering about. So for example, like on the discord server for Han cluster, you post announcements on there, things like that. Right.
00:24:44
Speaker
Do you think that those announcements might be valuable as content on the, on the cluster blog? Okay. I think you're right that they would be. And like you say, it's that it's that immediate gratification. it's it's it feels easier because it feels like, ah, whatever. I can post an announcement on my Discord server in like two minutes where I have to craft...
00:25:10
Speaker
an announcement or blog post on my website with an image or whatever and do the whole thing. And that will take 30 minutes or 45 minutes because I'm going to fret over every verb that I use, you know? Right, right. So that it's ah it's a mental load.
00:25:26
Speaker
But you're right. Yeah. That is what I should do. it's Yeah, well, and it because it feels more permanent when you put it into your website versus, you know, a Discord announcement where it's just like ephemeral, right? Or feels ephemeral, even though it's not.
00:25:39
Speaker
It's there, you know. And it shows that I'm updating the website, which helps with search engine. Apparently, hear if the website's updated regularly, then, you know.
00:25:53
Speaker
So, yeah, yeah, I should do that. So I'm going to put you on the spot again. Okay. Do you remember the YouTube videos you did for HonCluster? Yes, which i still need to like I still need to promote because they're so good. I think they're great.
00:26:07
Speaker
Did you put them on your website? They are on my website. Oh, good. Good, good, good. Okay, cool. Great content, right? I think. Cool. and i And I say up... It's not on the top of the front page because the top of the front page I haven't changed since the backer kit.
00:26:23
Speaker
So it basically it takes you to the to the page where there's a where you can go to the pre-order link. But I don't say pre-order now. I need to change that on the website. I just haven't done it yet. But lower down, the videos are there and I explain why you want to you want to see them Did you post a blog post to announcing the videos? No.
00:26:41
Speaker
No, I didn't. Blog. Please. haven't done a blog for two, three years, Christian. It's an announcement, not a blog, right? Announcements. Announcement. A press release. or Press release, maybe? Yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
yeah But yeah, I mean, I should because I've got, I do have RSS. It is on the Savage Rules Media Network and that will show up on people's pages. Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
I should do that. It's just that mental load. oh I've got to come up with an image. Yeah. And I've got to probably do something specific, meaning I'm going to pull open Photoshop and add a little spruce to one of my images or reformat it in such a way that it works for this post or whatever. So I will say i don't necessarily subscribe to the idea that every post has to have a unique image.
00:27:29
Speaker
Cause sometimes if it's like, you know, especially for like the immaterial plane, isn't product specific. So I might just reuse the same image that if it's associated with a particular, you know, product or whatever for Han cluster, that might be tricky, but you could probably get away with a default, like Han cluster logo or, you know, reuse, you know, the cover art or whatever it might be. Yeah. um You know, and and ultimately people just want to see that there's new content.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And want them to go the website. Yeah. i The other thing is like for now, because of simplicity, the plan is to keep the order. Right now it's a pre-order store, but it will become an order store for Han Cluster and Backerkit open indefinitely.
00:28:18
Speaker
Until I have new content, until I have a new backer kit to do, I don't need to have anything else besides that. That takes me away from my site to have them order it, right?
00:28:30
Speaker
But it is mostly under my control, right? That pre-order store is yeah it's under my control. right But um until I have more, until I have another backer kit or some other setting or whatever, then that will handle everything that I've got on order. right.
00:28:46
Speaker
um So that's the plan, but it's, you know, I feel the pressure wrongly or rightly to have some kind of a storefront.
E-commerce Site Challenges and Solutions
00:28:55
Speaker
And I know that that's a whole nother ball of wax. Yeah.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's, I will say that's where I do not have expertise setting up an e-commerce site. Basically do the people say e-commerce sites still? I don't even know, you know, but yeah, it's, um, I don't, i I, that's one of those things where I would prefer to let somebody else handle that.
00:29:18
Speaker
And so link to a store, you know, and yeah, they get a cut and so on. Yeah. um But that saves me a lot more sanity you know terms of setting things up and maintaining it.
00:29:30
Speaker
I mean, the the the reason I care is because Pinnacle...
00:29:39
Speaker
For example, has captured an audience. Yeah. They're directed to the website and they have an account there where all their PDFs are under their account. Right. Right.
00:29:50
Speaker
And so I can do that in Backerkit. Right. But it doesn't look as good As if I was able to do that in my website. Yeah. It's not an easy thing to do. It's something that would have to happen later. Well, yeah. and and And to your point, like using Pinnacle as an example, I mean, for the most part, they do a great job, but they've had, you know, their share of issues. Oh, yes. And challenges, you know, just like anybody would. Yeah.
00:30:15
Speaker
And that's something that then they have to deal with rather than it being something that a platform, yeah you know, that offers it as a service would be dealing with. But I don't know. Once I get a second project out there.
00:30:30
Speaker
what transitioned to, you know, yeah who does this aside from Amazon and I'm going to pay top dollar to, to, you know, like provide books for me. Like it the, the fees are insane yeah to have someplace like, you know, a third of more a marketplace deal with this stuff for you.
00:30:54
Speaker
Right. So it's, that's, it's really hard. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, it's, you have, you know, taking the orders, keeping up, you know, the, the data secure.
00:31:07
Speaker
The whole thing. Exactly. Whether you're doing the fulfillment or you're sending that data to somebody else to do fulfillment, you know, those are all things you need to consider. and it's, it's not trivial at all.
00:31:19
Speaker
Like it's, yeah. It, it intimidates me, honestly. like Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm getting ahead of myself a little, But I'm looking to the future just like, you know, for the same reason I trademarked on cluster, I'm looking to the future and to say, okay, well, what if this becomes something that I need to sustain in a way that doesn't cost me 40% per sale?
00:31:42
Speaker
Right. Right. You know, or do you hire somebody maybe for an amount yeah to help you manage that? Yeah, exactly. And that's that's daunting, daunting stuff, but it's necessary. It's just the way it is. It's it's leveling up your business, right? Right, right.
00:32:02
Speaker
But have to make a certain amount to do that. Yeah, that's the thing. There's always that that that threshold where... You know, you're, you're, you're just making enough, you're, you're, you're getting enough business that you need help, but you might not be earning enough that you can afford it yet.
00:32:20
Speaker
And it's like, you know, where, where you fall in that, in that gap is, is it can be really stressful. It is. And, and.
Risk-Taking for Business Growth
00:32:29
Speaker
there's that, there's that weird, <unk> it's the same reason why being more risky and, ambitious with your crowdfunding can help you boost the sales.
00:32:43
Speaker
Right. Like you're taking the risk to make that happen. Like putting more art in color art, all that other stuff. It's these decisions that you make to attract the backers. Yeah. It's the same thing with the marketplace where,
00:32:57
Speaker
um if you're right on that precipice, sometimes it's worth going into debt per se to get yourself over that hump so that you have that professional presence so people feel confident right using your marketplace to buy the stuff. Right. Yeah.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah. Like otherwise you're just kind of half-assing it doing it yourself and it looks like crap and you've got a better product than you've got a marketplace and that really sucks. Yeah. You know, So that's it's really tough to make those calls.
00:33:29
Speaker
And i don't know. ah That's the journey I'm on. yes i'd be curious see know where you we go Yeah. I'd be curious know where you end up. Yeah. and Well, me too.
00:33:39
Speaker
Me too. I'm cultivating relationships. That's what I'm doing at this point. Yeah. Just like I always do, you know. Right. But now I'm cultivating different relationships with people who know how to do kind of some of the stuff.
00:33:52
Speaker
Right. I'm trying. Right. And you have access to to people who can educate you as well. Yes. So that that goes a long way. yeah I do. And with web stuff, it's tougher yeah because um it's a marketable thing. It's it's it's an expensive thing.
00:34:10
Speaker
yeah And I can't ask people to do this for free. So i have to i have to you know I have to make it so it's worth their while. You know, yeah in one way or another, whether that's financially or through my assistance in some other way or whatever.
00:34:28
Speaker
Right. That's that's tough. But yeah that's what cultivating relationships is about. Yeah. And we've talked about that before. Yes, very much so. Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
But that's where I'm at in the process is I've got. I've got web searches that go to Hancluster, but I don't have a ah ah site. it's It's got good content, but I don't think it's very well organized. And I don't think it's amenable to getting people to come back.
00:34:55
Speaker
So that's that's my next step. Yeah. You know, after I get my print files out is really concentrating on the website to see what I can do with it. Well, let me know if you want some help with that.
00:35:07
Speaker
Oh, I'll let you know. Yeah.
00:35:12
Speaker
ah Where are you at? you're You're still trying to put together a design. Yeah, well, we've had you know we've had the immaterial playing up there for a while. um Every now and then I'll go in there and I'll tinker with it you know in terms of um you know trying to freshen it up a little bit. um I'll do updates like...
00:35:30
Speaker
For example, recently, the print-on-demand service for Savage Eberron, they opened up ordering for um in the UK. So I went in and you know updated the messaging about international orders saying, now available in the UK, blah, blah, blah.
00:35:46
Speaker
um What I should have done and what I didn't do was write a blog post about it
00:35:53
Speaker
So, you know, there's that. The coppers, children, those dosis. That's right. um You know, and then, you know, we have product pages, you know, for ah backstory cards for Foundry VTT and, you know, the different swag products we have, Savage Eberron.
00:36:12
Speaker
ah We'll have one for Explorer when the time comes. We probably should create something for Campaign Cardomancy, which is going into layout. Actually, it's in layout now. Carl Kiesler is working on it and he sent us some amazing looking prototypes. was just like, oh my God.
00:36:29
Speaker
Better than we could have even imagined, honestly. I'm so glad. Yeah, me too. So thank you, Carl. Carl's good people. Eventually we're going to force him onto this podcast. Yes, we need to have him on this podcast. We should schedule that soon.
00:36:44
Speaker
should. So yeah, you know, it's... it's ah Every now and then I look at the website and I think it feels outdated. I think it could probably be better because, you know, I have...
00:36:55
Speaker
I guess a different skills. and Yeah. So I, I see the problems, but then ah other people will see it and like, Oh, I like your website. It looks great. I'm like, really? feel like I just slapped that together. Cause I probably did at the time, but, um, you know, and, and, uh, and sometimes I do think about other, uh, content management systems like outside of WordPress and, um, because i've I've worked in several and, and there's some that are just quite honestly better, you know, than, than WordPress and, um, and more stable.
00:37:26
Speaker
um But again, time. Yeah. Inclination. Yeah. Motivation. Motivation. Yeah. Yeah. So.
00:37:38
Speaker
All right. Well, is there anything else?
Join the Discord Community - Beyond Audio Content
00:37:40
Speaker
No, I think, uh, you know, part of this was, was getting on a soapbox about like, Hey, people own your content. Don't depend on social media being your, your only web presence.
00:37:50
Speaker
Um, seriously, it's worth it. You know, just even if it's the most basic website with no images and you just have like text, at least you have your content there, you know, and and it's yours.
00:38:02
Speaker
Um, But yeah, and then, but also acknowledging it's, yeah, it's not easy. It's hard. Like everything else that we talk about on the show, yeah it's hard, you know? So, yeah.
00:38:15
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you for listening to the Designing Problems podcast. We want this to be more than a podcast. We want it to be a community. If you'd like to engage directly with us, share your creative triumphs, your roadblocks, or simply interact with a cool group of supportive people, we have our own Discord server, not our own website.
00:38:32
Speaker
But please come by, join the discussion, and share some inspiration. Until next time, keep designing your problems because you're bound to solve a few along way.