all the non-fun (but necessary) updates
2022 march 11 08:22
I guess I can say that I'm settled in for the most part. Small city/town life is still throwing me off a bit but at least it's quiet here. I finally got March's packs sent out after a headache of a time trying to figure out shipping with the USPS and then ending up paying way more than anticipated when I finally got to the post office. That's a story for another time but I'm in the process of figuring out if my scale is off and I need to buy a new scale, or if the one at the post office is off and they are actually overcharging everyone for postage. Either way, I'll probably have to still pay more for postage for fear of having stuff sent back to me. Anyway...
Shop and Subscription Updates
So after many failed attempts to open/convert my current e-commerce and subscription sites to USD, I have finally decided to migrate the online shop back to Big Cartel and my subscriptions will now be processed by Stripe. Since there is no simple way to migrate the actual subscriptions, I will be cancelling all subscriptions and recurring invoices closer to the end of March and you will get an e-mail letting you know your sub has been cancelled, something like this (with your current tier indicated):
Since Square won't let me edit this e-mail, I will send a follow-up email about re-subscribing if you wish. I'll give you all the option to sign-up between March 25 to April 5 so you can set up recurring payments to a date aside from the 1st. I know it's super annoying and one extra step, but sadly it's necessary to move to Stripe.
On the subject of subscriptions, I spent all of yesterday number-crunching in order to figure out conversions for all the tiers and current shop products. I know I have always tried to keep my prices as low as I can considering rising costs while also allowing me to pay myself a bit in order to sustain life. My experience with USPS threw me for a bit of a loop, as well as supply pricing here vs. back in Canada. As much as I may be saving with shipping supplies within the US and not dealing with duties and stuff cuz of the border, costs have not seemed to have saved much. I tried my best to keep my prices consistent with the conversion from CAD to USD but prices have gone up slightly even though my actual profits have dropped? Anyway. I want to keep my stuff as affordable as I can and I do want to be as transparent as I can with everything. On the bright side, I'm keeping free shipping a thing so I guess that mostly explains why prices haven't changed much. The USPS is more of a nightmare than I thought.
Tier Pricing Updates
So here are the tier updates. I'm still offering the same 6 tiers with the same products offered, only the prices have changed:
- SO. MANY. TREATS! US$36/$39 int'l (old CAD$45/$50 int'l) : 1 letter set, 1 notepad, 3 postcards & 3 stickers
- Writer's Treats! US$27/$30 int'l (old CAD$35/$45 int'l) : 1 letter set, 1 notepad & 3 postcards
- Treat Mix! US$16/$20 int'l (old CAD$20/$25 int'l) : 1 notepad, 1 postcard & 2 stickers
- Moar Treats! US$13/$15 int'l (old CAD$13/$15 int'l): 2 postcards & 2 stickers
- A Small Treat! US$7/$9 int'l (old CAD$7/$9 int'l) : 1 postcard and 1 sticker
- Virtual Buds! US$1 (old CAD$2) : access to private IG, updates twice a month via blog/e-mail
I am praying to the gods and any other entity out there that I will not have to update any of this. I'm still slightly salty that I finally got all this stuff sorted out near the end of last year and here I am basically redoing everything! So much fun! That's the nature of this whole thing I guess.
I have relaunched the shop with the updated USD prices. Your country's currency should show up in check out. I would love to add a currency converter but the few I have found are like... $100 and I can't deal with that right now :| I'm also testing out MailChimp for the update e-mails since I was using Shopify for that. I hope it works out well. And as always, you can see updates directly on the blog!
That's all I have for updates right now. I hope you all are doing well and enjoying the end of winter. I guess this is March's mid-month update since I'm not entirely sure I'll get anything interesting done by Tuesday. Sorry this e-mail isn't super exciting, hopefully I'll have some more interesting stuff by April!