Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Still deciding...

Those of you who have subscribed to my feed or dropped by in the past few months have probably noticed that I haven't posted since October or November of 2008. I just wanted to let everyone know what is going on and talk about the future of the blog.

Up until late October, I was using a wonderful feature on Spreadshirt that allowed me to browse specific designer's profiles then "grab" the designs I wanted to feature - "grabbing" allows me to sell the design in my own shop - when a guest design sells, the original designer makes their commission on the sale. In late October, Spreadshirt rolled out a new Marketplace format and with this, the option to grab designs from a profile was lost. The option to grab designs was still available through the Marketplace, however, the new search that was also rolled out with the new Marketplace does not work properly, leaving me pretty much stranded in terms of finding new designs to feature from my already designated guest designers.

This is when I stopped posting. This poor implementation of the new Spreadshirt Marketplace was kind of a blessing in disguise, I guess, since I was really swamped at the time and having a hard time getting my posts up on time. I wanted VERY BADLY to finish out the year at least, but it just wasn't feasible after the introduction of the new Spreadshirt Marketplace - as much as it angered me, it also gave me a nice and easy "hiatus point" for the blog.

So, the good news - Spreadshirt recently re-introduced design grabbing from profiles! Yay! One foot in front of the other, Spreadshirt, one foot in front of the other.

The bad news - I'm super swamped with all kinds of projects at the moment, including a whole new shop inspired by Pennsylvania German design - so, I won't be bringing the blog back (at least in it's original grandeur) any time soon. I want to start posting again, but I've got to think about a change in format. I think I was spending too much time on trying to be clever and that was one of my downfalls. I'm also thinking about possibly starting to feature designs from Zazzle as well.

So keep an eye on the feed. I hope to start posting again soon, even if it means just a list of five shirts with no clever write-up accompanying it.

Thanks for reading!