Why my Website Went on Hiatus and Why it is Back



Over the past 4 weeks, I have been working on bringing back the SewExplicit website. I pulled it down in 2018 or 2019 for reasons I mentioned in a post in February.  Since then, I have been selling through Etsy and Makerist and I linked the domain name to this blog. Now, this blog sits on a sub-domain (blog.sewexplicitpatterns.com). The downside to all of these is that my blog site SEO has been seriously messed with has I have lost most of the visits I get from search engines due to the domain name swaps. Hopefully, it picks up again soon. If you are here for the blog posts, kindly use the search function to look for the topic that brought you here

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I had briefly discussed why I pulled down my website in an earlier blog post. The main reason was that I was not able to make sales due to a lack of acceptable payment option. I have come to realise that PayPal was the most preferred option by most people and I couldn't offer that option (until now) because of where I live. I live in Nigeria, and the full suite of Paypal service was ( and still is) not open to us. While I have a PayPal account, I can only use it to make payments but I cannot receive payments with it.

For my Etsy store, a Paypal account is also required but I have been using a business venture based in the UK that allows you to use their Paypal account for a fee. While I could also have used this option on my website, the charges, alongside Etsy and Paypal fees that I had to pay were astronomical so I decided to limit my use of the venture's solution. I also pay a large percentage of revenue in fees on Makerist, but selling on Makerist has been good for my brand's visibility. 

At the turn of this year, I set out to start releasing new patterns again (still working on it albeit slowly) and re-establish the webshop. I had still not figured out how to accept payments until last month when Flutterwave, a leading payment services provider, announced their partnership with Paypal. With this partnership, I can now accept payments on my website using Flutterwave's Paypal integration. While this solution is similar to the UK venture's solution I mentioned above, the only fees that I get to pay are limited to the standard Paypal transaction fees and I also benefit from the economies of scale of the company.

I have now uploaded all my existing patterns to the webshop and customers can pay with either Paypal or with their card via Flutterwave API. Have you ever wanted to buy any of my patterns? now you can do so with ease. Or have you purchased my patterns on Etsy or Makerist? then you can look forward to the new releases that will be hitting the SewExplicit webshop first before any other place.

Also, kindly subscribe to the Newsletter mailing list here. I lost my subscribed contact list in my previous Mailchimp account because I abandoned it for such a long time that Mailchimp denied me access. I am working on a new pattern that will be exclusive to the email list subscribers. You can subscribe now and I promise to send you the free pattern when it is ready.

I sometimes wonder if anyone cares or even reads my posts on here, but I have since learnt that "consistency" is key in everything. Showing up is important, it may not pay off immediately but it will eventually pay off. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

UPDATE FEBRUARY,2023: This new solution by Flutterwave only worked for a while in 2021. FlutterWave made so much hype about this Paypal partnership only for it stop working after a few months.

Comments

  1. Welcome back. I do read your post

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  2. I think the information about the different payment problems are really interesting, thanks so much for sharing! I love supporting indie businesses, but it's easy to forget that not everyone can just accept credit card payments (and the associated costs) no problem. I feel like this would make a great episode of Planet Money.

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    1. Thank you Meg, I am glad you found the post interesting.
      I had to go and google what "Planet Money" is about before replying:)

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  3. Welcome back...I am so glad.. I have most of your patterns and they all fit great.. I look foward to you creating more designs in the future,,

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    1. Thank you for the feedback. It is nice to hear that my sewing patterns worked out great for you.

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