As a preface to this story, I craft my own candles. It's just one of those things that felt like a natural fit for a kitchen witch; it really is a form of cooking, after all. The skills are the same--knowing how to follow a recipe, and knowing when to tweak that recipe just like so, to come up with the perfect result. And just like my homemade bread has spoiled me for store-bought, I would certainly hate to have to go back to mass-produced store-bought candles as well.
And so it happened that my partner and I decided I should try to share my craft, and we got a website going to sell my candles online. During the month of June, we advertised on Google Adwords, and over 200 people came to see my site!
None of them placed an order.
As you could probably imagine, this was a bit discouraging. I mean, I know the site is sort of basic, but I didn't think it was that bad. Either way, I ended up feeling as though this online business thing was just harder than I imagined it would be, and sort of put things on the back burner with it.
However, last week one of my partner's coworkers decided to place an order for some candles, and we found out through her that the payment processor I was using (PayPal) was declining all of her cards. Someone else had also previously mentioned having issues, but she had thought maybe her prepaid card didn't have enough balance on it. So this made it seem like the problem was that the website was broken, which actually makes a bit more sense than having 200 people come after searching for candles, and none of them wanting to order any.
That's still not great, of course, since that advertising investment was sort of wasted if the website wouldn't take people's money. But, more importantly than that, I'm feeling much more optimistic now, imagining that the problem is something I should be able to fix. I'm getting the positive energy flowing again now, and hoping for the best again--which, of course, is the only proper way for a witch to be.
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