youtube what is good so i love making
videos where i inspire y'all i love
creative videos i love going out to do
photography but one of my favorite
things about having this youtube channel
is being able to make videos where i
learn something and then pass the
information along to you and make
your life easier as creative
professionals people who want to start
making money or make a career out of
their craft
now i think back to when i first started
photography and
i had so many questions i didn't know
how to do anything and over the years
i've had to learn it so anytime i make a
video or i can
pass this information along to y'all i
feel really good afterwards
i'm not gonna lie and today's video is
one of those videos i'm gonna show you
all how to build an
online store for your photography so you
can sell prints you can sell digital
products like presets you can sell
video luts you can sell basically
anything you want you can make merch
like i'm making and that is
actually what inspired this video so
earlier this month i launched my first
company
1826 1826 is the year of the first photo
and the idea behind this brand is to
create a brand that
is rooted in cameras and photography but
can be worn and appreciated by basically
anyone
it's not like super in your face but
there's definitely a message and a
meaning behind the products for the
people who are into photos and into
creative things it's kind of like
skateboard brands you can wear the
skateboard brand if you want but if you
don't know the real meaning behind the
brand you're not really in it
you're kind of a poser but you can get
away with it that is the idea of my
brand 1826 and i've been building a
website for
1826 that is completely different than
my photography website evanramp.com
basically evanreef.com is designed to be
an extension of me
it's basically a website to showcase me
as an artist that also has a store
attached to it so i wanted to make
a website that was just strictly
ecommerce based because i know a lot of
you out there want to do the same thing
so this video is part three of an
ongoing series that i have a squarespace
where we break down these types of
internet
ecommerce business sides of photography
the first one was where i showed you how
to build that photography site
evanramf.com
the second one was where i showed y'all
how to build a portfolio page or a basic
portfolio website in today's video we're
utilizing one of the brand new ecommerce
based web templates that squarespace has
to offer it is fantastic it looks
so professional i can't wait to show you
all how to build this site if at any
point in the video you want to sign up
or you want to give it a shot you can
head over to squarespace.comramp and you
can start a free trial
or you can use code and rant to get 10
off when you do sign up and make your
first purchase you know obviously
squarespace is the sponsor of today's
video they've sponsored a lot of videos
on my channel but
it's such an organic partnership because
this information
is no different than the information i'd
be giving you if they weren't a sponsor
and that's one of the reasons i love
working with them i'd be using
squarespace to build 1826.com and
evanramf.com because it's easy i
understand it it makes sense to me and
i'm just sharing this information with
you so thank you squarespace for
sponsoring the video today
so realistically this website should
take you about one day to create if you
follow along with this video you'll
probably have to pause it a bunch
catch up then you got to go out and
create any of the visual assets which
there's not a ton of there's
going to be a couple product shots you
need there's also going to be a couple
you know like
header type photos and other profile
type photos but
nothing major i think you'll probably
need about eight or nine pieces of media
to get the website done
and then you will be up and running this
website is minimal it's clean it's easy
to use and easy to understand
and then from there you can slowly add
in things and keep building
out the website that's what i plan to do
with 1826 but for now
we just gotta get started that is the
key to all this
honestly that's why i launched 1826
earlier this month with really no
promotion
and didn't really talk about it very
much i just wanted to get it going
get the ball rolling and start that
brand and now i'm going to build it and
this website is one of the first steps
so let's jump on the computer let's get
into it web design time
yeah i've never done i've never done
like a transition
into web design before so i don't know
don't know how to segue it so this is
where our website starts
the squarespace home screen and you're
going to go to the top right and go
ahead and click
get started pretty obvious and you're
going to be greeted with all these
different templates you can pick from
personally i think you should go through
these and see if there's any that stand
out but for today's video we're going to
go ahead and start with
online store and we're going to scroll
down and we're going to go start with
the almeida template so we'll click
start with almeda this is going to bring
up
this prompt that has a bunch of tips on
building your site but for now we're
just going to go ahead and give it a
name i'm going to call this
my photography store and then we're
going to go ahead and skip through these
but
if you're building the site and you want
to read them by all means go for it
they're helpful little tools that
can help you build and figure out how
the whole interface of squarespace works
so we're going to click on pages on the
left and we're going to go ahead and
delete
this lookbook page hit the trashcan
button we don't need it it's not going
to be part of our site today
and now that we're on the homepage we're
going to click edit in the top left
corner
and we are going to go through and
delete a bunch of sections that
we won't be using today and all you do
is click on the trash can remove
section bank so delete all those we're
going to scroll back to the top and
delete this one as well
and we should just be left with a title
and a text section
and we're going to click on that blue
square right there and it's going to
bring up a bunch of sections we can add
in
we're going to go ahead and use this one
today because i think it looks great
it's a very strong
starting home page when you enter the
site going to click on this pencil icon
over here on the left
and we're going to adjust the size you
can go small medium or large
for me personally i think medium is like
the perfect
sweet spot for this but you can decide
whichever one you want you can also
change the text
so we're going to click that plus sign
one more time and now let's go through
these sections as you can see there's a
bunch of different options here there's
headline options list options gallery
images
i'm probably eventually going to add a
gallery section to my website on the
home page so
if you want to add it all you do is
click that blue plus sign and browse
through these
but for today's video we're going to add
this product one right here it's a clean
three piece product and i think those
two sections together
look great so we're gonna go ahead and
save this gonna click edit once again
and we're gonna start editing this
section so we click
the pencil sign we're going to go ahead
and delete this
current photo that's in there and we're
going to add in our own
new one i think this photo looks fire
it's perfect for a print store
and it's honestly just like changing
your profile picture on social media
now if you scroll down you can change
the overlay opacity so i'm going to move
it up
just a little bit so the black overlay
is a little bit stronger
so the text can stand out highlight our
text we're going to go ahead and change
it
i'm just going to put a placeholder in
here of evan ramp and i'm going to add a
placeholder
down here below and i'm going to go over
to the button click the pencil and i'm
going to change
the button to shop all this is pretty
straightforward
any section that you want to change you
just click the pencil and that allows
you to
change what's going on now we're going
to go ahead and scroll down and we're
going to go ahead and highlight oops i
forgot to hit edit
we're going to highlight this section
right here i'm going to add in just
copyright 2020
gonna go back up to pages i'm going to
click shop and then i'm going to click
commerce now once i do this a prompt is
going to pop up saying start selling
with squarespace
we're going to go ahead and click get
started and we're going to answer these
questions really quick am i already
selling no
i'm selling art up to 10. you can answer
this however you want to answer it
and now we are ready to edit this page
so we're going to click
manage products and now we are going to
go through and delete
all these products that we don't need
this is a little bit tedious so i'm
going to speed it up
we're going to delete down until we have
three products
left kind of breeze through that section
but
now that we have three products we're
gonna go ahead and click these little
dots right here and we're gonna click
edit and from there we're gonna delete
the two photos to start with we're going
to retitle this
to 10 by 10 print or something like that
and we're going to click on edit for the
variants now because this was a clothing
template
there's a bunch of different sizing
options which could work to your favor
if you're doing multiple sizes of prints
you could size them differently here
but for today we're just going to start
simple and we're just going to have one
option available for this item and it's
going to be the 10 by 10 that's listed
in the title
so we're going to add in our weight
right here which is important for
shipping
we're going to add in the size or
actually delete the size
and we're also going to change the stock
from unlimited to a limited stock
depending on how many you have and you
can go ahead and add in your height and
weight and everything for shipping
we're going to go ahead right here and
add in the photos
that are going to be used as like the
thumbnails we have one of the print
itself and one of the side of the print
and that's looking good i'm going to add
in a description down here which is
pretty straightforward as well
and i think that's it we got to go
actually into some of these
other settings right here and make sure
we change some of the
links in seo yeah there we go so we're
going to go over here we're going to
change this to
a more basic link so if you send someone
a link to this it's going to say
whatever.com what you make up and we're
going to change the thumbnail
also to the thumbnail of the print and i
think
that looks perfect right here we're
going to click duplicate and we're going
to do the exact same thing
two more times with two other prints so
let's get through all that
right here exact same process repeated
over and over and now we have three
prints
on our website that looks amazing if you
bring your mouse over it's going to show
a quick
view of what the side of the print looks
like and now we can go ahead and delete
these last two items
kept those in there just in case we had
any issues and we needed to save one
later
what you could do also is you could make
one of these items not visible so you
have the template saved just in case you
ever want to sell clothes or anything
like that
but for now we can go ahead and save and
this is looking
great so we're going to click on the
pencil once again
our main design tool and we're going to
change the thumbnails from
three by four to a square i just like a
square better
and right here you can adjust the
spacing of everything depending on how
you want it to look
i think it looks fine as a default so
we're gonna click away
and we're gonna delete this lookbook
section once again and now our shop page
is looking
crispy clean very simple and
straightforward let's go ahead and save
once again once we do that we are back
at
our commerce tab and we're going to see
some other things that
we can get started on one is going to be
adding a payment
i use stripe there's a bunch of
different ones you can use you can read
through and figure out what was going to
work best
we'll go back to this commerce tab once
again and now
we'll click on choose how you're going
to ship you can add shipping options
i'm going to use weight is what i
typically like to use so let's do an
example we'll say united states
got to actually spell properly you're
going to go
and you're going to put in the price per
weight that's why it's important to put
the weight of the print with the box
you can click on shipping zone over on
the
right and add in a shipping zone and
bang it's pretty straightforward and
simple
so i like to use weight but you can also
use flat rate options
so let's say you want to ship to the
rest of the world you're not sure about
the calculations but you know something
like
45 dollars would cover the price of
shipping to basically anywhere in the
world
you can make that a flat cost and then
every item added you can say add an
extra four dollars or something like
that
shipping is one of those things that's
going to depend a lot about where you
live how big your item is so i don't
want to get
too much into that but that's how you
add your shipping options right there
and also you got to choose a
subscription plan to utilize all the
commerce pieces of squarespace
i believe the business is the most
popular because of
all the ecommerce tools that you get you
also have an advanced basic
and a or a commerce basic and e-commerce
advanced
so you can read through these and figure
out what you think is going to work best
for you you can also pay monthly
or pay annually i've paid annually
because it just saves you a little bit
of money in the long run
so now that we've gone through
everything with commerce we should be
able to
actually start selling stuff on the site
so we're going to go back to our home
page right now and we're going to go
ahead and edit
through our home page and make sure it's
up to speed and ready to start working
so remember how we changed this shop
button we're going to click that pencil
once again and we're going to go over to
pages
and we're now going to link that shop
button to our shop
page now that's one really cool thing
that you can do with these buttons is
add in a click through link
we're actually going to do the exact
same thing down here so we're going to
click once again on the pencil
we're going to drop in a new photo right
here of one of our prints
i think that looks good we are going to
go ahead and
delete the thumbnail name or whatever
we're going to click on
image and down here on this drop down
there's going to be an
image link we're going to click on on
image i'm going to click the little gear
box
we're going to go to pages and we're
going to drop in shop
click save so now if someone clicks on
this it will take them
to the shop page we're going to go ahead
and highlight
planners right here we're going to
delete this and we're going to change it
to
10 by 10 prints so now if someone comes
to your home page they say
oh 10 by 10 prints they'll click it
they'll go to the shop and we're going
to repeat this process
again for another print now something
really important to remember
is when you click on a like title like
this you can highlight the title and you
can click this little link button right
here
you can actually create a link to a page
on your site so what we're going to do
is just like we did
with the picture we are going to add a
clickable link so if they click
on 12x18 print it sends them to the shop
we're going to do the same exact process
once again
for this last section right here and now
these three look
great they're complete and you can click
on the photo and you can click on the
text and it will take them
to the shop so we're gonna go ahead and
scroll down we're gonna click on this
little
uh newsletter notification thing right
here it's gonna go ahead and open up
a whatchamacallit or we're going to
click edit and then we're going to open
up
the edit page right here we're going to
click the pencil once again and what we
have to do to make this work is we got
to add a storage option
so all we're going to do is click on
this squarespace mail campaigns it's
going to go to default
you can look through this and change it
however you want you can add in other
things as well
but we're just going to start with a
default so if someone adds their email
it captures it in squarespace and saves
it to a directory for you
now we are going to click edit and we're
going to go ahead and quickly just
knock out um or excuse me actually we're
going to go ahead and do the header
really quick
so what you can do with the header is
you can add in a logo right here we're
not going to do one today because i
don't have a logo for this fake site
but you can add one in you can also
change up the elements you can change
the links right here so let's say you
don't have a twitter and you have a
youtube you can click
add in youtube you can type in the url
or whatever and it's going to populate
it with a link
up in the top right next to where the
shopping cart is this is a great feature
it makes it really easy so you don't
like
go out and find actual link icons or
anything like that
now one really important thing that we
can check on right here is once we
go over to these pages well actually
hang on let me show you something cool
so click on this
icon right here and you can see how your
website looks
as a mobile website so that's something
if you
go through and you want to check and say
how's my site looking you can click that
icon in the top left you'll see how the
mobile looks as you can see our
clickable links are working
i think the site looks really good as a
mobile site as well so we're going to
click
on the about page we're going to go
ahead and click edit
and we're quickly going to edit this
about page i'm going to click on the
pencil once again delete the photo
add in our own photo we got some print
images right here that look pretty cool
i'm not going to bore you guys with
typing out a giant
breakdown of like my about me so i'm
just going to fill these in
with placeholders we'll say i don't know
premium products or something
and we'll delete this and we'll add in i
don't know insert words or something
like that we'll add a placeholder in
here for y'all
but definitely want to fill this out so
when people come to your site or if they
happen to find you
through search they can get an idea of
what you're all about now we're going to
do the exact same thing on the contact
page but
we're going to spice up this contact
page a little bit go ahead and click
edit in the top left corner and we're
once again going to go ahead and click
on our blue
cross right here and we are going to add
in an image so we're going to scroll
down
check and make sure there's no sections
we want to use but i think image is the
way to go
we're going to click on just one image
right here
and bang so we're going to grab this we
are going to drop it in the middle
i actually think it looks better over on
the left you can just drag and drop and
move the photo where you want
i think that looks really good let's go
ahead and actually delete this text
section that came with it
delete that right there now we have the
exact
contact me page that came with the site
but we added a photo in
we'll delete the photo add in our own
image right here i got this cool photo
of my camera with the gopro on
i think it looks really good and bang
there we go so
remember you're going to need a couple
digital assets handy while you're
building your site but
once again contact us we'll change it to
something like complete the form on the
right to contact us
simple and straightforward so now people
have issues with their prints or
questions they can get in touch with you
this way
we're going to click the pencil sign on
the contact us and we're going to go
ahead and connect an
email got to make sure you have an email
connected to this so if someone contacts
you
they can send the email somewhere so
yeah just add your email in there now
we're gonna save it we're back to our
home screen and we're just gonna
check our handy work make sure
everything looks good we're gonna go
ahead and click on shop we're gonna add
one of these products to our cart really
quick
loving how this template has this cool
like quick view so you can see the
second image
let's go ahead and add this 5x7 red
window print to our cart it's going to
pop into our cart up there
this looks perfect so the site is
functioning as it should
maybe do a test checkout if you want and
then you can refund yourself i've done
that in the past
now one thing real quick we can check on
is when you go over to design
you can go to fonts and you can actually
change the size of the fonts throughout
the site you can also
edit the particular fonts just wanted to
include that in there because it's a
little
style thing that you should be aware of
but as of right now
our basic print shop site is now up and
running and ready to go
and there we go told you all that was
going to be simple that took like what
14 minutes now you have an online store
that you can sell your prints you can
sell your presets you can sell your lut
pack for video you can sell merch so big
thank you to squarespace once again for
sponsoring today's video remember if you
want to build a website you want to get
started with a free trial you can head
over to squarespace.com slash evanrant
and you can use code evanranth when it's
time to purchase your first website
you'll save 10 so shout out to
squarespace and once again they're the
sponsor on today's video
now a few housekeeping notes and things
that you can keep in mind when it comes
to building this first site
the first thing is shipping who do you
use to ship stuff what should you use
how do you do it
this is something that you kind of just
learn with trial and error for me
at first i would just hand write every
address i mean i was getting a decent
amount of order volumes but this was a
few years ago and i
intentionally didn't go too crazy with
trying to sell a ton of stuff because i
wanted to learn the game
figure it out so down the line i could
make videos like this one
but basically what i did to start is i
just hand wrote everything an order
would come into squarespace i'd see the
order i'd take the address
and i'd write it down now that's like
the most basic way to do it there's some
other options out there for you
now i use something called shipstation
which is a completely different shipping
software that plugs
into squarespace so basically i have
this other thing that i signed up for
and paid for and then i can integrate it
into my squarespace site so as your
order volumes go up
you can start looking into that you can
look up more information and if you do
have
questions about it hit me up on twitter
i'd be glad to help you all there
but another thing with shipping is when
you're building that website remember
there was the section for the dimensions
and the weight you're going to want to
weigh anything you're selling on the
site beforehand
in the box and in the packaging so let's
say you're selling a t-shirt or
something and you're going to ship it in
a mailer like this
you want to make sure that you get the
weight of that in the website
so when it moves over to shipping
software or when it's calculating
shipping or however you have it set up
it knows what the weight is going to be
you don't want to just put the item
weight because a box or something could
weigh more it could bump up the shipping
then it's going to cut into your profits
it's not good now the last thing is the
business of doing this yourself
now it's a debatable topic i'm always
open to hear what other people have to
say about this but
in my opinion most people give up too
much control to
other entities they say you know i'm
just going to list all my prints on some
website and then the website sells them
for you and they keep a bunch of your
money
it doesn't have to be like that and also
as an artist when you're selling
something like prince
it feels much more personal to have it
come from the actual artist where it can
be signed where they know
this person looked at this they
inspected it for quality and the same
thing goes with
something like luts or something like
presets it's a much more meaningful
experience for your customer to know
that the place they're purchasing this
is from the actual artist and individual
as opposed to just
this blanket service that's a big reason
why i built 1826 the way i did why i'm
starting from the ground up
it's not because it's easy it's actually
not easy at all i'm having to build this
website
i'm having to get all the shipping stuff
together the first launch was definitely
a learning experience
but by doing it all myself i control
every piece of it there were a bunch of
hats actually that i got in from our
supplier
that had some minor errors on them and i
had to send them back who knows
if a service that i wasn't controlling
would have caught that
and at the end of the day that's a
product that has my name on it has my
sweat and my tears built into it that
someone else is controlling and they're
not quality testing
and then the customer service they're
contacting this other brand they're not
even contacting me so
take it or leave it you can decide
what's important to you but for me
controlling everything myself and
creating a real brand and an identity
and a personal connection with the
people who are purchasing things through
my websites
is what's most important to me so if you
have any dreams out there figure out a
way to get started
make it happen because every day that
passes is a day that you're not
doing the thing that you hope to do and
that doesn't sit very well
with me so i hope you enjoyed the video
hit the thumbs up button if you did
subscribe if you are not yet you are the
truth thank you squarespace once again
for sponsoring the video everything you
need is a link
down below see you next time