Alright, let’s talk about this little project of mine, the one I ended up calling *. It wasn’t some grand vision, not at first. It actually started out of sheer frustration, and maybe a tiny bit of spite, if I’m being honest.
I’d been tinkering with online stuff for ages, you know, trying to find a little side hustle that didn’t make me want to pull my hair out. My day job at the time was… well, let’s just say it involved a lot of spreadsheets and meetings that could have been emails. Soul-crushing, really. So, I was looking for an escape, something creative.
The Spark (or Desperation?)
The idea for * literally came to me while I was half-watching that TV show with my partner. She was hooked, and I was mostly scrolling through my phone, thinking about how I could make a bit of extra cash. Then she said something like, “You know, they should sell [some random item mentioned on the show],” and a little lightbulb went off. Not a bright one, more like a flickering, cheap LED, but a lightbulb nonetheless.
I thought, “Huh, fan merch. People love this stuff.” But I didn’t want to just slap a logo on a t-shirt. I wanted to try and be a bit more… clever? Or at least, less obvious. The name “*” just popped into my head. It sounded a bit quirky, a bit unofficial, which felt right.
Getting Started: The “Easy” Part That Wasn’t
So, the first thing I did was scope out what was already out there. Lots of generic stuff, as expected. I figured I needed a niche within the niche. I decided to focus on more subtle references, inside jokes from the show that proper fans would get. Things that wouldn’t scream “I AM A HUGE FAN OF THIS REALITY SHOW” but more like a nod and a wink.
Then came the actual building of the shop. Oh boy. I’m not a coder, not really. I can fudge my way through some HTML and CSS if I have to, but building an entire e-commerce site from scratch? No way. So, I looked at those platforms that promise you a shop in five minutes. You know the ones.
I picked one that seemed popular. “Easy to use,” they said. “No technical skills required,” they claimed. Lies. All lies. Maybe it’s easy if you want your shop to look exactly like their ten pre-made templates and you don’t want to change a single thing. But I wanted to tweak stuff. I wanted the buttons a certain color. I wanted the product layout just so. And every time I tried, it felt like wrestling a particularly stubborn octopus. Things would break, menus would disappear, I’d spend an hour trying to change a font.
My initial plan was to get a few designs made, upload them, and watch the money roll in. Ha! First, finding decent designs that weren’t copyrighted up to the eyeballs and didn’t cost a fortune was a mission in itself. I tried to design a few things myself using some free online tools. Let’s just say my artistic talent is… limited. They looked like a toddler had a go with a mouse.
The Nitty-Gritty: Suppliers and Logistics
Then there was the whole supplier issue. Did I want to buy a load of blank t-shirts and mugs and store them in my already-cramped apartment? Absolutely not. So, I looked into print-on-demand. Seemed like a good solution: someone else handles the printing and shipping. I just provide the designs and list the products.
This involved another round of research. Which print-on-demand service? What’s their quality like? How are their shipping times? I ordered a few samples from different places. Some were okay, some were pretty shoddy. One t-shirt arrived with the print visibly off-center. Not a good look.
I eventually settled on a couple of suppliers that seemed reliable enough, integrated their system with the not-so-easy-to-use shop platform I was stuck with. That integration, by the way, was another week of headaches. Instructions were unclear, support was slow. Classic.
Trying to Get People to Actually Visit
So, I finally had a shop. It looked… okay. Not amazing, but functional. I had about ten products. Now what? People weren’t just going to magically find *, were they?
I tried a bit of social media. Made an Instagram account. Posted some pictures of the products. Got about three likes, probably from my mum and my partner. I quickly realized that marketing is a whole other beast. And it’s a hungry beast that wants either a lot of your time or a lot of your money. I didn’t have much of either to spare.
I read articles about SEO, keywords, hashtags. My brain felt like it was full of cotton wool. I tried running a tiny ad campaign on social media. Spent about fifty quid and got maybe one click that didn’t even result in a sale. Brilliant.
What I Learned (Mostly the Hard Way)
So, *. Is it a roaring success making me millions? Definitely not. It ticks over. I get a few sales here and there, mostly when the show is actually airing and there’s a buzz. It pays for its own hosting fees and maybe buys me a nice takeaway once a month.
But the process itself, that was the real takeaway. Here’s what I figured out:
- “Easy” is rarely easy: Anything that promises to be super simple usually has hidden complexities if you want to do anything beyond the absolute basics.
- Good enough is sometimes okay: I obsessed over making everything perfect at the start. Wasted so much time. Sometimes, just getting it out there and then tweaking is better.
- Don’t underestimate the non-creative parts: The designs are the fun bit. The logistics, the marketing, the customer service (even if it’s just one email query a month) – that’s the stuff that takes up the real time.
- Niche is good, but super-niche tied to a fleeting trend is tricky: The interest definitely wanes when the show isn’t on. That was a bit of an oversight.
I spent a lot of evenings and weekends on this. Frustrated grunts were common in our house. My partner was very patient, listening to me rant about API integrations and hex codes.
It’s still there, *. I update it occasionally if I have a new idea or if the show throws up some new catchphrase. It’s a reminder of that period of trying to build something, anything, on my own terms. Didn’t make me rich, but I learned a ton. And honestly, just the fact that I actually made something that people occasionally buy? That feels pretty good, even if it’s just a silly mug with an in-joke on it.
