We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this Good Old Blades micro podcast. As the stipulations for uh social media conduct change as it relates to knife making and other restricted uh products and services and things like that, um, a lot of people have asked me specifically about how to develop a website uh for knife makers that satisfy the gambit of e-commerce requirements. And I thought it'd be a good idea on this micro podcast to talk a little bit about websites, why you would want that over doing all of your business over social media and some options that you have. So, first and foremost, knives by most social media platforms, uh Instagram and Facebook primarily are considered weapons because of that, they heavily restrict not only the ability to promote individual posts and pages, but then also further use algorithms to limit the exposure of those type of websites and accounts to limit the amount of reach that a an account business or otherwise has with their their user base. Alright. And this is not conjecture, this happens all the time. Um, it is just the process of uh of adhering to acceptable use policies, and most social media platforms do not like weapons, and again, knives are one of them. So the largest problem with that is that though you might see some level of success and supportability within a given social media platform today, it does not look the same as it did five years ago, um, and even two years ago. Things are progressively changing in the world of how data is searched and uh how impressions are augmented, so the like what you actually see out of a social media platform, and it's getting so specific that if there is anything that a social media platform feels is damaging to their brand or to their user base or otherwise, uh, you know, the political and bureaucratic side of it, then they will uh limit your exposure or remove your account. And we're seeing that in in droves with um you know political posts and um other other type of social dissonance posts um that that might have fact checking or uh you know people are are getting uh banned or their accounts suspended for a certain period of time because of it. So it's just the world with the that we live in. Problem being, as a knife maker, if you're looking for social media to provide a user base for you to market your goods to, um the more restrictive they get, the more difficult it is for you to get visibility. So gone are the days of being able to post something on Instagram and getting you know thousands of views on videos or on posts because um thousands of people are not looking at your stuff. And if you try to promote it, um they're gonna go back to their acceptable use policy and say it's a a banned or a legal um uh product or whatever, you know, it's against their acceptable use policy, and though you might not be out any money, uh you won't be able to complete that campaign or boost your posts or anything like that. So, in the interest of being able to actually sell a product, you need to be able to have it on something where you control every aspect of its operation and visibility. Now that does come with uh certain caveats because even having a website on the internet today, you're still subject to the ability for search engines to pick it up. If Google decides for some reason that they don't like something that you have on your website, uh they can choose to deprioritize or or lower the relevance of that automatically, and you show up lower on search engines, or you don't have relevance built out in search engines, and it's all part of the machine. So, kind of with that idea in mind, um there are lots of website builders out there that you can use in order to create a website. Um a few of those from uh from the lowest end of the price range uh start out with like GoDaddy and Squarespace and Wix, and then you go up to probably the you know smaller medium business um uh uh type of accounts and services with with Shopify and Big Commerce, and finally Magento, but I don't think that any normal knife making uh company will need the the powerhouse that is Magento to run their e-commerce stores that's usually uh reserved for um high custom customizability and vast inventories and uh things like that. So um, you know, there's not that many uh large knife companies that even use Magento. I think maybe Smoky Mount Mountain Knifeworks uh uses it and a few others, but um, you know, not many. So whatever the case may be. What specifically you're looking for when you're developing a website is ease of inventory management and being able to present a narrative on your website that tells the story about you, your and your knife making, all right. Idea at least being that you know when somebody hits your website, they can see anything that you have for sale, they can learn uh something about you as a maker, your journey through knife making, and you they can see examples of your work. So that kind of covers the the basics. So any platform that you're looking for, it either needs to be able to host a website that you have not inventory in as an e-commerce experience, but maybe available knives and pictures and things, and they have to reach out to you, which those are fairly simplistic uh development efforts, or um e like full e-commerce platforms that have a shop and have inventory and and uh associate uh you know product IDs and SKUs and prices and uh a cart experience where you can select something, check out on it, it reduces the inventory by whatever number you have as your as your your inventory levels and so on and so forth. Um the expectation that you should have around cost for a website if it is only presenting your product, but it's not you know an e-commerce platform, is probably less than $150 a year. For websites that have e-commerce capabilities, you're probably looking at somewhere between three and four hundred dollars on the on the lower side. Um, if you're going to to Shopify, you're probably looking about five hundred dollars, you know, somewhere around there. Uh, most websites have plans available and you can kind of work through that. Um when you're selecting the platform that you're going to use, you know, you have to decide on whether you just want a regular website to show you know your gallery and things like that, and about you know, the about you page, or whether you want e-commerce, and then uh there's some decisions that you have to make on e-commerce platforms and how much volume you're going to be doing. Um, you know, if you're selling 20-30 knives a year, um, that's a little bit different than if you're selling hundreds of them in a semi-production or production uh type of scenario, and uh the development requirements for the website change quite a bit depending on how complex you're getting, and an interactive uh cart and product page and inventory and everything like that does get a little bit time consuming and complex as to how you express your products in a way that makes sense to an end user and uh enables the purchasing process, all right. So when when you have make these decisions, you're going to have to also decide on whether you need help with that or whether you can do it all yourself. Now, I now my experience with knife making and knives is that most people in the uh tangible goods and crafts uh don't have an exceptional amount of uh technical prowess, and that's why I build out quite a few websites per year. It's because I'm usually helping out um friends and and other people that I'm introduced to because the the world of the of the website and e-commerce and everything like that can be a com uh a little bit complex to navigate, especially if you don't understand anything about the code that goes into it and uh so on and so forth. However, what I will say is you can you know kind of short circuit the technical deficit you might have by going with something like GoDaddy or Wix or even Squarespace at times, because a lot of the website building experience is point and click. So they've gotten uh good enough with with web development platforms we where you can build a website out primarily by yourself. You can even use templates that are there to give you a guidance, and all you're doing is changing configurations, which are all you know text-based or things like that, you know, it walks you through the process of doing that. So the only real advice I can give you otherwise on how to navigate this space is that if you feel like you're out of depth and you feel like you have to muddle through developing a website, then you really have to think about what the purpose is of the website. If it is to sell, if it is to present your story and everything and monetize that through um selling on your website, then you want it to be the very best and you and the most user-friendly experience that it can be. And maybe if you're not capable of doing that, you have to enlist help. Um, developers, depending on whether uh they're experienced in uh general e-commerce or website development or using other platforms to make it easier for you to manage, um, you know, their prices vary. It could be you know several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. And I've worked on websites anything from you know the you know $500 range up to um well, several tens of thousands of dollars for complex builds, but uh in general for knife making somewhere under $7,000. It just kind of depends. Um, I wouldn't expect in general that you that anyone listening to this would need to spend that much money, um, but there are some complications if you don't know how to do it, and there's a lot of hours involved for a developer because at the end of the day, what you're paying for in a developer and an administrator is the number of hours it takes to get everything done that you need done uh from an inventory and website perspective and whatnot. So you know the mileage and costs may vary, but once you get your website built, your next priority really should be funneling the traffic that you have on social media to your website for purchasing. So instead of doing uh you know raffles and giveaways and um you know selling products or doing drops inside of the context of social media, uh maybe actually set up and configure all of that on your website so you're able to do those same things and then list that website, that section of the website up on social media and drive your customers to the website. That way you're not actually performing any quasi-illegal activities on social media. Um, you're you're handling that all off-site on your website, and by doing that, you're also um making your website top of mind for your collectors and uh and uh community holistically so that way they know that if you're going to do something, it's gonna be on your website. So I I hope that helps. Um it really only scratches the surface on how complex websites can be and all the code and other things like that that are involved with it. However, um if you find a fairly simplistic um web editing uh software or or you know a platform like Wix or Squarespace or GoDaddy, um it should be fairly intuitive. And I think that you can muddle through building a website that uh at least gives you a presence online and you can forward uh people to see your work and then reach out and contact you.