Designing & Store Setup

Store & Book Process - from idea to in the store here

If you've been to the Patreon page you know about the "Behind-the-scenes" stuff there, and the "What's Needed" post, which tell the whole story, all of the software and hardware, tricks, every bit of what went into this whole Samurai Ruach project to get it done. I do that because, basically, life is life, but living it is a jerk sometimes, so for whoever needs the help, here's how I got THIS SITE (and store here) done. If you didn't know how to do it, and wanted a straight up, no sales pitch, no "like and subscribe" but "JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU DID SO I CAN GO DO IT AND GET ON MY FEET!!!" answer, here it is so you can Go be successful. This whole page is linked, btw.

Also, If you go to the "READ ONLINE" tab a the top, or button in the revolving slider menu at the bottom of every page, it takes you to a directory listing of ALL of the Samurai Ruach reading material. It's all categorized and linked by platform. It's an organic process, so some things may be linked, and some may not. Some things may be draft versions, so you get a sneak peek at things before they're done. There's a lot there. "READ ONLINE"....

Fun-fact: #1 - I originally made this site because I was looking to use the Print On Demand services/companies CustomCat and Printful for merch, but couldn't link them to Patreon. I needed a way to make the site pay for itself to stay up, and also to pay me, so I could keep creating. If I have to go out and slave the last bit of soul and life out of me again, after learning everything I've learned, and seen and experienced everything I have... I'd do something. It would not be worth being here on tis planet, in "this life" like that. Flat out. People pray to the author and creator of Armageddon for an escape from Armageddon. Think about that. Also, just because you had a great week in prison, doesn't mean you're not still in prison. So, print on demand...

POD or Print On Demand is where I can go to a POD website with my logo or image or thing... I pick from their selection of shirts, hats, mugs, bags, socks, cards, stickers, whatever.... I put my image on their stuff... I post that picture on my site which is linked to their site. You come to my site, you see it, click to buy.... the order goes to POD company. POD company prints and ships the order. Most will keep their cut, then send you yours. Some will just charge you, and you pay for it with what the customer paid you. But there's no overhead. You don't have to store anything. It's print (or make the stuff)... on demand (when someone orders it). Nothing exists until it's ordered, so there's nothing to pay for.

THE MERCH CREATION PROCESS

I ended up going with Printful who connects directly to WIX where I built the site that you're on right now. I had to link the WIX store to PRINTFUL, so I could design merch in PRINTFUL, and it would then be added to the WIX store (here). Printful shows you the cost they'll charge you (but not with the sales tax or shipping prices) so you know "If I sell a shirt for $10, they'll charge $6 and I'll make $4. All I have to worry about is sales tax (paid by whoever buys it), and what I'll be charged for shipping (also paid by whoever buys it)."

So in a sense:

(1) You design designs (images, patterns, etc.)... That's what people want. Create that expression of genuine humanity, since everyone is losing theirs, and selling it out for money to BUY HUMANITY... they will always, as long as there is a human spirit... need and want.... art. Music, dance, food, paintings, shows, etc. And Fashion. Something to validate their being, by reflecting their thoughts of their self in the moment. "This is me now. I am somebody. understand and know the divinity of me now." That's all it's about. Put that into a t-shirt.

(2) You build a website (if you didn't already).... You build or buy a custom house (website). It's up on blocks at some dealership. So you get domain name (plot of land and address for your house so people know how to find you), which is HOSTED on a server (a neighborhood or city you will pay property tax/domain aka hosting fees, to). You pay the host (city/Server) for the space your house (website) is sitting on, at the address your purchased (domain name/ .

website address). YAY PAYING FOR THINGS!!!!

(3) Set up your mailbox. Why? So people can contact you, and you can contact them, and they can leave messages about how to buy your art. Plus it's like your strawman. Its the thing that gets all of the ads and notices, it's the social-security number in a way, that connects you to everything online, and the real proof that you exist online. You need an email to get a domain, or build a website, or put up a store. You need an email (maybe) to have the people who will build it to contact you. They're usually free. The more free, the more evil backed they might be, and the more people will go for those because they're free, so the more that company will have power over the people. Make sure it's JUST FOR BUSINESS. GET A DIFFERENT ONE FOR PERSONAL STUFF. AND GET A THIRD ONE FOR RANDOM CRAP so you don't get scammed or hacked or whatever else. Make sure one of those is a Proton free account, and one is a Gmail (linked to the devil and system) account. The Gmail one is your beast chip, in a way. Anyways, so you have all of that. Create all day long in your house/website. No one knows it's there unless they randomly look thru your window, or you invite them in.

(4) You need to to establish your presence... meet the neighbors. Advertise, but nothing major, because you don't have a store. What you want is a Launch-- something to introduce you and your art to everyone else. But there's a lot of confusion out there. So, start in a like-minded circle. No need to re-invent the wheel. Find spots that already love AND WANT your thing, but might be lacking (might also NEED) your thing. Find a place and group where there's enough support for it that you'll be off to a good start. Social media = neighborhood and community groups you can have events with, and talk to, who are interested in the same things you're doing. It's also full of commercials and crap you don't need, that will distract you from creating, and being free and your self, sucking your soul out one hourly scroll that only feels like seconds at a time.

(5) STORE. Not everyone wants a store. Not everyone needs a store. It all depends on what you're selling. If it's music, you can get something like Bandcamp, where you can make an album and embed it into your website.... like so...

There are things like music sites where you can sell directly from that site. All you need is to link some text, or embed a code to install or display a player, like the one here, that links to that site. So if someone buys a song from the link, it goes right to your profile on that site. They have their own ecommerce setup. All you have to do is link it to your bank. Also, there's PAYPAL, and other sites that I don't know about and didn't have time to look into really, but other banking sites, where people can purchase things from your profile or link, and it goes directly to your bank, when they buy your digital products. For physical products you deal with shipping, so you'll have to figure out the rates you'll be charged, so you'll know how much to charge the customer. For instance, if you sell a shirt for $10, but the shipping is $5, you can either say, the shirt cost $15 and it's free shipping, or you can charge $10, so people will see a cheap price, and $5 shipping, for however they feel about that... or you can sell the shirt for $13 and people will think it's higher quality because it costs more, and there's $2 shipping, which they might complain about, but it's only two bucks. They usually feel a lot better paying $15 and getting FREE SHIPPING. It depends on your crowd, and products. Print on demand things usually cost a little more, but they handle the shipping, so you just have to figure out the price breakdowns.

So you have a home (website) and all of that, and a little community who likes your art. How will they buy it? And how will their friends... in France... buy it? You'll need a STORE (a garage to store it all in, and show people, AND SELL IT FROM) on your website to sell your soul.. I mean, art. Same thing. So, depending on how your website is built, and who is hosting it (the city it's in, Wix, Squarespace, Wordpress, etc.), when you build your home (website), it may have an attached garage (comes with a store), or you can use a company (Etsy?) to build one that you can connect to your house (website). So you get them to build teh garage (Store), but you have to connect it to your house (website). You need the walkway (ecommerce), and fence (virus protection), so that you, and others, can get from your house (website) to the garage (store). Some people will just look around the house. Others know what they want and just want to go to the garage, get it, pay you, and move on.

(6) Onto Ecommerce Platforms.... So, you have designs and art (products), and a website (a house), that also has a store (Garage) you can sell your stuff from, so people don't trample all over your house. YOU, just having those, are WAY AHEAD OF A LOT OF PEOPLE. Most just get job and hate life, as they're getting paid to do. You've got a foot in the door to get out, and are prying that door open. Now, Pick your Ecommerce platform. Connect that to the STORE on your site. Ecommerce? Ecommerce platforms are how the money moves from the customer and your store, to the bank accounts of all of the people involved (you, the print-on-demand company, whoever else i involved in the product being created and then shipped to the customer, and then paying everyone their cut). They're your personal STORE MANAGER AND ACCOUNTANT... It's your book keeper person in charge of finances, shipping, orders, and everything else. So, Shopify, and WooCommerce are the big ones there. WooCommerce is free. With those, you can connect the store to the site you built, and can connect whoever else is going to be involved. Ecommerce is that walkway that connects everything, and even an escort person, who deals with anything and everything that has to do with the garage (store), and reports it to the house (website) so you don't have to manage all of that.

Some sites have BUILT-IN ecommerce, like WIX, so everything happens in the WIX store. When you get your Wix site, you get the store, and the ecommerce comes with it and connects it all in one shot. Same for Squarespace. BUT if you already have an ecommerce platform, you can add it to those sites. Patreon did not connect to Printful, so I made a WIX site. Before the WIX site, I was experimenting with WooCommerce and making a site on Wordpress. So I built a site on Wordpress... built a Store on Wordpress... Got WooCommerce to handle all of the ecommerce and business stuff (sales, inventory, payments, etc.), and was looking into CustomCat to be the POD company I'd use... BUT, between the Wordpress website, and CustomCat-- there were too many other charges (fees), connection/linking issues, and things to deal with, and I didn't have time to learn it. WIX was more simplified. I went with WIX. I do enough with this project already and don't need more micro managing things to eat up time I don't have to spend on that.

(7) Speaking of CustomCat... I know, you're an artist and you make your own designs, but someone has to print them. YOU CAN GET A TRANSFER MACHINE. I've done that. One good thing about heat transfers is that you can set up and do jobs on the fly... events, shows, just go out and if you have a generator and a van and a laptop and printer, you can make shirts on the fly ANYWHERE. It really doesn't take a lot. If you get great paper, a great printer, and great shirts, you'll make a lot of cash. And it's CASH, so there's that untraceable factor that's good. I've gone around the country selling shirts with some guys, setting up a tent, they got shirts from a printer who was in the group, and I designed a few things-- they followed sporting events. Pretty good money, but all money runs out. You need a vendors license, and you need to know the rules, like copyright stuff so that the FDA, Trade Commissions, and whoever else don't roll up on you with fines, cease all of your product because the logos look too similar or you're using images that are IP (Intellectual Property) or violate something-- there are laws. A solid way to go? Just make your own designs, build a brand, and own all of your own original stuff. If you end up needing a printer, pick a Print On Demand Company, or buy your own machines to print your own things, or create and paint, and do whatever. There are plenty of people doing bleach painted items. They look pretty amazing, some of them. Anyways, CREATE STUFF.... Take pictures of your products, or get the printers to give you pictures (mockups= pictures you could use as advertisements, or models wearing your stuff or interacting with it) to load onto your site. To get the products made, and get pictures for customers to see and pick from. Usually a POD company does all of that. They get your design, give you the mockups to advertise on your store, connect to your store through your ecommerce platform, get the orders from your site and PRINT ON DEMAND so there's no overhead, do quality control, ship the order, and your ecommerce splits up the money from the transaction so everyone's happy. Now, POD prices are higher than if you did it all your self, but that's the tradeoff. One good thing is, since nothing gets printed until it's ordered, you can design as many variations as you want, and have them all in your store, so people have almost unlimited options-- kind of playing a numbers game. Like if you have 1 solid design, whoever picks that one is your sale. But if you put up 20, then you have more to pick from. Anyways, PICK YOUR PRINT ON DEMAND COMPANY....

(8) So take your designs, make sure they're solid. Connect the ecommerce and POD to your site. Now that it's connected, load your designs into the store to make products and get mockups. Don't go too crazy, because you'll get better and better as you do it more and more, figuring out more tricks to get better designs. I'll do a video or something too about some of this stuff. Like, one on designing a design, and then loading it onto Printful, and making the mockups, and then adding it to the Wix store, so you can see the process.

(9) When you're finished, and it's all finalized by you, then take the product mockups and link the products to your store (whatever store you have. Etsy, WooCommerce, Shopify, etc.).... You can go back and make edits, even after it's live in your store.

(10) Then go back to those groups, social media, and wherever else, and advertise your store and products. They're all just pictures for now.

(11) People see the pictures and want your product. They go to your store on your site. They buy. You get paid. After designing products and customizing it on the POD site, you just sit back and keep designing. They handle the rest.

Printful has a decent selection, but I also like CustomCat because they're more local/close (Michigan?), and I've heard the shipping times are faster. CustomCat (Custom Catalog) also has a different garment printing technique (Digi-Soft) that no one else (at the time of writing this) is doing, which is a blend of the top techniques: supposed to be the best of all worlds. Youtube all of them for your self so you can choose. As far as shirts, which ones, how they hold up, you can look at Shimmy Morris, who did a good study on t-shirts, but just going with a company and getting one is the best way to see if it works for your design.

As for the setup here, I'm still working on "THE HORSE." (laptop), which is at least 4 - 5 years old. The screen is falling off and the LCD panel kinda comes out but it's doing the job but it's time for an upgrade as they say. SPECS: HP Pavilion Laptop 15 cw1xxx - Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.10 GHz - Installed RAM 8.00 GB (5.92 GB usable) - System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor - Pen and touch Pen support.

All of the designs I have I either drew them myself on an XPpen 15.6 Pro tablet which you can get at their site, or did in the old Photoshop 6.0, which is giving me issues at times (understandably). The laptop in general is slow. It sometimes takes me 2 mins (60 seconds) for a letter to pop up when I start to type. Write a 100 page book with that. I was given a desktop which stopped working just as soon as I loaded everything (that would fit) onto it. I says all of that to say, more than likely, your equipment is better than mine, and there's AI out there, so you should easily be able to take this info and do what you have to do, and do way more, faster, and better than me. There's more about my setup, what gets used in this Patreon post here that shows how the character sketches were done.

10/25/25 Update - Also, I'll work on throwing together a video playlist to add to here, of the current tools, even if I'm not able to currently use them. THE HORSE is still kicking, but things are... interesting, so it's still a bunch of ripping out hair and teeth, and overstressing to do simple tasks. Also, still trying to make all of this profitable, make money doing this, but that, too, is a learning curve. Look up Instagram Shoppable Posts.

Directory and listing of ALL of the Samurai Ruach reading material...