21st Century Digital Boy

I don’t know when or if I will return to making physical art—the future is unclear.

I don’t enjoy managing sales tax, and selling digital goods and services allows me to skip that process (for now).

Because I’m not selling physical work, I have a Shopify account I’m not using. I paid for the annual plan, which doesn’t expire until July of this year, so the account sits dormant until I decide what I want to do next.

I could keep the account and turn it into my digital download empire, or I could cancel the account early without expecting a prorated refund and start a second site on Squarespace, where The Hungry is hosted.

It would be easier to manage if both sites were on the same platform, and since I just built The Hungry site on Squarespace, I’ll likely end up there.

The biggest problem is that there isn’t a single app that does everything I need.

Squarespace offers the easiest customization and is a good platform for blogging. They also have email newsletter support, but I don’t know how it compares to ESPs.

Shopify is the hands-down best option for e-commerce. Still, they purposely do not add certain functionality, relying on third-party software companies to provide apps to fill the gaps, each with a $ 19-a-month subscription. Also, I don’t recommend using them for blogging and newsletters.

ConvertKit has been great for the newsletter and digital products, but from a design standpoint, it’s stunted compared to Squarespace.

This blog is on Beehiiv, and I dig the platform as an ESP, but there’s no native capability for selling digital products. In fact, there’s not a lot of opportunity to monetize internally unless you subscribe to one of the higher subscription tiers.

The short story is that there’s a lot to think about, and the future of the Dave Conrey brand is a little murky, but it is guaranteed to be clearer soon.