#how to make a website on squarespace

[dxsole]

panic! at the disco? did you mean

[scyaxe]

lowkey how hard would it be to get a web store running

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

I'm loving the animal reference repository!! Such a fantastic resource and I can't wait to use some of these photos for studies or painting reference. I was just wondering, is there a way to download the photos from the website? On one hand I can imagine you disabled this purposefully to prevent AI scraping or other unwanted use. But at the same time it can be handy for people to have high res photos to work with, and I personally like to have my reference photos in the photoshop file next to my drawing. (Also I was one of the people who asked about contributing photos. I honestly think the first 3 points you mentioned could be worked around quite easily. However the 4th (workload) is one I can't argue against of course. I'll see if I can make a small donation and if you ever do open up contributions... I'll be happy to share!!)

Yes! I want people to be able to save images, and you can! But Squarespace's image gallery setup makes it a pain to do. I've actually got a page on the site showing how to do that - do I need to make it more prominent?

The important thing to know is that when you click on a single image, it opens in a "lightbox" display, which for complicated web reasons won't let you save files directly from it. Saving has to be done when viewing the larger gallery page (the species page with all the images).

On mobile:

In gallery view, tap and hold on the image again you’re interested in saving. Tap “Save to Photos” to save it to your phone.

This will not work if you are viewing a single image full-screen on mobile. If viewing the image full-screen you can take a screenshot, but the resulting image will be lower resolution than if you saved it from the gallery view.

How this looks will vary on Android devices, but I've had friends confirm the pathing is pretty much the same even if the layout is a little different.

On desktop:

In gallery view, right click on the image you want to save and click on the “Save Image As” option.

This will not work if you are viewing a single shot full-screen in lightbox mode. If viewing a photo full-screen you can take a screenshot, but the resulting file will be lower resolution than if you saved it from the gallery view.

This worked when I set the site up, shoot me a note if it's broken since then.

The gallery pages allow me to mass-upload files so I don't have to do individual photo uploads, and they're more responsive on mobile... but this is the downside to that ease of use on the back-end.

[dervampireprince]

so i've been coding a website

home of: the dervampireprince fanart museum, prince's art gallery, a masterlist of resources for making websites and list of web communities, and more!

[18+, minors dni (this blog is 18+ and the art gallery and art museum pages on my site have some 18+ only artworks)]

littlevampire . neocities . org (clickable link in pinned post labelled 'website')

if you don't follow me on twitch or aren't in my discord, you might not know i've been coding my own website via neocities since june 2024. it's been a big labour of love, the only coding i'd done before is a little html to customize old tumblr themes, so i've learnt a lot and i've been having so much fun. i do link to it on my carrds but not everyone will know that the icon of a little cat with a wrench and paintbrush is the neocities logo, or even what neocities is.

neocities is a free website builder, but not like squarespace or wix that let you build a website from a template with things you can drag in, it's all done with html and css code (and you can throw in javascript if you wanna try hurting your brain /hj). i love the passion people have for coding websites, for making their own websites again in defiance of social medias becoming less customisable and websites looking boring and the same as each other. people's neocities sites are so fun to look through, looking at how they express themselves, their art galleries, shrines to their pets or favourite characters or shows or toys or places they've been.

why have i been making a website this way?

well i used to love customising my tumblr theme back when clicking on someone's username here took you to their tumblr website, their username . tumblr . com link that you could edit and customise with html code. now clicking a username takes you to their mobile page view, a lot of users don't even know you can have a website with tumblr, the feature to have a site became turned off by default, and i've heard from some users that they might have to pay to unlock that feature.

i've always loved the look of old geocities and angelfire websites, personalised sites, and i've grown tired of every social media trying to look the same as each other, remove features that let users customise their profiles and pages more. and then i found out about neocities.

are you interested in making a site too?

neocities is free, though you can pay to support them. there is no ads, no popups, they have no ai tool scraping their sites, no tos that will change to suddenly stop allow 18+ art. unlike other website hosters, neocities does have a sort of social media side where you do have a profile and people can follow you and leave comments on your site and like your updates, but you can ignore this if you want, or use it to get to know other webmasters.

to quote neocities "we are tired of living in an online world where people are isolated from each other on boring, generic social networks that don't let us truly express ourselves. it's time we took back our personalities from these sterilized, lifeless, monetized, data mined, monitored addiction machines and let our creativity flourish again."

i'd so encourage anyone interested to try making a website with neocities. w3schools is an excellent place to start learning coding, and there are free website templates you can copy and paste and use (my site is built off two different free codes, one from fujoshi . nekoweb . org and the other from sadgrl's free layout builder tool).

your site can be for anything:

a more fun and interactive online business card (rather than using carrd.co or linktree)

a gallery of your art/photos/cosplays/etc

a blog

webshrines to your a character, film, song, game, toy, hobby, your pet - anything can be a shrine!

a catalogue/database/log of every film you've watched, every place you've visited, birds you've seen, plushies you own, every blinkie gif you have saved, your ocs and stories, etc

hosting a webcomic

a fanwiki/fansite that doesn't have endless ads like fandom . com does (i found a cool neocities fansite for rhythm game series pop'n music and it's so thorough, it even lists all the sprites and official art for every character)

i follow a website that just reviews every video game based on whether or not it has a frog in it, if the frog is playable, if you can be friends with it. ( frogreview . neocities . org )

the only html i knew how to write before starting is how to paragraph and bold text. and now i have a whole site! and i'm still working on new stuff for it all the time.

i just finished making a page on my website called 'explore the web'. this page lists everything you might need to know when wanting to make or decorate your website. it lists:

other neocities sites i think are cool and i'm inspired by, check them out for more ideas of what your site could look like and contain!

website building resources

coding help and tutorials

free website html code layouts you can use if you don't want too start coding from scratch

places to find graphics and decorative images for your site (transparent background pngs, pixels, favicons, stamps, blinkies, buttons, userboxes, etc)

image generators for different types of buttons and gifs (88x31 buttons, tiny identity buttons, heart locket open gifs, headpat gifs)

widgets and games and interactive elements you can add to your site (music players, interactive pets like gifypet and tamanotchi, hit counters, games like pacman and crosswords, guestbooks and chatboxes, etc)

web manifestos, guides, introductions and explanations of webmastering and neocities (some posts made by other tumblr users here are what made me finally want to make my own site and discover how too)

art tools, resources and free drawing programs

web communities! webrings, cliques, fanlistings, pixel clubs (pixel art trades) and more!

other fun sites that didn't fit in the other categories like free sheet music sites, archives, egotistical.goat (see a tumblr users audio posts/reblogs as a music playlist), soul void (a wonderful free to play video game i adore), an online omnichord you can play, and more.

i really hope the 'explore the web' page is helpful, it took three days to track down every link and find resources to add.

and if you want to check out my site there's more than just these pages. like i said in the beginning, i recently finished making:

the dervampireprince fanart museum

every piece of fanart i've received (unless the sender asked me to keep it private) has been added to this museum and where possible links back to the original artists post of that art (a lot the art was sent to me via discord so i can't link to the original post). every piece of fanart sent to me now will be added on their unless you specifically say you don't want it going on there. there's also links to my fanworks guide on there and how to send me fanart.

other pages on my site

about me (including favourite media, quizzes, comfort characters, kins, and more)

art gallery (art i've made, sorted by month)

graphics (so far it's just stamps i've made but plan to remake this section of my site)

media log (haven't started the 2025 one yet, but a log of all films, tv, writing, music, theatre, fandoms, characters and ships i got into in 2024)

silly web pets

shrines

site map

update log

my shrines so far:

i have ones for lucifer from supernatural, sam winchester from supernatural, charuca minifigures (arcade prizes i wanted as a kid that i'm trying to finish collecting as an adult), my waifuroulette discord tcg collection. my masterlist of every lgbt+ marvel character is a wip. i love making each shrine look different and suit the character/fandom/thing the shrine is about. and then there's also:

the european musical section

i ramble about them a lot and it's no surprise there's multiple shrines for them. i fell in love with german musical theatre in 2020 and that expanded in being interested in all non-english language musical theatre and trying to spread the word of it and how they deserve to be as known as english-language musicals. one musical in particular, elisabeth das musical, is my biggest special interest so expect a very detailed shrine about that one day.

so far this part of the site includes

'enter the theatre' an interactive web theatre where you choose a ticket and that musical will play on the stage (click a ticket and the embedded youtube video for that musical will appear on the stage and play. i dealt with javascript for the first time to bring the vision i had for this page alive, it might be slow but i hope enjoyable)

elisabeth das musical webshrine [not made yet]

tanz der vampire webshrine [not made yet, might abandon the idea]

my favourite european musicals [not made yet]

a masterlist of european musicals [a wip, only two musicals listed so far, i am listing every musical and every production they've had, this was a word document i kept for a long time that i always wanted to share somehow and this page is how i'll do it. there's no other list for european musicals out there so i guess it's up to me as always /lh]

the future for my site

i will update my art gallery, the fanart museum, my media log and other collections as often as i can. there's so many more pages i want to add including:

profiles for my ocs

finish my european musical masterlist

finish my 'every marvel lgbt+ character' masterlist (i have no love for marvel or disney's lgbt+ representation nor are all of these characters good representation and a lot are very minor characters, but for some reason i have gotten hyperfixated on this topic a few times so here comes a masterlist)

make shrines for loki (marvel), ares (hades), my sylvanian families collection, vocaloid (and/or vocaloid medleys), my plushie collection, pullip dolls

make a 'page not found' page

and i have one big plan to essentially make a site within a site, and make a website for my monster boy band ocs. but make it as if it was a real band, an unfiction project (think like how welcome home's website portrays welcome home as if it was a real show). this site would have pages for the band members, their albums, merch and maybe a pretend shop, and a fake forum where you could see other characters in the story talking and click on their profiles to find out more about them. and then once that's all done i want to start posting audios about the characters and then people can go to the website to find out more about them. that's my big plan anyway. i hope that sounds interesting.

i also want to make an effort to try and join some website communities. be brave and apply for some webrings and fanlistings, and make some pixel art and join some of the amazing pixel clubs out there.

but yeah, that's my site, that's neocities. i hope that was interesting. i hope it encourages people to make their own site, or at least look at other's small websites and explore this part of the internet. and if you go and check out mine feel free to drop a message in the guestbook on the homepage, or follow me on neocities if you have/make an account.

[dominiqueramseyart]

Do you have any tips on going about making a website for your art/yourself

Think about your site layout Research the website layout you want to fit your art the best first, above anything!

I had to make this seperate blog because my currently portfolio site does not best fit my art needs, but I also can't up and delete it. So now I am paying for 2 seperate websites.

Domain name and coding If you don't already, I recommend learning basic coding (html/CSS) so you can have full control over your site. Squarespace (my portfolio site) is ok but im limited on what I can do with it. Im currently learning how to do HTML myself.

It will cost money on top of paying for the site hosting, but get an official domain for your site. Be sure that this domain name is easy enough to spell and represents you in some way (your name, art subject, etc.

Accessibility Take accessibility into consideration when creating your site. Such as using a max of 3 different fonts, have colors contrast each other, use alt text where you can, and have your font be dyslexic friendly.

The dyslexic friendly font is typically the less aesthetic fonts, but at least your audience will be able to read it lol.

[trungles]

Squarespace updated their whole thing, which meant that I had to go back and redo my website even after I’d just made a nice new landing page. After much grumbling, I finally updated my website again in a way that makes sense with the new squarespace website nonsense. There are finally appropriate links to my buy my books and art 😭 lmao I don’t know how I skated by for so long without this.

[thefrogman]

I can't believe you forgot the five thousand dollar HDMI cable! That's the most important part! Never mind the fact that most HDMI cables do basically the same thing and have very few specialized features, don't think about it. Never mind the fact that gold plating is worthless on a digital signal. Spend five thousand dollars on a gold plated HDMI lead, right now!

You can never go wrong with AudioQuest. If you want overpriced cable nonsense, they got you covered.

Meet the Dragon "10K" HDMI cable.

For a cool $2300 you can get "Level 7 Noise Dissipation."

LEVEL 7!!!!!

Check out this totally scientific description of this feature...

"Traditional “100% shielding” is not enough to guard against the increasingly prevalent effects of Wi-Fi, cellular, and satellite radiation. In AudioQuest HDMI cables, all 19 conductors are Direction-Controlled to minimize the RF Noise that damages performance by “directing” or draining it away from the most vulnerable circuits. In Level 7 Noise Dissipation, high-loss graphene is added to the carbon layer sandwiched between layers of metal around the 4 FRL + eARC pairs, a "global" high-loss carbon layer is placed around all conductors, we incorporate our patented 72v Dielectric-Bias System, and even the drain wires are 100% Perfect-Surface Silver."

I'm sure all of that would hold up to scientific scrutiny.

I mean, sure, you are just transferring 1s and 0s back and forth, and as long as all of the 1s and 0s get where they need to go, your picture will look exactly the same with a $10 cable as it does with a $2300 cable... but I really do need that Level 7 dissipation. My house is constantly flooded with satellite radiation.

Yes, there are shitty HDMI cables. And some of them struggle to meet the bandwidth they claim on the packaging. This will cause no picture or sound or it will cause dropouts or skipped frames. Sometimes you will get crazy artifacts that pop in and out. But you cannot improve video or audio quality with a fancy cable.

You will not see magical colors so bright you cum in your shorts.

You will not hear indescribably intense bass that will violently vibrate your testicles--killing your sperm. That was microplastics, okay?

You will get the data that was encoded into the media file.

You just need a cable that can pass along that data without incident. Buying a "good" cable is actually recommended. Blue Jeans Cable is a great brand that has high quality control standards and a good warranty. They are a little spendy, but everything is a good value.

Their website is built on ancient GeoCities technology...

So you know they prioritize their budget toward R&D and product design over graphic designer or a subscription to Squarespace.

I buy their cables because they always meet the data bandwidth they claim and they can take abuse due to using tougher materials that last.

My best advice when buying an HDMI or other data cable is to figure out how much bandwidth you need, and then make sure in the product description they mention the data rate.

So if you want 4K resolution at 60 Hz, you will need a cable that does at least 18 gigabits per second. If you need 4K/120Hz/4:4:4/12 bit, then the bandwidth should be 48 Gbps. And if you get more bandwidth than you actually need, the cable is backwards compatible.

Here is a handy chart...

USUALLY, if they list the actual data rate (Gbps) in the product description, you can trust they certified it can pass that much data through. It's when you don't see any Gbps rating in the product description that you should move on to another cable.

(USB standards are insanely confusing, but the same advice applies. Try to find out the data rate you need and research to make sure the cable is capable of that.)

I'm afraid all of this cable nonsense goes back a long way. When I turned 16 I immediately applied for a job at Best Buy selling computers. And I really loved that job. So many people were clueless about computers back then and I was very good at assessing their needs and making sure they went home with the equipment and accessories that would suit them within their budget.

And if they tried to buy the eMachines computers, I would tell them they might as well set their money on fire.

Throw directly into trash because this is some hot garbage.

Unfortunately my managers pressured me to sell warranties and accessories that I didn't really believe in. The hardest thing they asked me to do was sell people gold-plated printer cables. This is back when printers still used a parallel port connection.

They wanted me to sell these for $40 to $60 (depending on length).

Even though these bad boys did the exact same thing for only $20.

I could actually see on the store's computer how much markup these cables had. The cheap ones cost Best Buy the exact same amount as the gold ones.

Maybe they weren't as aesthetically pleasing, but those cheaper cables were built like fuckin' tanks. I probably still have some of these in my basement that would function just as well as they did 25 years ago.

The ONLY difference was the "gold" contacts on the ends. But my managers told me to lie to customers. I was to tell them you would get much faster print speeds, better colors, and more DPI (dots per inch). But both cables sent the same 1s and 0s. They either worked or they didn't. The only tiny advantage is that gold contacts are slightly less resistant to corrosion over time. But I have yet to see that happen within the lifespan of any cable.

So I would tell customers it was a waste of money and lie to my managers saying the customers weren't interested.

"Did you tell them it was faster?" "Yes." (A lie.) "Did you tell them it made the colors better?" "Yes." (Also a lie.) "Well, we're going to have to work on your sales presentation skills." "Sounds good, boss." (Whatever, dude.)

[shinyzango]

Does anyone know a webdesigner or at least someone good with webdesign who could help me?

I've been banging my head over revamping my website on SquareSpace to make it look more interesting but my dumbass brain can't come up with any layout or palette color that looks right.

And doesn't help that I need to fix up my website so I can finally set up the page for commissions prices and such…

I am willing to pay for the disturb of course, but yeah I'm. Tired of sitting here with a website that I don't like anymore and don't know how to fix it up…

[red-dye40]

I'm curious as to how you made the site for nfrtg! It's awesome :)

oooooh thank u! im not really a coding girl at all so i am truly just using squarespace to do all the heavy lifting but so far it’s been overall reliable (i’ve had to cheat a couple things here and there, and SOME formatting decisions keep getting undone/don’t apply to certain screen resolutions so that’s extremely annoying.)

i make all the lil pieces of the site individually in photoshop and illustrator and plan out the basics of the layout on indesign. to me it feels like collaging or scrapbooking and it’s soooooo nice. literally my fav part of the whole process is getting to slowly piece a page together with all my little pictures.

crowdsauce pages take so long because of all the individual components i’m making, it’s like doing a bunch of side quests in an rpg pretty much—i’ll be like “okay so for this next post this user is going to dox newf so they’re gonna post an image of all of newf’s info, but in order to post that photo i have to make a bunch of fake screenshots for different websites, so first i have to go into the wayback machine to find out what facebook looked like in 2011” etc etc

it’s so funny because the images literally end up so tiny but i wouldn’t be able to live with myself if they weren’t as detailed as possible

[kradeelav]

Hey Krad, do you have any advice for starting a website like yours? I love the idea of starting a website to host my fandom and personal portfolio, and maybe get back a piece of the old internet. How did you put yours together?

hey there! great question, and the good news is there's a lot of ways to go about it.

the bad news is, there's a lot of ways to go about it.

to simplify things, there's kind of ... three "tiers" to the back-end of how to create a website. let's break it down below.

high ease, low customization. (wix, weebly, squarespace, etc. you pay a company + they give you a bunch of themes and pre-made pages for you to drop images in.) can have one of these online in 2-3 hours, but it often "feels" templated and sterile.

medium ease, medium customization. (making a theme from scrach with tumblr's custom code editor, hybrid sites with some pages in pure code, some with wordpress grafted onto some subdomains). this is what i'd classify my site as, as I use wordpress for my logs for brainless updating. while i'm confident coding single/static pages, i just don't have the time or brainwidth right now to make a complex archiving system.

low ease, high customization. (neocities, pure html/css/coding). the downsides to this is oftentimes these sites are not phone-friendly, and there's a steep learning curve. but for the quintessential "old internet" experience, by far the best route to take. there's also something really empowering about learning why things work the way they do.)

some of this can be super intimidating if you're starting from 0 coding knowledge; there's no shame in switching to a templating software. hell i started with weebly and dicking around in tumblr's custom code template for a solid 5 years before making my current site, and that was with a previous 5 years of sketchy html experience) you're not gonna learn everything overnight.

but! as long as you keep a curious and inquisitive mind, you can't go wrong.

one last encouragement: there's kind of a mini renaissance with custom sites right now, especially in neocities circles, so you're kinda in luck in that there's more resources than ever. i love scumsuck's guides, and fancoders (the community) is also all over this too.

good luck!

[everydaygremlin]

How do I make a website and like.. not have to pay,,,

neocities dot org i think. web domains are so expensive nowadays its sad. google used to have googke domains and they were so cheap but alas squarespace purchased it

[aluhnim]

I have a Member's Only Blog!

It's basically like Patreon, but hosted on my own Squarespace website. It gives me more control over how I organize my space and make it more and more accessible to my followers and kind patrons.

It's only 5 USD a month, which helps me a lot with grocery bills (and maybe rent in the future)!

Sign up is available here!

[jadeglas]

Wow, it's been a hot minute since I was last here in an interacting, not lurking way, but let's try this again!

I'm Jade, a 30-something year old mama and storyteller cleverly disguised as a grown ass woman. I have trouble with consistency and I hate being in charge, but I promise I can tell a good story.

Things have been gradually getting to be too much over the past ... 8 or 9 months or so? I have a bad habit in which I'll set reasonable goals and schedules for myself, get bored at the difficulty level, and start increasing the intensity of too many things, too quickly, without giving myself time to adjust to anything properly, and then wonder why I feel like I'm drowning. It's something I'm working on.

There's this app called Sprout? It helps. You get a cute bird friend to help encourage you to complete tasks and take care of yourself. Message me if you're on Sprout, too, and you want a friend!

So yeah, I'm a mama first, always. I started working part time at my youngest gremlin's preschool, but I'll be backing off that a little bit soon, so that should give me a consistent day to create.

My original stories that I first started telling everyone about? They've changed so much! I have a different structure, now, and so many potential new stories to write. The same premise, though - A world in which a small portion of the population has superpowers. A country in which you either register your superpowers with the government so that you can use them legally (sanctioned), or don't register them, gaining the title non-Sanctioned, and risk imprisonment or worse if you're found out. And of course, the theme to the series is action/thriller romance in which the villain (or vigilante) gets the girl, because heroes are nice and all, but at the end of the day, don't you want someone willing to burn the world down just to see you smile? I'll go on more about it in another post, don't want to make this one drag on too long.

Oh! And I started a business, bc of course I didn't have enough I was trying to do already, but it's already registered and legal and everything, even if I don't have my own website up yet. I've been learning about how to put websites together, so if you have any questions about that, feel free to drop a question to me! Once I get over the imposter syndrome, I'll be wanting to work with authors, especially romance authors, and I know Squarespace best, but I know a lot of "best practice" stuff that's helpful for any platform, too.

So yeah, if any of this peaks your interest, feel free to say hi. Like I said, I'm inconsistent and trying to work out why I'm not getting notifications that people have been messaging me? I set an alarm to help me remember to check that regularly, so communication should improve (if you have messaged me and are waiting on a response, I'm so sorry!)

And if you're a writer, too, tell me about what you're working on! I like most stuff and I'll be happy to gush about your fic with you, fan or oc!

Take care of yourself, ok?

~ Jade

[gracielas-photography]

🛠️ Behind the Scenes: How I’m Prepping to Launch My Photography Biz 🎬📸

Starting a creative business isn’t just about having a camera and an Instagram page (although those definitely help). It’s also about building the right structure behind the scenes so everything runs smoothly—especially when you're offering a service like photography that relies on you being the product and the process.

So here’s a little peek into what my business operations plan looks like, and how I plan on getting everything together to officially launch my photography brand for small businesses here in the Niagara Region.

🎯 What I’m Offering (and How to Making it Happen)

At its core, my business is all about creating branded visual content for local entrepreneurs, shops, creators, and hospitality spaces. Think product shoots, branding sessions, lifestyle visuals—stuff that helps people show up online looking like they mean business (because they do).

I’m not selling a physical product, but I am creating deliverables—photos, curated image sets, sometimes even moodboards or creative direction—and those take resources. So while I’m not sourcing inventory, I do need to keep my toolkit solid.

🧰 Tools + Gear I Use

Here’s what I already have in place (or am investing in):

Camera gear – I shoot with a mirrorless DSLR that handles both sharp product shots and moody lifestyle work.

Lighting – Mostly natural light for now, but i plan on getting reflectors and invest in portable softbox for indoor setups.

Laptop & editing software – Lightroom and Photoshop are my go-tos, and I’ve got presets I’ve developed to keep my work consistent.

Props & backgrounds – I’m slowly building a small collection of flatlays, textures, and versatile props that work across brands. I also plan to thrift or DIY a lot of this to stay creative and budget-conscious.

Client booking tools – At the moment i only have an email that is specifically used only for my photography but i also have my Instagram. It's not exactly fancy but it works.

⏳ Can I Get Everything in Time?

Totally. Most of the tools I need, I already have or can get easily. Props and creative resources will grow over time, but the basics are here. I also plan to rent studio space as needed, depending on what the shoot calls for. A lot of clients want their photos done in their space anyway (shops, salons, cafés), so being mobile is a win.

📝 Licenses + Permits?

Because I’m a service-based business working independently, I’ll be operating as a sole proprietor. I’ll register my business name and handle any tax stuff that comes with that.

As for licenses, I don’t need anything major unless I’m renting commercial space regularly or doing shoots that involve permits (like certain public areas or drone photography). But I’ll stay on top of that as things grow.

🚀 What I Need to Launch

My launch won’t be a big grand opening—it’s more of a soft rollout. I just want to get in front of people who need the work and start booking. But to really make it official, here’s what I’m putting in place:

A clean, simple portfolio website or landing page (I’m thinking Squarespace)

A few strong sample projects that show what I can do

Clear pricing/packages that are easy to understand and flexible for different needs

Local networking—connecting with business owners, visiting shops, going to markets, talking to people

Consistent Instagram content to show off behind-the-scenes and finished work

💡 The Big Vision

I want to build something real—not just a gig, not just a side hustle. I want this business to feel like a creative partner to the local brands I want to/ will work with. Like, yeah, I’ll take your product photos, but I also want to help you figure out how to use those photos to actually grow your business.

I want to keep it collaborative, community-focused, and flexible. And I want my clients to feel seen, supported, and proud of how their brand shows up in the world.

So that’s where I’m at. Bit by bit, getting the tools in place, building the vibe, and getting ready to hit “go.”

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Does youtube have mandated scripts now? It seems like every time I stumble upon a new channel they say the exact same shit verbatim, and I'm not just talking about the standard "like and subscribe and ring that bell," I mean they all mention how close they are to some milestone and then show a graph explaining how they get X number of views per video but only Y percent are from subscribers. Like what even is that? Why do they all feel the need to give us behind-the-scenes looks at how desperate they are? Their videos can't ever just speak for themselves, they all have to take a full minute of the runtime to break down their channel analytics like they're tech bros pitching their startups to investors. Are they even making videos for people anymore, or is this something that advertisers expect of them? Brilliant and squarespace and skillshare and audible and raid shadow legends and all sorts of VPNs, are they the ones calling the shots for creators now? "A channel with X subscribers generates an average of Z clicks to our website per ad read, so we will only sponsor you if you can consistently hit that threshold." Maybe it's simply a bandwagon thing, like one guy started doing it and then he got hundreds of knockoffs who thought that's just what big name channels are supposed to do, but it feels too systemic to be random.