I just wanted to give an update on my Educational Online Store. It launched 6 months ago. It contains over 300 products already, and I believe many of them are pretty darn good, but people weren’t really finding the store or buying much.
That’s not terribly motivating, of course. But it was also a bit confusing to me, because my other work is found naturally and bought once in a while (such as my books), even though that work is lower quality and marketed less. It felt like I was doing something completely wrong. I was stuck in my ways, in certain “productive” habits, where the final step—actually selling things—was clearly missing.
And so I took a step back for a month or so. As explained in the previous Spring 2026 Update article, I made my first Steam video game instead. I was forced to take a sort-of-not-really summer holiday, simply because I was sick and tired. (And I do believe that nobody can function when it’s nearly 40 degrees outside all of a sudden.)
When I returned to the online store, all the issues jumped out at me. Perhaps my new experience with seriously marketing that video game, and getting it published on a professional platform, helped out here. I realized the store was just not very findable or usable by those whom it was aimed at: teachers, homeschooling parents, anyone leading a group (activity). It was mostly set up as a general store that happened to sell a lot of educational products, which meant no target audience was finding it.
I spent quite some time overhauling large parts of the store. It’s much more usable by teachers and parents now. A fully defined curriculum sits at the core and can be easily found and navigated. Pricing makes more sense, product types are better communicated, there’s an overview with free resources for people to “try out” the store, and much more. The visual design didn’t change much, but it was certainly massively improved (partially by adding more icons and images everywhere).
I just wanted to give you the summary. I wrote a much longer, detailed article about the full process on the store’s blog: Major Update: Version 2.
As stated, the visual design is next on the list. The store looks quite pretty—especially compared to some very ugly/bland educational platforms—but … it doesn’t really communicate the right things. It looks like a cozy little silly store that sells fantasy books, not a massive educational store that teachers can use professionally. The main font is distinct, readable, and magical, sure, but it’s so far removed from a typical “educational font” or “kids font” that people get the wrong idea.
A complete visual overhaul, if I do it, would be “version 3” of the store. It would be purely an overhaul to make the design communicate the right “vibe”, instead of just “making it prettier / fixing ugly bits”. It’s something that I haven’t done much, which is why I’m still not sure how to do it.
Perhaps the biggest improvement is that I now have a clear, full Curriculum at the center of it all. It allows me to jump around and pick what I want to work on today, instead of being forced to make things in order. It allows visitors to immediately recognize this as an educational platform and easily find the topic they want to teach (next).
I briefly wondered if it was actually a bad thing to show this entire curriculum, because now visitors can see that the store has barely started and most topics have nothing. But then I shrugged my shoulders and just told myself that the only way to fix that … is to keep going and publish new resources at a steady pace.
Anyway, let’s hope that I can report more customers and purchases in 6 months time.
Tiamo