I had an internal debate about whether to post this article about buying decks and other items online.
I mean – I do post affiliate links from Amazon and from Book Depository. You can see my Affiliate Disclosure here, but it’s also posted in the sidebar of every page of my site.
I buy from both of those sellers (as well as quite a few others).
I built this website because it is something I enjoy, and I try to post information (both to this webpage and to my YouTube channel) that I wish I had been able to find when I first started on this field of study. This is indeed a field of study and isn’t just a hobby that can be learned in a quick two-hour session.
I also post information about decks just to help out the artist / producer (such as the YouTube video I posted yesterday on Star Trek: The Original Series Tarot Deck – it isn’t even available for online purchase yet but has been available at fan conventions and such). BTW, I do plan to do a blog post about that deck, since I’m so excited about it.
Back to the reason for this post.
I definitely do want people to make purchases through affiliate links, because that is the only thing that contributes toward the support of this website. There are a multitude of fees that are associated with building a website (domain name, hosting, email, specialized software) as well as creating videos for YouTube. Sure, this is a fun project for me right now, but it may not be sustainable in the long run, since it directly costs me money out of my pocket.
So with all that in mind, I would like to write about buying decks and other items from sites that post items on behalf of the creators of the items.
I know from personal experience selling items on Amazon that those fees are nothing to sneeze at.
Etsy has been in the news recently for raising their rates on all of the small businesses that sell on their site (including my own Trillium Tarot shop on Etsy). The items in my shop are electronic-only and are available for instant download after purchase, so I don’t need to worry about shipping fees.
A wise friend once told me to do a Google search for a rather expensive deck that I was eyeing. He was correct – by purchasing directly from the artist’s website, I saved about 50% on the purchase price AND the artist did not have to pay seller fees.
When I first set up this website, I was young and green and eager and excited. I got the basics of the website together and started the process of obtaining affiliate links. I include links to whatever deck or item my video is related to. Those affiliate links are in the descriptions on the YouTube page – I do have a few affiliate links sprinkled within this website, but not very many.
In other words, I am not a link farm. I’m not a website that just throws links at a wall and hopes that something will stick. I’m trying to build something with legitimate content and have been hopeful that the site will be able to pay its own bills. I’m not getting rich with this site (lol).
I will do videos for items where the artist has their own website, so that you can buy directly from them and cut out the middleman (aka Seller Site). That will save you money as the purchaser / customer, and it will put more money directly into the pockets of the artist since they will avoid the transaction / seller fees.
I look forward to providing new content for you, and hope that you’re inspired to fire up the Google machine to find the artists directly!
