Many years ago I had a small home based business selling handmade jewellery. I worked it alongside my corporate gig. It was a passion project because I love to create. I ran a Shopify store and sold affortable and unique pieces throughout the United States and Canada primarily. It was fun. I set up the website myself using Shopify and it was very straight forward. I got better at taking photos, writing descriptions and overall making the customer experience a pleasing, effortless joy. I wanted to make it easy for people to navigate the menu and see the items up close - so that they could make a confident, informed purchase. It worked well. There weren't nearly as many features as Shopify has now, and it lacked the option of adding apps to the backend. Overall, it was a relatively simple platform to use.
Until A.I.
Fast forward to 2026. I started my website after pivoting from another platform. Shopify now has a bevy of built-in tools and apps to make the experience effortless - or so they say. Like many other websites/companies they have an AI "feature" that is supposed to help troubleshoot and save time. Save time it is not. At least not lately. Not only is this "sidekick" tool causing me more work, but it's not doing what is being asked of it. If it was a person he'd be fired.
Case in point. I had a description for an item that would not change no matter how many times I changed and saved the text. Initially the AI said it was an issue with an app in the back-end which I never recall even installing. Delete the app it said - that will solve the problem. Wrong. It then suggested it was a problem with the third-party company (print-on-demand). So I reached out to that platform and its AI said it wasn't an issue from their end, rather, an issue with Shopify. I spent literally 3-4 hours over the course of 2 days trying to sort out what you would think would be an easy fix. As of this blog post it STILL isn't resolved. And the AI apparently isn't working now. Likely just as well.
Time is money they say. I have had numerous inquiries about these new products which took me hours to photograph, design and upload - and sadly, I cannot make these available yet. It's akin to window shopping but the store is never open. You can see it. You want it. You're excited and prepared to buy it - but you can never seem to get there during opening hours. Frustrating right?
Nothing brings me more joy than an email inquiring about an original piece of art or seeing a recent sale pop up on my phone. Some days I get several. Some days, nothing. I know having been a business owner before that this life can be unpredictable - which is actually exciting for me. It's not the predictableness of a "normal" job. When those good months come in it's a reward for all of my hard work. But what about those months I worked a lot and they weren't as rewarding as others? That's the nature of being self-employed I remind myself. I know I would rather take the uncertainty of income and work 80+ hours a week for myself than work an unrewarding job in a cubicle for half those hours for a "steady" paycheque.
So as I write this blog, late at night, I think of all of the awesome artwork and merchandise I want to offer the world and how something seemingly so simple is becoming unnecessarily complicated. I know once I figure it out - which I will - the sales will start coming in regularly and all this effort will be well worth it. And maybe, just maybe, I can rename the AI to "Almost Insufferable."
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