Passive income for Tower Hill Stables?

I'm Nic, and I've been suggesting to Martin and Fiona that we have some behind-the-scenes features for you. It seemed only right that I start things off with a behind-the-scenes look at the website and new Tower Hill Stables online shop.

I was a vegetarian for twenty-five years and have been vegan for fourteen years. I live near Durham with my partner Coral. After leaving the military as an aircraft engineer, I eventually found my way into technology and have been working with tech since the 1990s. I can’t provide help in terms of volunteering at the sanctuary, but I can use my magic skills to look after the website and online shop.

As a techie living over two hundred miles away from Tower Hill, I wanted to help Fiona, Martin, and the team. We first met when we went to meet and interview Fiona for Kent Vegan Events back in 2019 and not long after that, I started providing Microsoft 365 help to Tower Hill, and then after the website was updated, I also started managing that.

Our website is hosted on Squarespace. A few months ago, Martin and I were chatting about how we could use the site to generate an income. I had never used Squarespace as an online shop, and just under a month ago, I stayed up late one evening and started the Tower Hill Stables shop.

The main reason was to generate a passive income that, once set up, would take minimal overhead. Print on demand seems to satisfy that requirement, and it also means that you can be a part of the sanctuary by having a mug that you can use every day. We make a small profit on each item sold, and this goes into the general fund that helps keep the sanctuary running.

As a freelance Microsoft consultant, I have been using AI for a while at work and used Microsoft Copilot to produce a few images. Within a few days and lots of refining, we sold our first ceramic mug. We wanted to create mugs that were artistic and that reflected the love and strength of the animals that reside at the sanctuary.

We also thought it would be good to offer a unique view and brand for the sanctuary, and judging by the numbers we are selling, you like them as well.

At the time of writing, we are also selling the 2025 calendar. Martin found a good printer (Cipher-Graphics), and after a few mock-ups, I ended up with 250 calendars in the spare room. We don’t have the time to handwrite all the labels, so I decided that a thermal label printer would save time. This meant learning how Royal Mail Click & Drop integrated into Squarespace, and now each order is transferred to the Royal Mail site, and then I print the labels and send them out to you.

We are also experimenting with Tower Hill Stables tee shirts. This gives you the opportunity to have the same images from the mugs on shirts.

The technical blurb…

I want to say a big thank you to Dan at Vegan Mortgage Adviser, his sponsorship of the site is a huge benefit and means we can offer you some great features.

Squarespace

So, a bit about the site, Squarespace has a range of subscription plans and we are on one of their commerce options. I have been managing websites for a while now, and been a Squarespace Circle member since 2019, this is a free to join area where nerds and folk who produce websites can ask geeky questions. Our site is code free, and this means its supported by Squarespace and should anything happen to me, can be managed by anyone with a good understanding of Squarespace.

The Squarespace shop is then hooked into a payment mechanism (currently Stripe) who handle all the card details and mean we never get to see or store any card details.

Printful

Like any shop, we need products, and as we don’t have any space to keep stock (along with the upfront payment) print on demand from Printful which has a Squarespace integration allows us to create virtual items and even generates product mockup images for us to use in the store. We set our prices lower than their rrp, and as Printful has lots of fulfilment centres around the world, the mugs are produced in the nearest one to your chosen delivery location and you pay a lot less on the postage.

Aside from having to change the spelling on each item from US English to UK English each time, the integration works very well. When you place an order in the shop, Stripe takes the payment and we get it 14 days later. The order is automatically sent to Printful and we pay them like any other supplier (in advance of course). The production, and fulfilment is all done by them.

Microsoft Copilot

The designs of the mugs and items in our shop are all done in house, and before I created them, I looked around to see what else what available, and what you might want to spend your money on. As a former engineer, turned IT bod, its not easy to allow your creative side to flourish. During Covid, I dabbled in combining tech and art by creating some photos of tech and industrial things, and even had my own online shop at SmugMug. You may have your own views on Artificial Intelligence (AI), but if you are a Google maps or translate user, then you have already been using AI.

I donated my entire photo collection to Pexels so they can be used free of charge, and have had 11million views, the image of the red printed circuit board has been viewed nearly 3million times and downloaded nearly 8,000 times.

Using Microsoft Copilot, I gave it a set of instructions or prompts to produce the images you now see on mugs. I then added each to Microsoft PowerPoint to produce the final high-resolution transparencies with our text and the name of who the image depicts.

Calendars

The calendars are done in house as mentioned above Printful could only print them in the USA, and the postage was more than the product. Martin sent me some high resolution images depicting some of our lovely residents and I used PowerPoint to provide a mock-up to the printer, a week later, 250 calendars arrived.

I don’t have the time to hand write 250 labels and if I did my handwriting would foil even the most advanced systems, and on top of this, the postage needs to be applied which would mean a trip to the local sorting office every few days. For some reason, those lovely folks at Royal Mail have an integration in to Squarespace from their Click & Drop service, and it prints the labels if you have a suitable printer. They will even collect from our house, and they even print labels…. But they don’t print and supply labels for Click & Drop unless you go to a sorting office.

I looked at the various options and ended up buying a Zebra label printer. It’s the small type that can also be used in shops for till receipts and if you use their thermal labels, there is no toner or ink to purchase.

So, when you place an order on the site for a calendar, I log into the Click & Drop site, add the correct postage and pay via PayPal, then the labels and if needed customs forms are all printed. There is a parcel drop off box nearby, so I am now a regular walk to the post box with an armful of calendar envelopes person.

And finally…

I hope you have had an insight into the way we provide the website and shop to you. We have always wanted to provide useful information and as the payment is taken using secure systems such as Stripe, or PayPal or ApplePay we never get to see your card details. I have spent a lot of time and effort getting things right behind the scenes and am continually refining the site.

Please get in touch with me if you want to know more. I can't guarantee that our solution is right for you, but at least you can have a chat with a mature techie who has ethical roots.

You can use the form below or check out my website Clever Computer Bloke.