When people discovered that I was building a WordPress website, one of the most common questions I received was why I didn’t simply continue relying on Instagram, focus entirely on Shopify, or start doing regular TikTok live selling.
From a business perspective, they’re all reasonable suggestions. Instagram is where most people first discovered Crysto.light. Shopify is excellent for managing products and payments. TikTok Live has helped many small businesses reach entirely new audiences and significantly increase their sales. I completely understand why people recommend these platforms because they clearly work.
The more I thought about it, however, the more I realised that I wasn’t simply choosing between different platforms. I was choosing between different ways of building a business.
Over the years, quite a number of people have encouraged me to start doing regular live selling on TikTok. Every now and then, someone will tell me, “You’d probably sell so much more if you went live every week.” They may very well be right. Live selling creates energy, allows people to interact with products in real time and encourages quicker purchasing decisions. There are businesses that have been built very successfully around that model, and I genuinely admire the amount of work that goes into doing it well.
The reason I’ve never embraced it isn’t because I think there’s anything wrong with live selling. It also isn’t because I doubt that it could grow my business.The simple truth is that every time I imagined building my business around daily or weekly livestreams, I found myself becoming less excited about the future I was creating.
As I reflected on it, I realised that I wasn’t trying to build a business that asked, “What generates the fastest sales?” I was trying to build a business that answered a different question altogether. What kind of work do I still want to enjoy doing ten years from now?
The answer became surprisingly clear. I enjoy writing. I enjoy researching. I enjoy spending several days thinking about an idea before turning it into an article. I enjoy having thoughtful conversations with clients where we can explore a question in depth. I enjoy curating collections because I genuinely love beautiful minerals and the stories behind them. Those are the parts of my work that leave me energised rather than exhausted.
That doesn’t mean I dislike selling. Every business needs sales to survive, and I’m grateful every time someone chooses to support my work. The difference is that I’ve never wanted selling to become the centre of what I do.
The more I worked on Crysto.light, the more I realised that Instagram, Shopify and WordPress each serve a different purpose. Instagram is where conversations begin. It’s where I share snippets of daily life, new arrivals and updates with the community we’ve built over the years. Shopify is where transactions happen. It allows people to browse products and purchase them conveniently without unnecessary friction. WordPress, however, is where my ideas live. It is where I can write about why different astrology books contradict one another, why I believe spirituality and critical thinking belong together, how I think about ethical spiritual practice, or what I’ve learned from marriage, family estrangement, depression, cancer and building a business.
Those are conversations that simply don’t fit comfortably inside a short video or a carousel post.
The more I wrote, the more I realised I wasn’t building a website because I needed another sales channel. I was building a home for ideas. There’s another reason this matters to me. Social media platforms are designed around speed. Posts appear, perform for a short period of time and gradually disappear beneath newer content. Algorithms change. Features change. Trends change. None of that is inherently good or bad. It’s simply the nature of platforms designed to keep our attention moving.
A blog feels very different. When someone spends ten or fifteen minutes reading an article, they’ve made a deliberate decision to slow down. They aren’t scrolling because something happened to appear on their feed. They’re there because they’re genuinely interested in exploring an idea. I find that incredibly meaningful.
Perhaps that’s also why I don’t measure the success of my writing by likes or views anymore. If someone discovers an article two years after I publish it and finds it genuinely helpful, then I think it has already achieved something that social media often struggles to provide.
Looking back, I think choosing WordPress was never really a technical decision. It was a philosophical one.
I realised I didn’t want Crysto.light to become a business that simply sold products. I wanted it to become a place where people could think. Some readers may eventually buy a crystal, some may book an astrology consultation.. some may simply spend an afternoon reading articles before quietly leaving.
All three outcomes are perfectly alright with me.
Because if someone walks away with a clearer understanding of themselves or a better question than the one they arrived with, then I believe the website has already served its purpose. Ultimately, every business reflects the values of the person building it. The business I want to build isn’t the fastest growing one or the loudest one. It’s the one that still feels like mine many years from now.