Startup Founder Tech Lessons

Tech Stacks are Not Your Friend

When my e-commerce account angered the Google Merchant policy gods, the Google Goliath ate my lunch.

Let me explain. This August, I prepared to launch TheTechMargin’s NoRules shop. Shopify, I learned, is a fantastic and daunting platform. I am a fan thus far, but I did not account for the amount of work I was taking on until the end of a very rainy July, and the first weeks of August entailed 7-day work weeks averaging 60 hours per week.

Beta NoRules shop was ready to launch after three weeks of hustle. Google Analytics was wired to my Google Merchant account, and integration traffic flowed.

Then, I received a policy violation from Google. It was highly unclear what crime had been committed as policy violations are as clear as Cuneiform writing on an ancient block of stone. Some metadata was missing from my product ads, and there was no clear way to update the items or understand what Google was looking for. I do not have time to read pages of documentation about this topic. I wear seven hats and have a pile of hats on the floor in rotation.

Startups are really into hat-wearing metaphors because the idea represents reality well.

A week passed, and I received notice that my Ads account was suspended due to the Merchant account policy issues. My ads account has been around for a decade, and I have run a multitude of campaigns and spent considerable money on ads. All of this was turned off with the flick of a switch.

Google is a mega-beast of a tech stack, and I love their products for the most part. After a decade of building apps for the Salesforce platform culminated in the tech layoffs of 2023, I swore that I would NEVER again become beholden to a proprietary technology.

Oh, but comfort runs strong, and the desire for interoperability is fierce in my engineering mind. I was stoked to learn a modular stack like Google after spending many years within the gated walls of the Salesforce platform.

Google is not a tech stack, but it makes sense to call it so as I leverage Google in my operations from the backend to the analytics, content, ads, etc., here at TheTechMargin. I am a software engineer and must be able to diagram the “stack”; thus, any diagrammable stack I am using to run my business is, in essence, a tech stack.

Back to the woes that Google rained upon me this month…

To the Goliath Google, I am a small speck of phytoplankton wriggling around in THEIR vast ocean of “users.”

There is no support for invisible specks in the Google-verse. There are places where one can request an appeal, but there is no way to know if anyone or anything is listening on the other end.

I tried, nevertheless, begging through text boxes for someone or some AI to help me.

Finally, I found an app on the Shopify app store: https://support.simprosys.com/google-shopping-feed.

Simprosys is what big tech companies wish they could be but will never be because they are all bloated—all of them, even the cool ones. Trust me.

The support team at Simprosys is incredible and spent significant time walking me through the mysteries of Google Merchant policy violations and what I needed to modify on my store to enable the use of the all-seeing and omnipotent Goooooogle.

The process of earning Google’s trust again took about three weeks in total. During this interim, my website traffic across all of my domains, including those of businesses unrelated to TheTechMargin, ground to a halt. My YouTube views (Google owns YouTube) slowed to a trickle. Granted, my focus was derailed from content creation due to repairing what was inadvertently broken, but my business was on ice for all intents and purposes.

Finally, and after nearly three weeks of pleading through the text box appeal void, an unceremonious message appears within my Google Ads account:

Turning the machine back on is apparently more complicated than turning the thing off. It was another whole week before traffic flowed across my domains as it once had. Lesson learned, I think?

I am still in the Google stack and will forever be, I suspect. It was terrifying to be at their mercy. If I could not advertise with Google, my business would be toasted and not the champagne kind.

A permanent ban from using Google’s advertising tools is one threat that can be leveraged to force compliance. I learned this whilst reading through the tediously confusing and mostly irrelevant “help” docs Google directed me to instead of helping.

Thank you, Simprosys; I cannot recommend this company enough. May they stay nimble and lovely for the long haul. This is not a sponsored post; I want to thank this team for being amazing.

The worst part about the suspension was how seemingly random it felt. All business operations, not only the e-commerce operations, were impacted. I believe this is likely due to architecture cobbled together through acquisitions made by Google over the years.

There is no way for the switch that controls Merchant account ads to be turned off separately from all ads running through a Google Ads account. The engineering teams at Google are too good to have built a system that does not allow for fine-grained control. Smells like technology acquired via M&A to me. Rube Goldberg would be proud of Google.

The Art Part

If you have read this far, you might wonder what the NoRules shop at TheTechMargin is about. You are in luck; I will tell you why I added e-commerce to the business strategy of TheTechMargin.

I am an artist and engineer married to an artist and have many artist friends. I care about artists being successful, both financially and creatively. I attempted to earn a living early in my career by making art. This entailed working in the service industry to pay my rent and bills and making art when possible.

That model sucks. In my case, the lessons learned from working in the service industry bartending are invaluable life lessons. There is also a time limit on how long we can do that kind of work without breaking our bodies or losing our minds.

If you have never worked as a waiter, bartender, or line cook and are an a**hole to your server, please unsubscribe from this newsletter and check yourself. Arrogance is gross wherever it shows up.

Most of my artist friends also worked alongside me, slicing lemons, remembering specials, double shifts, aching feet, and the sound of a thousand conversations numbing us to sleep each night.

I got a degree in computer science and built a business around graphic design and website development, which got me through to a corporate career and health insurance. I left art in pursuit of stability.

Check Reddit or any forum site for how artists make a living; most responses are sad. Most suggest marrying someone who will support you…. yikes. Other options include moving far away from everything, living in a trailer on a cheap plot, or doing restaurant work.

There is another way, my friends.

The fusion of art and tech about which I am endlessly passionate stems from my background and the experience of those in both the art and tech worlds whom I love dearly.

Collaborative E-Commerce

Alternate revenue streams are a natural and viable option for anyone with passion, tenacity, ideas, content, and technical know-how.

TheTechMargin is collaborating with artists in designing products that expand their audience and allow for passive income generation.

Our first collaboration is a celebration of ephemeral seasons and the magnificence of nature. As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere leave Summer behind, a reminder of the delicate blossoms of spring gives hope for the abundance on the other side of winter.

The Artist Series is live on TheTechMargin NoRules shop, and I have a campaign drop to share along with the store’s launch.

Community Building

Creating tangible products is an excellent way to connect with the community. I love designing and marketing an item as unique as the moment right before a painting is finished, getting those products into the hands of our community of technologists and creatives, and sharing back to the community through content informed by these interactions.

Send us photos wearing TheTechMargin, and with your permission, we will build a community page featuring all of us. We are shipping to several countries, including the United States, and will add new markets upon request. If you are outside our shipping zones, send us a note so we know you want in.

The weather is spectacular today, and so I must go outside. Take a look at our shop and support us by making a purchase. Thank you, Steve; you were the first customer of TheTechMargin NoRules shop!

❤️

Until next time, be fearless in your creative acts, and be kind to yourselves.

—Sonia @TheTechMargin

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