I Almost Shut Down the HobbyScool Shopify Store(And Why I’m Glad I Didn’t)
For a long time, the HobbyScool Shopify store felt… optional.
It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t losing money. But it also wasn’t something I thought about very often. If I’m being honest, it lived in that familiar category of nice to have…extra revenue, low-cost products, a place for VIP passes.
And at one point, I seriously considered shutting it down.
Not because it failed, but because time is always limited, and anything that isn’t clearly pulling its weight becomes a question mark.
What changed my mind wasn’t a big optimization project or a sudden traffic spike. It was a single week where I treated the store like a real ecommerce asset instead of a background system.
That decision exposed something important: the store wasn’t just a place to sell products. It was infrastructure. And I had been underestimating it.
In this experiment report, I walk through:
why the store drifted into “nice to have” territory
what running a simple Black Friday promo revealed about its real value
why I decided not to optimize anything yet
and how thinking like a future buyer completely changed the decision
This isn’t a story about scaling fast or squeezing more revenue out of a store.
It’s about recognizing an asset before it’s obvious and choosing to build it before you know exactly how it will pay off.
Want to See the Actual Experiment?
Inside The $1M HobbyScool Experiment, I’m sharing the full experiment reports, real decisions, and behind-the-scenes breakdowns as they happen — including what we’re building, what we’re delaying, and why.
That includes:
how I’m deciding which assets to keep, cut, or build
what I’m prioritizing with limited time
and how these decisions tie into building a business that can scale beyond the founder
What this is really about isn’t Shopify.
It’s about how creators decide what’s worth building when time is limited. How “nice to have” assets quietly become future deal-breakers. And how thinking like a buyer, not just an operator, changes what you keep, cut, or commit to.
That’s the lens I’m documenting inside this experiment.
It’s about learning how operators think when they’re building something meant to last.
FAQ
What is this experiment about?
This experiment documents why I chose to keep and rebuild the HobbyScool Shopify store, not as a short-term revenue play, but as a long-term business asset worth growing.
Who is this for?
This is for creators and digital business owners who are running lean, making real decisions with limited time, and trying to build something that can scale beyond them.
