The nine jobs nobody quotes you for
An agency builds the site and hands over a login. Here is the work that starts the day after, and how much of it lands on the owner.
A roaster we spoke to last year had just paid for a new website. It was a good website. Fast, clean, the photography was better than ours. Three months later they were still launching lots by hand at eleven at night, because the site was finished and nobody was running it.
That gap is the whole problem, and almost nobody prices it. The build is quoted. The running is not.
What you were handed, once
A set of pages. A cart and a checkout. A contact form. That is what a website project delivers, and there is usually nothing wrong with any of it.
It is finished. Delivered. Sitting there.
What it takes to run, every week
Putting the new lot live. Writing the launch email. Telling wholesale it is in. Watching subscriptions. Chasing failed cards. Picking, packing, labelling. Filing the claim when a box goes missing. Answering "where is my order". Reading the numbers.
Nine jobs. Every week. None of them is roasting.
Individually they are all small, which is exactly why they never get resourced. Nobody hires for "putting the lot live". So they land on the owner, in the evenings, in the order they become urgent rather than the order that matters.
The failed card is the one to notice
Most of the nine are visible. You know you have not sent the launch email, because the lot is sitting there. The one that is invisible is the subscription that failed a card and quietly stopped.
Nobody complains. There is no ticket. The revenue just is not there next month, and it looks like the market softened.
This is the argument for having someone whose job is the running rather than the building: half the work is noticing.
What to do about it
Three honest options. Do it yourself and accept the evenings — plenty of roasters do, and it works until it does not. Hire someone, which is a real salary for a job that is nine part-time jobs in a coat. Or have it run for you.
Whichever you pick, the first step is the same: write the nine down, put a name against each one, and see how many say yours.