Do I need to be technical?

Not at all. You never need to understand how it works, only that it does. We handle everything and explain it in plain language.

How long does the setup take?

Foundation goes live in one to two weeks. Each Motion automation takes two to three weeks. We start with a short call to scope it honestly before anything is built.

Will I own the site when it’s done?

Yes. Everything is in your name and your accounts: code, domain, hosting account, Google Analytics, the lead-tracking sheet. If you decide to walk away tomorrow, you take everything with you. No vendor lock-in, no hostage data.

Why not just build it myself on Squarespace?

Honestly? If you only need a one-page portfolio, go ahead. Squarespace is great. We come in when the site has to do real work: capture leads, route them somewhere useful, integrate with the tools you already use, look like nobody else’s. Foundation pays for itself the first time the site books a job while you’re at the studio.

What if something breaks?

Well-built sites and automations rarely break. But when they do, we honour our work. We ship the fix and learn from it. For ongoing peace of mind, ask us about an ongoing support arrangement after launch.

What if I already have a site?

Tell us about it. Sometimes Motion can plug straight into your current setup. Sometimes a small foundation check is worth the time first to clean up tracking, forms, or hosting. We’ll be honest about which one you need.

Stop copying invoices: small automations every solo artist can set up

You don't need to be technical. You need to notice the things you do every week that are the same shape, and then have a computer do them for you.

Below are three automations that pay for themselves in admin time within a month. We've set up versions of all of these for artists in Melbourne. Each one takes us about an hour to build. You can build them yourself in an afternoon if you're patient.

Automation 1: contact form into your task manager

The problem: a curator emails you through your contact form. You see it, mean to reply, get pulled into a kiln load, forget. Two weeks later you remember.

The automation: when a new contact form submission arrives, create a card in your task manager (Trello, Notion, Things, whatever you actually use). Pre-fill it with the person's name, message, and a follow up by date three days out.

Tools: Make.com (or Zapier). Trigger is the form submission webhook. Action is create task with these fields.

Set-up time: 30 minutes.

Saves: about an hour a week, plus the stress of I know I'm forgetting something.

Automation 2: invoice paid into a spreadsheet

The problem: you sent an invoice through Stripe or Square. They mark it paid. You're supposed to log the payment somewhere for your tax return. You don't, every time, until April.

The automation: when an invoice is marked paid, append a row to a Google Sheet. Date, client name, amount, what it was for, GST. Done.

Tools: Make.com. Trigger is invoice paid on Stripe, Square, or Xero. Action is add row to Google Sheets.

Set-up time: 45 minutes. Once. For the next decade.

Saves: ten hours of tax-time misery a year.

Automation 3: new newsletter signup into a personal welcome

The problem: someone signs up for your newsletter. They get the generic platform welcome. It feels like a robot.

The automation: when someone signs up, send a personal-style email from your address, just two lines. Thanks for being here. I'll send something new in about a month. Reply to this if you ever want to. And then your name.

That's it. It looks like a real reply. Conversion to buyer goes up.

Tools: your newsletter platform (Buttondown supports this natively, Beehiiv does too). Or a Make.com flow from signup to a Gmail send.

Set-up time: 20 minutes.

Saves: nothing, but turns more readers into clients.

The tools, briefly

Make.com. What we use most. More flexible than Zapier, cheaper at volume, harder to learn. The free tier handles 1,000 operations a month, which is plenty for these three automations combined.

Zapier. Easier to start. Pricier as you grow. Worth it if you want zero-friction set-up.

Native integrations. Sometimes the tools talk to each other directly without an automation platform in the middle. Stripe + Notion has a direct integration. Use those first.

When to outsource the setup

You should set these up yourself if you enjoy the puzzle, or if you want to learn what's possible.

You should pay someone to set them up if:

You've tried twice and lost a Sunday to it.
The automation is more complex (multiple branches, conditional logic, multi-app).
You want it to be reliable from day one, with monitoring.

Process automation is the line we keep separate at TQE for this. We build one workflow at a time, document it, hand it over. You own it. We're not in your tools after that, unless you want us to be.

Where to start

Pick the one of the three above that hurts the most right now. Don't try all three at once. Build one this week. See it run for a fortnight. Then add the next.

Most artists we know save four to six hours a month after the first one is in place. That's a whole working morning back. Once a month. Forever.