Bringing Psych2Go to Life: The Journey Behind Our 350 Plushies
We are writing these blog posts to document our journey of getting all 350 Psych2Go plushies into people’s hands across Canada.
Initially, we wanted to ship worldwide. However, tracked shipping from Vancouver to anywhere outside Canada turned out to be extremely expensive sometimes costing more than the plush toy itself! We didn't want our audience paying double, especially with everyone managing their own bills and financial commitments.
That’s why we hesitated to sell merchandise for so many years after starting the channel. Traditionally, YouTube ad revenue covered our costs so our viewers could receive mental health content for free without having to pay out of pocket (YouTube Post).
But times have changed. As YouTube has evolved, so has content visibility, the topics we cover, and overall engagement.
At one point, we even considered calling it quits because we felt our work on YouTube was complete. But after receiving so many heartwarming messages and comments on our posts, we realized this journey wasn't over yet (YouTube Post).
We want to expand into the physical world and deliver a tangible piece of wellness straight into your hands.
We received a few local orders recently, and honestly, it brought tears to our eyes. Even when shipping within Canada, sending the smallest flat box with tracking from Vancouver to Toronto costs around $20 CAD via Canada Post—so you can imagine how high international shipping costs would be!
Moving forward, we’re planning to reach out to the amazing founder of Chibird for advice. We both started on Tumblr around 2013 before Psych2Go became what it is on YouTube. We hope to learn from their experience running Patreon and subscription-based models to build a sustainable path forward for our team.
Stay tuned for updates! In the meantime, we want to give a huge thank you to all of our early founding supporters. If you’d like to be mentioned in a future post, please let us know!
If you'd like to join, check out our $1 Founding Member Club as we continue developing tiers and perks.
Progress on shipping the plush within Canada:
