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Shopify is a cloud-based, SaaS (software as a service) E-commerce solution. A 14 days free trial, no credit card required gives you access to an admin panel where you can choose free templates, add pages, add images, enter store data, add products, and shipping details. In addition, you’ll be able to choose from a rich selection of free and for-purchase design templates and more…
How do I set up Shopify 2022?
- Get Prepared. Before setting up your Shopify account, there are a few things that you have to put in place. …
- Create Your 14 days free trial Shopify Account. …
- Add Products. …
- Add Pages to Your Site. …
- Select a Theme and Customize Your Store. …
- Customize Your Checkout Page. …
- Set up Shipping. …
- Configure Your Taxes.
- Set up Payment Gateways
- Prepare for launch
- Launch your store
Shopify is a subscription to a software service that offers you to create a website and use their shopping cart solution to sell, ship, and manage your products. Using their service, you can get access to easy to use admin panel where you can add products, process orders and enter store data
Here are the basic steps on how to sell on Shopify and get you a highly converting store in no time:
Set up your Shopify account. …
Enter a domain address. …
Select a Shopify theme. …
Add products. …
Install apps to support and expand your business. …
Market your business and optimize for conversion.
From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Payment providers.
From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
Under Store settings, tap Payments.
Not only is Shopify a powerful platform to start with, but it lets you add some amazing apps. … However, it’s worth noting that adding Shopify’s own apps will require some coding snippets.
You can Build / create an ecommerce theme for online stores using Shopify as the e-commerce software, and make a massive earning up to 70% for each theme sale you make on the Shopify Theme Store. The average revenue per partner on the Shopify Theme Store is USD 11,000 per year
Shopify merchants can now enable Login and Pay with Amazon, Amazon’s payment gateway in the US, UK, and DE. By enabling Login and Pay with Amazon, Shopify store owners can simplify their checkout process for hundreds of millions of online shoppers.
What are the benefits of Shopify for creating an online store for your business?
Easy To Setup And Use. …
Visually Appealing Online Store. …
App Integrations. …
Security and Reliability. …
Excellent Loading Speed. …
Powerful Marketing Tools. …
Mobile Responsiveness. …
Outstanding Customer Support.
To get your site live you’ll need a domain name. You have two choices. Firstly you can buy a domain from Shopify and it will be added to your store automatically. This saves you time, especially if you have no knowledge about hosting a website.
Shopify is an effective eCommerce website builder that allows merchants to design, develop, market, and sell any type of goods to consumers around the world.
The 50 top Shopify stores for inspiration
haus. Furniture and home goods etailer haus uses a sleek, modern design for their Shopify store. …
The Critical Slide Society. …
Studio Proper. …
Tluxe. …
Quad Lock. …
The Modern Shop. …
Brilliant. …
The Candi Factory.
Shopify Basic costs $29 per month, with 2.9% + 30¢ per online transaction. The main Shopify plan costs $79 per month, with 2.6% + 30¢ per transaction. Advanced Shopify costs $299 per month, with 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction.
PayPal is one of Shopify’s default payment providers. As soon as you open a store, you’re given a PayPal Express Checkout account with the email you used to sign up for your Shopify store. Before you can collect payments for orders made with PayPal, you need to set up your PayPal account.
Shopify wins!
Although Amazon’s Individual plan is more suitable for small-scale sellers, overall Shopify offers better value for money. It’s cheaper than Amazon’s Professional plan, and is more scalable and transparent with its pricing than Amazon, making it easier to budget for.
Ruby
Liquid is an open-source template language created by Shopify and written in Ruby. It is the backbone of Shopify themes and is used to load dynamic content on storefronts. Liquid has been in production use at Shopify since 2006 and is now used by many other hosted web applications
Shopify Basic costs $29 per month, with 2.9% + 30¢ per online transaction. The main Shopify plan costs $79 per month, with 2.6% + 30¢ per transaction. Advanced Shopify costs $299 per month, with 2.4% + 30¢ per transaction.
In my opinion, Shopify is relatively easy to learn, especially if running a fairly standard ecommerce store. … Don’t confuse an easy setup process as meaning Shopify is simple. With thousands of apps, it’s quite powerful and customizable. Knowing which apps to use is probably one of the hardest things.
No, Shopify is not really a scam. The provide exactly the service they say they will provide. However, like most products, their marketing is misleading to naive people. There are to parts to selling online
Overall rating. Shopify is the best ecommerce platform on the market today. It’s designed to help people build their own, scalable online store with hundreds of built-in features, and tons of apps. You can sell products directly on your website, and across multiple marketplaces and social media
Shopify is an obvious choice for ecommerce, but you might outgrow it at some point, or simply need a more flexible solution. In our experience, BigCommerce is the strongest Shopify competitor for growing start-ups; WooCommerce is best for WordPress-based shops.
No, Shopify is not really a scam. The provide exactly the service they say they will provide. However, like most products, their marketing is misleading to naive people. … The real fight is getting people to find your product.
But it’s true. Shopify is a tool. It might not be for you. … But if you need to run a multi-product eCommerce store with inventory, marketing tools, customer records, etc – then Shopify is absolutely worth it…if the pros / cons balance out for your based on your goals, resources, expertise, etc.
There are five Shopify plans available:
‘Basic Shopify’ – $29 per month.
‘Shopify’ – $79 per month.
‘Advanced Shopify’ – $299 per month.
‘Shopify Plus’ – negotiable, but starting at $2000 per month.
Overall rating. Shopify is the best ecommerce platform on the market today. It’s designed to help people build their own, scalable online store with hundreds of built-in features, and tons of apps. You can sell products directly on your website, and across multiple marketplaces and social media.
Shopify can’t make you rich. Can it be one of the many tools you’ll use to build a successful business? Yes it can, but that doesn’t mean it’s your best choice, as it is one of many similar tools and “best” requires a solid fit for your needs. In order to build a successful e-commerce store, you need many things.
Shopify is not a scam, shopify is a E-commerce platform where you can sell physical and digital products. However there is a lot of scammers on the internet that promote the drop shipping business model on shopify.
When it comes to Shopify vs Etsy, Shopify is the better choice for online selling. It’s more scalable, more flexible, and offers better ecommerce tools than Etsy. That said, the choice really depends on you – your business, your budget, and your goals.
Shopify is very popular and remains at the top of different platforms because it is a complete eCommerce platform that helps everyday people set up their own online store and sell products on multiple channels.
Sign up for an online store account.
To name a few, there’s Amazon, eBay, and Shopify. However, since we are talking about dropshipping with no money, you can start with Shopify. It offers a 14-day free trial. After the 14-day trial period, it will cost $29 for the basic plan.
Payout and fee tracking
You must complete the setup of your Shopify Payments account, including all your business details and banking information, within 21 days of your first sale. If your account is not set up within 21 days, then all payments are automatically refunded to the buyer.
Try Shopify free for 14 days (no credit card required).
If you already have a website, or you’d like to sell on Facebook, you can use Shopify Lite for $9 per month. WordPress users can also use Shopify’s plugin.
One of the main reasons to consider Shopify Shipping is the reduced shipping rates they offer through USPS, UPS, and DHL. All Shopify customers can benefit from this discount, but merchants on higher plans will save more on shipping. Discounts are available on select services.
Wix vs Shopify: Overall Winner
Wix is better for individuals looking to shift a limited number of products, while Shopify can support small stores all the way up to large businesses. Shopify is only suitable for building online stores, whereas Wix is also suitable if selling online isn’t the main focus of your site.
In September 2015, Amazon.com announced it would be closing its Amazon Webstore service for merchants, and had selected Shopify as the preferred migration provider; Shopify’s shares jumped more than 20% upon the news. On October 3, 2016, Shopify acquired Boltmade
Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform that helps you build your own online store, without needing any tech skills. Shopify powers over 800,000 businesses and came top in our own in-depth research, outperforming all its competitors. However, it’s not for everyone.
Most Successful Shopify Stores: The Hundreds
Why They’re Successful: $many million in annual revenue plus a 14% increase in conversion rates, 16% increase in average order value, and 53% increase in returning customers in year-over-year results.
Ruby on Rails framework
Shopify is built on the Ruby on Rails framework. Shopify is one of the oldest Rails apps in existence (and one of the largest now). They actually just wrote a post on our site about how they’ve evolved the monolith and added services.
Yes, dropshipping is legal. It is just a model of order fulfillment where the supplier handles shipping and the retailer handles sales. Most companies make dropshipping as an additional channel for raising sales with shopify. … If your supplier is selling counterfeit products, you would be liable for the sales.
Shopify Shipping is a built-in shipping suite that gives merchants access to calculated rates through USPS, UPS, and DHL. With Shopify Shipping, you can process orders and print shipping labels in bulk without worrying about a third-party integration.
Shopify Buy Button lets merchants generate an embeddable product card and checkout that can be placed on any type of website. Try Shopify free for 14 days, no credit card required. By entering your email, you agree to receive marketing emails from Shopify
Shopify has processed and assessed the risk of hundreds of millions of orders. We can protect most orders, so you can fulfill them quickly and with confidence. The remaining orders are likely fraudulent, so they’re unprotected and the decision to fulfill or cancel is up to you.
“The choice between eBay and Shopify essentially comes down to the kind of business you’re running. eBay is great if you’re selling a wide variety of products and if you’re selling physical products. Shopify, on the other hand, is better in the long term if you plan to build your brand from scratch.
Shopify represents one of the cheaper ways into selling online, with its starter plan, “Shopify basic” costing $29 per month and allowing you to sell an unlimited number of goods. gives you access to Shopify’s Buy Button, which allows you to sell goods on an existing website or blog
Hosting is included in every level of the Shopify payment plans; you do not need to pay for an external host. We can help you setup your existing domain name, if you have one, or you can buy a new one through Shopify. … Thankfully that’s never an issue with Shopify’s as it is included in your subscription plan price.
Here are the current rates: Basic Shopify – $29 a month + 2% transaction fee. Shopify – $79 a month + 1% transaction fee.
…
So – if you’re using Shopify, use Shopify Payments to eliminate transaction fees on card transactions.
authorize.net.
Stripe.
First Data.
2 Checkout.
Amazon Payments.
and many more!
If you find a product that piques your interest, you can add it to your Shopify store in a few clicks.
…
Trending products to sell
Pet bed. Looking for the purrfect popular product to sell to pet owners? …
One size fits all sofa and couch covers. …
Minimalist jewelry. …
Beard straightener.
The main disadvantages of using Shopify are its transaction fees for those using a third-party payment gateway (some of its competitors don’t charge any transaction fees at all, regardless of payment gateway used); its limit of three options per product (note: don’t confuse this with variants, of which you can have 100 …
Shopify for Dummies: A Beginners Shopify Tutorial. … Shopify is a great cloud-based choice with low startup costs and an easy-to-use interface from which you can promote, sell, and ship your products. I mean, with Shopify, it’s possible to run a complete online store quickly for as low as $29/month!
Top 500 Most Successful Shopify Stores
Rank Store Address Alexa
1- colourpop.com
2- jeffreestarcosmetics.com
3- fashionnova.com
4- reddressboutique.com
14 days
Shopify generally provides 14 days free trial and you can try all Shopify features during that period and decide if the platform is suitable for your needs
Yes, it is safe to buy from Shopify. Shopify is one of the safest, most popular e-commerce platforms in the world, although just like in any other business, scammers are still present. A legitimate store will have contact details on its site.
In the US, Shopify is required to submit a 1099-K form to the IRS for each merchant who processes more than $20,000 and has more than 200 transactions in a calendar year (or less if they’re in MA or VT states)
Shopify Payments, like many payment gateways, does require a checking account with a bank to deposit your funds into. While there isn’t currently a way to set up other payout options for Shopify Payments, you’re absolutely welcome to simply accept payment via PayPal – lots of our merchants do!
With Shopify, there are some common scams, and all are rampant on e-commerce platforms. There is card testing scam, and chargeback scum and both involve loose of money which is actually Not healthy for business and can quickly destroy the customer-retailer relationship.
That platform is pretty simple to use ( as seller) legit, honest, and low cost. Many scammer use this easy set-up to run a scammy business for as long as its last, or even make fake Shopify web(shop)sites, only to scam customers; its really the same as with Ebay, Ebay is very kosher but there are sellers.
Yes, Shopify is a legit e-commerce platform and is one of the top platforms in the market today. Shopify is a complete eCommerce platform that helps everyday people set up their own online store and sell products on multiple channels.
The average revenue per partner on the Shopify Theme Store is USD 11,000 per year.
Start a Referral Program. A very fast way to promote your Shopify store is to start a Shopify Affiliate Program. …
Give Customers Outstanding Service. …
Instagram Stories. …
Make use of Special Holidays. …
Social Media Contests. …
Advertise Your “coming soon” Sales. …
Facebook Stories. …
Organize Sales that Lead to Charity Donations.
Tobi Lütke
Tobi Lütke, billionaire founder of Shopify. Tobi Lutke, the Canadian CEO and founder of e-commerce platform Shopify, has a net worth that’s doubled to $3.2 billion in just six months, thanks to his company’s skyrocketing stock
Shopify is definitely worth considering when you look at what you get for your money. It provides business owners with a solid yet flexible store builder that can increase conversions and sales, as well as reduce a lot of administrative tasks, and provide valuable management information.
Anywhere from $5/day to $25/day, $100/day, $1,000/day – the sky is the limit. As for product cost, if you are doing dropshipping, then it’s $0. If you stock, and ship the items yourself, that depends on the wholesale cost of the products you want to sell. Shopify stores are just like any other business
Here are 61 strategies you can try:
Start a Referral Program. One of the fastest way to promote Shopify store is by starting your very own Shopify Affiliate Program. …
2. Facebook Shop. …
3. Facebook Groups. …
4. Facebook Stories. …
Pinterest Boards. …
Pinterest Buyable Pins. …
Instagram Store. …
Instagram Stories.
Shopify Payments transfers funds to the bank account you have entered on the Payment providers page in your Shopify admin. The account you use to accept payouts needs to be a full checking account.
For instance: Basic Shopify: Available for $29 per month, Shopify’s basic solution for your online store comes with everything you need to launch your business quickly. The Basic plan charges a transaction fee of 2.9% plus 30 cents per purchase. That’s the highest price from Shopify.
Shopify Shipping is available for orders shipped from fulfillment locations based in the United States (USPS, DHL Express, and UPS) and Canada (Canada Post). There is no per-label fee when purchasing a shipping label. Instead, you are charged the cost of the discounted label purchased through Shopify Shipping
What are the benefits of Shopify for creating an online store for your business?
Easy To Setup And Use. …
Visually Appealing Online Store. …
App Integrations. …
Security and Reliability. …
Excellent Loading Speed. …
Powerful Marketing Tools. …
Mobile Responsiveness. …
Outstanding Customer Support.
Bottom Line: The Startup Cost for a Shopify Dropshipping Store Can be as Little as $40
Shopify Cost: $29/month (14 day free trial with our link)
Supplier and Product Sourcing: $0.
Domain Name: Depending on service, $11/year.
Paid Traffic: Start with $100 free credit from Google.
Trying to take on Amazon and its fulfillment network is a daunting task. That $1 billion investment Shopify is making may sound massive, but Amazon plans to spend $64 billion on logistics and shipping alone in 2019
A few years ago, Shopify released an app called Shopify Facebook Store that allows merchants to set up a fully integrated store on Facebook. … But, selling on Facebook may not be a tactic that everyone should use
Presently, Shopify is the most popular way to set up your own business and brand. But what to sell on Shopify?
…
Bikini and Lingerie. …
Mobile accessories. …
Fitnesswear and accessories. …
Health care supplies. …
Functional Home Decor. …
Beauty make up tools and accessories. …
Baby care supplies. …
Baby safety product.
Exchange Marketplace contains thousands of Shopify stores for sale, so before you start looking for stores to buy there, it’s worth trying to narrow down your requirement. … As you might expect, the Shopify stores on Exchange Marketplace that generate the biggest monthly profits are the most expensive ones.
Shopify is cloud-based so it can be run from any web browser connected to the Internet. The ecommerce platform has a robust easy to use tools that helps a store owner quickly set up a web site that can sell anything with minimal effort. … This system is called Shopify payments.
Many merchants are using Shopify in creative ways to sell, well, pretty much anything and everything else.
…
Products…
Services (appointments) …
Memberships. …
Consultations. …
Digital products. …
Event support. …
Experiences. …
Classes, lessons, and workshops. …
Rentals
You can sell pretty much anything on Shopify, from used clothing to new clothing and more. You can even drop ship clothing, which means you partner with a brand to ships the items you sell without ever having to store inventory or even see the item
Although Amazon’s Individual plan is more suitable for small-scale sellers, overall Shopify offers better value for money. It’s cheaper than Amazon’s Professional plan, and is more scalable and transparent with its pricing than Amazon, making it easier to budget for.
Yes, Shopify is a legit e-commerce platform and is one of the top platforms in the market today. Shopify is a complete eCommerce platform that helps everyday people set up their own online store and sell products on multiple channels.
That’s why we are listing the trending niches of 2023 so that you can find the top-selling items online.
Shapewear.
Travel accessories.
Healthy and beauty products.
Smart watches.
Health Care.
Skin Care.
Hobbies and Craft.
Lamps and Shades.
Why You Should Start a Shopify Store
Whether or not you start an ecommerce business is up to you, but if you decide you are going to, you definitely need to do it using the Shopify platform. Here are just a few reasons.
- Your store design costs normally would be thousands of dollars, for getting a website designer that not only has the skills to create a great looking website, but also to program all of the ecommerce functions you need including security. But with Shopify, there is no huge investment of thousands of dollars. You just pay one of four tiers of pricing and you get the perfect ecommerce website.
- You get the benefit of the entire Shopify team. You aren’t just getting a website template with Shopify, you are getting a ready-made store that has already had all of the bugs worked out and has been re-designed and re-worked so that it functions perfectly and has just about every feature that you could possibly want.
- The platform is so intuitive that you can start building your store right after logging in. You might have to look at the help pages to use some of the more advanced features but for adding products and customizing design as well as other basics, you can start doing it right away with almost no learning curve.
- You have some incredible security. By law, an ecommerce website has to take certain steps to protect a customer’s financial information, but you don’t just get sufficient security with Shopify, you get some of the most highly rated security features of any ecommerce platform on the market today. You don’t have to worry about programming security protocols or making sure that your site is protected on all sides from thieves who want your customer’s credit card numbers. Shopify does all the work for you.
- Shopify is designed to help you reach your SEO potential. If you were to pay a designer for a custom ecommerce site you would spend thousands of dollars or perhaps even tens of thousands of dollars and you wouldn’t get the features that you get with Shopify. One of those features is their search engine optimization. With Shopify, your e-store has the best chance possible to rank high in the search engines and bring you lots of organic traffic.
- You get analytics that tell you exactly what is going on. With Shopify, you can see exactly where your customers are coming from, what keywords they are using to reach your site and where they go once they get there, not to mention how long they stay. All of this information has one primary purpose – to allow you to tweak your Shopify site and your marketing and promotion efforts to get as many people coming to your site as possible and then getting them to stay there once they arrive. You still have to offer great products, but Shopify helps you market your site much more effectively and gets customers to show up, which is half the battle when it comes to ecommerce.
- Your site is already optimized for mobile and will continue to be optimized in the future. With Shopify, you get a responsive website that will work with any mobile device and as this quickly becomes the primary way that people shop, your ecommerce website is only going to get better, as the engineers behind the platform ensure that you always keep up with the technology.
- You get hosting with your site. Shopify has an advantage that many ecommerce platforms do not share – your site is hosted by them, and your payment gateway and other shopping cart features are already taken care of. Not only does this save you money since you don’t have to pay for hosting, you also will always have enough bandwidth to support your traffic and of course, you get security with the hosting that is unrivaled.
- Shopify is extremely reliable. Shopify didn’t get to their spot as the number one ecommerce platform by accident. They are so popular and so widely used because of how reliable the platform is. When your store begins to get more traffic, you will lose money for every second or minute that your site id own. Using Shopify minimizes the chances of this as much as possible.
- Shopify has numerous apps created for your use. The Shopify app store has some talented designers creating programs that you can use to make your ecommerce store even better. You can customize the appearance of your site and do a great deal with Shopify but with the app store you can create an unstoppable force in the world of ecommerce.
An Introduction to Shopify
Of course, creating a store has never been easier either, thanks to Shopify. In fact, setting up and launching an ecommerce website is as simple as painless as creating a WordPress or Blogger blog these days thanks to ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
What You Need to Start Your Own Ecommerce Website
There are some initial things that you should be bringing to the table if you plan to start your own ecommerce website, before you start configuring your store or even deciding what sort of products you are going to sell. You should ask yourself if you have or are willing to cultivate the items on the list below to give yourself the best chance possible of having success at selling online.
Here are a few things to consider if you are thinking of getting into the business.
- Are you able to devote the time involved into making your store successful? That may include several hours per week that you spend setting up your ecommerce website while still having to work a full-time job or assume your regular responsibilities. Even if you are able to be successful and work your store full-time you will have to spend time each week on order fulfillment, shipping, updating your store, communicating with customers and following the industry of products that you are selling.
- Do you have the ability to invest in your store while still meeting your financial responsibilities and possibly compromising the lifestyle that you are used to in order to have money to spend on setting up your store? Even if you take out a loan to start your store you are still assuming financial risk and you need to make sure that you are prepared financially.
- Can you work on your store for a year or more without seeing any sort of profit? The Small Business Administration estimates that the average small business won’t see a profit until the second or third year in business.
- Will you be able to keep yourself motivated even if you feel as if you aren’t having any success at running your store? You may end up having to work for a long period of time before you see any sort of success and most people would give up before they reached the point where things turned around for them. Are you able to make yourself accomplish the work that needs to be done daily, as well as live your regular life, including working at another job, all with what seems like to reward at any time in the near future.
- Are you prepared to accept potential defeat? You might put in the work, live simply or take out a loan to have money to invest in your business, purchase a great deal of inventory and do countless other things to make your website a success only to realize that it is never going to work the way that you have it currently set up. The competition is fierce and it not only takes skill and perseverance to run a successful e-store, it also takes luck. It is possible that you’ll never be able to get your business off of the ground and you have to be willing to take that risk.
How You Can Use Drop Shipping with Shopify
You list products on your website and you do the promotion, and when someone buys one of those products you get a cut but you don’t actually have to do any of the fulfillments because it is all taken care of by the drop shipping company. So, how do you configure Shopify to use drop shipping and is it a profitable venture?
What is Drop Shipping?
Drop shipping is when a company like yours purchases a product from a company that will then ship the product to the customer. Your company doesn’t actually buy the product until the customer buys it from you.
This makes for lower overhead and removes the need to warehouse and ship products. However, the disadvantage of drop shipping, is that you aren’t able to mark up the product very much before customers decide that they don’t want to buy from you because your prices are too high.
What Drop Shipping is offered through Shopify?
One of the drop shipping options offered through Shopify is Amazon itself. Amazon has a long history of allowing people to make a profit from selling their products on your website.
This is a great deal because Amazon has amazing customer service and as a vendor that is selling their products you’ll benefit from that customer service reputation as well. Amazon is definitely the biggest drop shipping company that is offered as part of the Shopify platform as well as the most reliable.
Shipwire
Shipwire is another drop shipping service that is integrated into Shopify. Shipwire allows you to store and ship your products from their warehouses that are located all over the world, specifically: the United States, Australia, China and the United Kingdom.
Rakuten
Rakuten, which was previously called Webgistix, is the other drop shipping platform that is integrated into Shopify. They have a good reputation and quite a few shipping options which is great if you want to offer your customers the widest choice available of shipping.
They have a reputation for delivering items fast and keeping up with modern technology, which you can integrate into your store. They also have great customer service according to the people that have reviewed them online.
Making Your Shopify Store a Success
But if you understand some of the programs that are now available, you will be able to find more of the same in the more recent programs offered, or simply newer versions of the ones mentioned here. At the very least, when you have completed this chapter you should be able to know where to look for add-on applications that will make it much easier to run your Shopify store.
Accounting:
Accounting is one of the most important parts of your business management. You need to keep track of what you are spending and how much, so that you can make adjustments that will make your business as profitable as possible.
In addition, you’re going to need a down-to-the-penny tracking to report your taxes and have all of your paperwork in order if you need to defend your accounting in an audit. Luckily, Shopify can be integrated with some of the biggest third-party accounting software packages like Quickbooks, Freshbooks, Xero and more.
Inventory Management:
You’ll also need a way to keep track of your inventory and the tools that are offered by Shopify may not have every feature that you require. You can automate the process of replenishing inventory as little or as much as you’d like.
You can track what the frequency of item sales so that you can get recommendations on which ones you need to replenish right away and which ones you can worry about later one because the chances are lower of them selling, and you can even automate the process of ordering if you like. Whatever inventory management setup you prefer, you can find a software solution that will provide it.
Customer Service:
When it comes to customer service, you want to go the extra mile. You need people to feel as if they can get in touch with someone if they have a problem because otherwise, they might not buy from you in the future.
There are a number of automated solutions that you can integrate into your Shopify store that will make your customer service better and easier to manage. From feedback and comment systems to live chat support, there are many ways that you can integrate third-part applications to make your customer service great.
Social Media Management:
Social media management isn’t just a good idea in today’s online business, it is absolutely vital to the success of every ecommerce website out there. Social media management is definitely one of the aspects of your site that has the most automated tools associated with it.
Whatever social media platforms that you are using, there is probably an application compatible with your Shopify store, and for the major ones, there are many. Shopify already has some integrated Facebook and Twitter tools available.
Marketing:
Marketing is something else that you might need some extra help with. Because marketing is important no matter what kind of business you are in, but difficult to manage if you are a one-person ecommerce website, automated tools that help you market your products are definitely a plus. Often, marketing is combined with social media, but there may be other avenues that you’re pursuing as well.
Sales:
If you want to create more sales, you need to implement some compatible third-party programs that concentrate on things like upselling a customer, or giving them impulse buying options, as well as things like customer loyalty programs that make them want to come back.
Reporting:
There are definitely some reporting tools that are already integrated into your Shopify store, but if you want to get more information than what these standard tools provide you might have to install third-party applications that give you more comprehensive reports.
Things like what your customers viewed before they made a purchase, how long they spent on the purchase page, which products they skipped over and most definitely where they came from to get to your site are all details that you can gather and analyze to make your sales numbers higher.
Shipping:
Shopify probably has one of the best shipping programs already integrated into the store. The way it works is this: a customer purchases an item from you, including the shipping cost. You then purchase the postage-included shipping label from Shopify at a discount – with the amount of the discount depending upon which plan you are currently enrolled in – and send your customer’s item on its way. However, if you don’t want to use the integrated shipping tools for whatever reason, Shopify does allow you to set up your own custom shipping options.
Misc. Tools:
There are far too many tools out there that can be integrated into Shopify to include a list here, but what might help you further are some suggestions on where you can find these programs. One of the richest resources is right on Shopify’s own user forum.
There are probably hundreds of threads with programs that can be integrated into Shopify, and if you have a particular question, there are other Shopify users there, some of them with many years of experience, that can help.
Shopify Compared to Other eCommerce Platforms
If you are considering using Shopify, you might be wondering whether they live up to their claim as the best ecommerce platform or whether there is a better solution out there. To help you answer that question, this chapter will go over some of the top ecommerce platforms and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each one, as well as how they stack up to Shopify.
An Ecommerce Platform Defined
The first thing that we’ll do is define what an ecommerce platform actually is. An ecommerce platform is a software program that gives you the framework to build an online store. This means that rather than having to code in things like product pages, shopping carts, buying buttons and various other complex design elements.
All of that is done for you when you use an ecommerce platform. All you have to do is customize your site with the design that you want – usually through the use of themes, and then add your products and other information. It is an easy way to build an online store as long as you choose a platform that does what you need it to do.
Comparison: Shopify Against Other Platforms
There are many ecommerce platforms out there to choose from – hundreds if not thousands. Shopify is by far the most popular and the most widely used of all of these platforms but does that mean it is the best? We’ll be looking at the top ecommerce platforms and see how Shopify stacks up against each of them. If Shopify is the best, you should know why, and be able to compare the platform fairly against all of the others in order to make an informed, unbiased decision. So, let’s compare them one by one.
The Top Ecommerce Platforms
We’ll be comparing Shopify against three platforms that are definitely up there in the top five with Shopify: Magento, Bigcommerce and Volusion. We’ll compare each one with Shopify on the basis of the following factors: Pricing, design customization, features, security, marketing, reports, add-ons and support.
These are all of the basic framework components of each ecommerce platform out there and by looking at these eight factors you can decide how each of them compare with Shopify and decide which one you are going to go with, or if you are still going to use Shopify.
Pricing
First, let’s discuss pricing. Magento is free unless you want to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition, which is pretty pricey. BigCommerce is the most expensive of the bunch with four tiers of features, each one about double what Shopify costs per month. Volusion and Shopify are very similar when it comes to pricing.
Design Customization
Next is design customization. All of these design customizations are based upon themes. All of the platforms have some free themes and then there are premium themes as well. BigCommerce doesn’t charge anything for their selection of 100 themes, but the quality is pretty low.
Volusion has a couple of dozen free themes and then nearly a hundred premium ones, and the quality is comparable to Shopify. Magento has some free themes but most of the good ones are premium and they can run upwards of $150. Shopify and Volusion definitely have the best out of the four and Shopify themes are a little higher quality.
Frontend Features
These four are nearly comparable when it comes to frontend features. The only problem really lies with the BigCommerce platform which isn’t very clean. It does have more features than any other platform to make up for it however. All of the frontend designs are mobile responsive so you don’t have to worry about that.
Backend Features
BigCommerce is the clear winner here when it comes to backend features. There is just enough customization to allow you to make your store look the way you want and the interface is very nice and clean.
Shopify also has a clean interface and is fairly robust although not quite as nice as BigCommerce. Both Volusion and Magento have backends that have a very steep learning curve and although Magento offers a much greater array of features, it is almost impossible for first-time users to make the backend do what they want without learning much of the tutorial information first.
Security
Shopify is the clear winner here because of the hosting that they offer and the fact that they feature a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and are PCI compliant. BigCommerce is pretty secure as well but doesn’t feature a CDN. Volusion does provide hosting and have a CDN and PCI compliance but you have to pay for encryption which Shopify offers for free. Magento requires that you get outside hosting which costs you extra per month, but the basic edition of Magento is free to make up for it.
Marketing
The marketing encompasses several aspects including SEO, social media and more. When it comes to SEO the big winner is BigCommerce as the SEO customization is very well planned and quite robust. Shopify only has the basic SEO features and Volusion is even worse. However, Magento has everything built in for SEO just the way you’d need it.
As for social media integration, all of them are about the same except for Magento, which offers no social media integration whatsoever. As for the newsletter feature, both Volusion and Magento have them built in. Shopify and BigCommerce doesn’t have a built-in newsletter but they do integrate easily with third-party application for this feature.
All of the platforms offer the same basic promotion features like discounts and coupon codes. They also all support selling items via other channels and allow you to use the onsite marketing tools to start bringing in traffic.
Reports
As for reports, they all offer pretty much the same thing. The reports and statistics features on these platforms are all basically the same and give you the much-needed information about conversion rates, bounce rates and an overview of the products that you are selling. There is no real clear winner here when it comes to this feature.
Add-ons
All of these platforms also offer add-ons that will extend the usability of the platform and give you even more features than you had before. They have app sections of each platform that you can browse and decide how you want to expand your store.
The thing about the apps is that they are constantly changing and each platform is always moving alongside the others so you can’t really pick a clear winner based on this. What you have to do instead is decide which one you are going to use and then keep track of the add-ons that you see.
Support
Okay, so what about support? Let’s start with Shopify. No matter what package you choose – including the cheap per month Basic package you get 24/7 support. BigCommerce has a great education center and you can get in touch with support 24/7 weekdays and between limited hours on the weekends.
Volusion offers phone, live chat and email support 24/7 and then Magento is the one that is seriously lacking in support unless you upgrade to the expensive Enterprise version. However, you can visit forums to get help with Magento .
Choosing the Right Shopify Package
The easiest way to allow you to determine what package you should go with is to describe each feature that Shopify offers, based upon this chart, and then mark which membership tiers get access to that feature.
At the time of this writing, the Shopify plans are as follows:
- Lite: $9 per month
- Basic: $29 per month
- Pro: $79 per month
- Unlimited: $179 per month
Features Offered by Shopify with Membership
Online Store: Basic, Pro, Unlimited
With Shopify, this is where everything begins. If you want to have an online store, you need to choose one of the membership plans that offer it – Basic, Pro or Unlimited. If you choose the Lite plan, you aren’t going to get a store.
Point-of-Sale: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
You get the point-of-sale feature with all of the plans. What this gives you is the ability to take payments any way you need to using the Shopify POS. That means that you can accept payments in both the virtual and real world and it is easy to set up with an app on your mobile device and an intuitive design that requires no training whatsoever. There is also a retail add-on package that gives you everything you need to sell in a brick-and-mortar store.
Facebook Integration: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
With this feature you store gets fully integrated with Facebook so when people visit your page, they can see the items that you have in your store, updated whenever you change them, and be able to click through to your store and buy if they want to. No matter which plan you choose you get this integration.
Pinterest Integration: Basic, Pro, Unlimited
This feature comes with every package except for the Lite package and it allows you to sell items from your store directly on Pinterest buy having a buy button integrated into your pins. Buyable pins allow customers to buy without even leaving Pinterest and could definitely result in a lot more sales.
Twitter Integration: Basic, Pro, Unlimited
Again, comes with every package except for the Lite, and this feature works pretty much the same as the Pinterest integration does. Anytime you tweet a product, it will automatically include a buy button, product image and description so that people can shop without even leaving Twitter.
Shopify Buy Button: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
The Shopify buy button is how you can add your buy button to any website that you choose, and it comes with all of the different packages that Shopify offers.
Retail Package: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
This is the cost of the retail add-on package. With some features, you get a discount with the higher priced Shopify packages, but with this particular one, the retail add-on costs $40 no matter which package you go with.
Credit Card Rates: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
As mentioned in the last feature, some tiers give you different costs. This is an example of those. You pay less fees for accepting credit cards the higher of a tier you choose. So for the Lite and Basic packages, you pay 2.9% plus 30 cents online and 2.7% plus 0 cents in person while the Pro package only charges you 2.6% plus 30 cents online and 2.4% plus 0 cents in person. The Unlimited package gives you a further discount – 2.4% plus 30 cents online and 2.2% plus 0 cents in person.
Transaction Fees: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
So, for this package, you don’t pay any transaction fees with Shopify Payments no matter which package you choose. But if you use external payment gateways you are going to pay 2% on the Lite and Basic packages, and 1% with the Pro. The Unlimited package only charges you half a percent transaction fees on outside payments.
Number of Products: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
No matter which package you go with, you get an unlimited number of products in your store.
24/7 Support: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
All of the packages include 24/7 support. If you are paying for a package with Shopify, you get access to support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.
Shipping Label Discounts: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
When you buy shipping labels from Shopify you get deeper discounts with the higher tier packages. With Lite and Basic, you get up to 50% off shipping labels while you get another 5% off with Pro and another 10% off (for a total of up to 60% off) with Unlimited
Fraud Analysis: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
No matter what package you go with you get Shopify’s award-winning fraud analysis to make sure that you are protected from fraudulent purchases.
Manual Order Creation: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
Again, you get this feature no matter which package you choose. What a manual order feature gives you is the ability to enter an order manually without having the customer purchase the product online. That means if you sell something in the real world you can still take advantage of Shopify’s features by entering it into the system manually.
Website & Blog: Basic, Pro, Unlimited
With the exception of the Lite package, you get to have a website and blog through Shopify with any of the tiers that you choose. This allows you to blog and builds authority as well as gives you an ecommerce store. Blogging can help you rank for more keywords as well.
File Storage: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
No matter what you choose here, you get unlimited file storage.
Discount Codes: Lite, Basic, Pro, Unlimited
Discount codes allow you to run promotions and give your customers a discount when they use a specific code. This is a very good tool for knowing where your traffic came from and which advertising methods work the best.
Gift Cards: Basic, Pro, Unlimited
With the Basic, Pro and Unlimited packages you get gift cards that your customers can use to give to other people or use at a later date.
Professional Reports: Pro, Unlimited
The Pro and the Unlimited packages are the only ones that give you the ability to run advanced reports and see what is really going on in your store. You do get some basic reporting without this feature, but it is very limited and it could be worth upgrading to the Pro or Unlimited packages all by itself.
Abandoned Cart Recovery: Pro, Unlimited
This allows customers to come back after closing out the page and finding their shopping cart just as they left it.
Advanced Report Builder: Unlimited
The only package that you get this advanced report builder in is the Unlimited package and in fact, this is one of only two features that you can only get with the Unlimited package.
Real Time Carrier Shipping: Unlimited
This is the other feature that you get only with the Unlimited package.
How to decide if a Product is Right for Shopify?
There are some really great ways to evaluate product ideas and determine whether or not you should make time and monetary investment in starting an e-store around them. Here are three ways that you can evaluate products specifically for the Shopify platform or for an e-commerce business in general.
Are you the person to market this product?
This is the first question that you should ask yourself because with the Shopify site specifically you are competing in a niche and the way that you’re going to make your business grow is by becoming an expert in that niche.
If you are selling products that you know nothing about and that you’re not willing to learn about then those products are definitely not right for Shopify or any other e-commerce store that you’re considering.
Do people want the product?
The next thing that you’re going to have to figure out is whether or not people want the product. This can be done a few different ways. Obviously, you could do market research or have a company do it for you, which is usually prohibitively expensive.
A much better way to do market research before you buy a product is to create listings for them and then make them out of stock. Then, you can try to get people interested in your “out of stock” products to see whether or not they would be viable for your Shopify site.
Can you Compete?
Another thing you have to decide is whether or not you can compete in this particular niche. Large corporations dominate the biggest markets out there but there are also some pretty solid companies that are dominating the smaller markets too.
You need to look at the competition, and determine whether or not you can rank for any of the keywords that you’ll need to get people into your site as well as whether or not you can sell products at a low enough price to compete with these big-name companies that are likely able to get wholesale prices that are better than yours. If not, then you should choose a different product.
Where to Get Your Shopify Products
Of course, there are digital products to consider as well. Digital products can be a huge part of your income, particularly since if you create them yourself, you can sell them with no overhead whatsoever. Then, there are subscription products to consider, which might be something you add to your store if you have a valuable service that people are going to pay for month after month. But as far as obtaining products, let’s start with where you can get your physical inventory.
Obtaining Items Wholesale
When an item is manufactured, ideally, it would go straight to retailers and then they could add their markup and sell the item in their store. Unfortunately, it doesn’t happen like that at all. What actually happens is that the manufacturer sells it to a distributor, who then sells it to a wholesaler (or vice-versa) who then sells it to the retailer, if you’re lucky. There may even be more middle-men with their hand out along the process and so the price can get pretty high by the time it gets to you.
The big stores like Walmart do enough business that they are able to skip a lot of steps and buy directly from the manufacturer. That’s why they can offer their customers such low prices and be able to undercut the competition. But as an ecommerce website without any real clout, especially if you don’t have the money to buy in bulk, you are going to be buying close to retail on some things.
Some wholesalers won’t sell to you unless you purchase a certain amount and others may not want to deal with you at all. Retailers often spend years building relationships with their suppliers in order to make sure they get the best price possible.
Where to Look to Buy Items Wholesale
If you want to buy items wholesale, you need to understand who the players are in your area. The wholesale industry has 50 of the biggest distributing companies generating a quarter of the income in the entire industry. The world of wholesale is a small one and there is a definite distribution chain that wholesalers supply through. It is a club that you have to have an invitation to be a part of.
At the highest level are the manufacturers who take the raw material and turn it into a product, or the import companies who buy it elsewhere and import it to the United States. Those companies then sell it to wholesalers or to distributors responsible for a region, and who distribute the product to the retail stores in that area. There are also brokers who are the go-between of small retail businesses and the distributors.
Volume & Relationships Mean Discounts
When it comes to getting the best price on items, you need to have one of two things, and probably both. You need to be buying large volumes of products, whether that be many items of the same product or just a large order, and you need to establish a relationship with your wholesaler.
If you have been working with the same wholesaler for any length of time, you will begin to build a relationship, and that relationship will ensure that you get a good price down the road, even if you aren’t necessarily buying as much inventory as they’d like to sell you, as they want to keep in your good graces.
Since you’re new, it is unlikely that you’re going to have a relationship with the supplier so you’re going to have to work towards it, and make up for it by buying in bulk as often as you can. Even so, there are wholesalers who will sell and ship to small businesses if you look for them.
You may not get as good of price from these wholesalers but as you become more and more well-known in supplier circles you will be able to move up the ladder to get to a better supplier.
Where to Look for Wholesalers
The best place for you to look for wholesalers these days is probably the internet, as you don’t know anyone outside of the web that you can call. There are definitely wholesalers who list online and market themselves to businesses via the web. There are also trade associations and directories that you can make use of like Wholesale Central.
One way that you can go about finding the right supplier online is to find a store that sells some of same products that you do and shoot them an email to ask for a recommendation. They may not wish to help you if they are a competitor of yours, so try to find someone who you’re not competing with.
Other than the internet, you can find wholesalers by attending trade shows. There are dozens and possibly hundreds of trade shows that have wholesalers attending them and if you can attend you may be able to get a supplier that you wouldn’t have ordinarily had access to.
You can also read trade magazines, particularly the classifieds section, to find wholesales that supply your particular product. You can also get recommendations from business organizations like the SBA, Small Business Development Center and the local chamber of commerce.
You might also want to try talking to the manufacturer themselves. Although you probably aren’t going to get them to sell you products at the prices they sell to wholesalers, they might give you some recommendations of the people farther down the supply chain that serves small businesses. Another great idea is to visit retailer forums, particularly those for ecommerce. Of course, there is always the Amazon affiliate program as well.
Getting Digital Products to Sell
Depending upon what the digital product is that you are planning to sell, you can almost always make good money on them. You might have heard of Clickbank as the digital marketplace for sellers and affiliates.
The problem with clickbank products is that they are often overpriced because the creator doesn’t sell that many and has to be an affiliate commission whenever they do sell something. However, Clickbank isn’t the only game in town.
Figure out what sort of digital product that you’d like to sell, and whether you plan on providing that digital product yourself or whether you plan to be an affiliate for someone else and then search the internet for products that fit your needs. You’ll probably have to do some real research, because once you find a product, you need to vet it carefully, but soon you’ll have some digital inventory to sell.
How to Make your First Sale with Shopify
Eventually, you will get that first sale, but it may take some patients. Here are some of the ways that you can increase your chances of getting that first sale sooner.
Your Family & Friends
Your family and friends are going to be an invaluable marketing tool when you first launch your store. They may want to buy products from you themselves, just to support you, but more likely they’ll tell their friends and eventually someone will need something that your offering. Any sales organization will tell you that you start with your family and friends and then network from there.
Advertising
Advertising used to be something that only the most successful businesses could do because it was expensive to advertise on television, radio or newspaper. But with the Internet, advertising has gotten quite a bit cheaper.
You may be able to find a website that appeals directly to your customers and advertise there for a very low price. In addition, there is Facebook advertising, Google Adwords and various other low-cost methods of getting the word out there.
Deeply Discount or Give Away Products
Another method that you can use to get your first sale is to give out huge discounts. Obviously, when you make your first sale you are going to make very much money on it and in fact may lose money. However, the word will spread and you may be of the make a profit on other products that you are discounting.
Giving away products doesn’t seem to make sense either but some companies set aside a certain budget for marketing and then use that to make up the cost of the items that they’re giving away.
Then they advertise the free items in describe them as “for a limited time only” which usually brings quite a bit of traffic some of which may by something else.
Make Some YouTube Videos
Finally, you could make some YouTube videos. They can be advice videos or you could just be talking about how you are able to get your store off the ground. Adding links to your store may bring in traffic that will give you your for sale.
An Introduction to the Shopify Success
While having an online store is something that many people dream about, few actually follow through and build one, so you are in a unique class of individuals. Of course, creating a store has never been easier either, thanks to Shopify.
In fact, setting up and launching an ecommerce website is as simple as painless as creating a WordPress or Blogger blog these days thanks to ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
What You Need to Start Your Own Ecommerce Website
There are some initial things that you should be bringing to the table if you plan to start your own ecommerce website, before you start configuring your store or even deciding what sort of products you are going to sell.
You should ask yourself if you have or are willing to cultivate the items on the list below to give yourself the best chance possible of having success at selling online. Here are a few things to consider if you are thinking of getting into the business.
- Are you able to devote the time involved into making your store successful? That may include several hours per week that you spend setting up your ecommerce website while still having to work a full-time job or assume your regular responsibilities. Even if you are able to be successful and work your store full-time you will have to spend time each week on order fulfillment, shipping, updating your store, communicating with customers and following the industry of products that you are selling.
- Do you have the ability to invest in your store while still meeting your financial responsibilities and possibly compromising the lifestyle that you are used to in order to have money to spend on setting up your store? Even if you take out a loan to start your store you are still assuming financial risk and you need to make sure that you are prepared financially.
- Can you work on your store for a year or more without seeing any sort of profit? The Small Business Administration estimates that the average small business won’t see a profit until the second or third year in business.
- Will you be able to keep yourself motivated even if you feel as if you aren’t having any success at running your store? You may end up having to work for a long period of time before you see any sort of success and most people would give up before they reached the point where things turned around for them. Are you able to make yourself accomplish the work that needs to be done daily, as well as live your regular life, including working at another job, all with what seems like to reward at any time in the near future.
- Are you prepared to accept potential defeat? You might put in the work, live simply or take out a loan to have money to invest in your business, purchase a great deal of inventory and do countless other things to make your website a success only to realize that it is never going to work the way that you have it currently set up. The competition is fierce and it not only takes skill and perseverance to run a successful e-store, it also takes luck. It is possible that you’ll never be able to get your business off of the ground and you have to be willing to take that risk.
Why You Should Add Product Reviews on Shopify
Still others don’t even know that they have the capability of having product reviews enabled on their Shopify site. But there are some pretty compelling reasons that you should add product reviews.
They Influence Customer Options
The bottom line is, product reviews influence customer opinions. More than half of the people that buy products online read the customer reviews before they decide to part with their money. For these people, whether the positive reviews outweigh the negative ones is the determining factor of whether or not they’re going to buy.
Reviews Improve Your Marketing Efforts
Have you heard the Hollywood axiom that bad press is still press? Whether people are leaving good reviews or bad reviews on your products you are still getting reviewed and this will bring in visitors. Some companies even purposely spark controversy so that they can get traffic coming in.
Reviews Improve SEO
When it comes to search engine optimization, reviews are some of the best tools that you could have to improve your search engine rankings. That’s because reviews contain words and when you have more words on your site you rank for more keywords.
In this way, even bad reviews are good for you once again; the more reviews that you have on your products the bigger the increase in traffic that you’ll get.
Reviews Show You’re Legitimate
Another thing that reviews do for your business is show that you are legitimate. With all of the scams that are online these days, people are wary about buying from sites that they haven’t heard of or haven’t purchased anything from before.
You can combat this to a certain extent by using trust symbols and using Shopify’s own payment gateways so that people can know that their information is secure.
However, that doesn’t tell them if they’re going to receive their product nor does it give them any information about what kind of shipping you do or what condition the product might be in when it gets there, as well as customer service experiences.
Who are Shopify’s Top Competitors?
There are actually some pretty solid reasons to go with Shopify over the competitors that are out there. Here is what you need to know so that you can feel good about your decision.
Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce is one of the major competitors for Shopify if you’re talking about platforms that do the same thing as Shopify. The truth is, Shopify has many more internet searches than Bigcommerce. However, the site isn’t doing too badly either.
While Shopify can boast almost a quarter-of-a-million merchants, BigCommerce has 100,000 or so. They are fairly easy to use and have a lot of the same features as Shopify has, plus they have about the same pricing as Shopify does. However, Shopify simply does it better things to the App Store, the terrific interface, customer service and more.
Magento
If there was ever a platform that can compete with Shopify for the features that are available it is Magento. That’s because this platform is open source and anyone can build features to work with this program.
However, Magento is not a full service e-commerce platform. It does not offer the support, the security for the company standing behind it. The people designing Magento are independent programmers working together to create a great e-commerce platform but for most people, Shopify works much better.
WooCommerce
If you are familiar with WordPress you might’ve heard of WooCommerce. This premium WordPress addition is a solid program with a great team behind it. What WooCommerce has going for it is that it works with WordPress which is one of the leading content management systems in the world.
Shopify Wins by Customer Consensus
So these programs have been around for a while and others are little newer than Shopify but what they all have in common is that while Shopify’s interest from consumers has grown exponentially the interest in the rest of these e-commerce platforms has pretty much stayed the same as it was when they first released.
That’s not to say that the platforms haven’t improved – they have – but they never really took off with consumers like Shopify has.
Shopify Costs versus Potential Sales
Obviously, this is to be avoided, and many people that are considering starting an e-commerce store are already having trouble with their bills and don’t have the budget to pay for a store until it makes a profit.
So you have to do some calculations to decide whether or not the cost of doing business in the Shopify is going to be worth whatever price that you’ll be paying.
Your Shopify Plan
Your Shopify plan is the first thing that is going to determine whether your sales are going outweigh your cost or whether it’s going to be the other way around. There are four Shopify plans to choose from. The first of the plans is only nine dollars a month.
From there it goes to $29 a month, $79 a month and $179 a month. With each of these plans, you get various benefits and features for your Shopify store. You also get discounts on things like Shopify shipping and on credit card processing fees so factor this in as well.
Your Product Choice
The next thing that is going to influence whether or not you’ll be above or below water with your Shopify site is what products you have chosen and whether or not you have chosen to fulfill orders yourself or you’re using a third-party like a drop shipper.
On the product side, your profit will depend on how much you can save by buying the products wholesale and how much you can mark them up before selling them to the customer.
However, if you are selling the items yourself and keeping them warehoused, you are going to have overhead and cash flow issues that may affect your profit.
Your Add-Ons
The other thing that will determine how much you’re spending versus how much are making is what sort of add-ons you have and how much you’re spending on them.
Some people have third-party applications that they use to manage their social media, other people have Shopify apps that they are paying a monthly subscription for and there may be other fees or costs covered under this miscellaneous umbrella. How much you can keep these costs down correlates to whether you can afford your payment or not.
