I have an exciting announcement to share…

I just celebrated my best-ever month selling products on Shopify!

This isn’t my first 4-figure month, but it’s my best one yet.

And in the interest of full disclosure: It took me a little over a year-and-a-half to get to this point. But looking back, I learned a TON about selling on Shopify (and continue to do so), that I think would have saved me a lot of time and wasted effort over the past year and a half.  So I want to share those learnings and save you from making my mistakes, and only following my proven success strategies. As the saying goes, “success leaves tracks,” and I’m going to lay them down for you right now.

Why Sell on Shopify

Ecommerce has seen a massive boom in the few years According to the 2018 Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report, ecommerce revenue continues to surge, up 16% YoY in the U.S., but the real money is made in places like social media and online subscriptions.

And people are jumping on the bandwagon though business-in-a-box platforms like Shopify, and online commerce marketplaces like Etsy. In fact, there are more sellers online than ever before. This can be a great way for you to make money online if you can think of a product that you are passionate about selling. And this product can be something that you make on your own (like, for example, dog bandanas, which is where I found success), or a product that you resell from another vendor.

Setting up an ecommerce shop is also a highly attractive option for making money online, because it’s a tactic you can employ with little to no start-up costs.

Do you want to get selling on Shopify? It’s easier than you think! Download my “Start Your Shopify Biz Blueprint” here.

How to Sell on Shopify (and Make 4- Figures per Month with This Formula)

You might see some other articles out that on “how to make 6 figures selling on Shopify” – and don’t get my wrong, those articles are AWESOME! And that is an awesome goal to work towards.

But let’s be honest – 4 figures is a much more attainable goal to work towards. And once you prove to yourself and your business that it’s capable of making 4 figures per month, it’s that much easier to ramp up to 5 figures, and then 6 figures, and then… the sky’s the limit!

And 4 figures is nothing to scoff at, especially when you consider that this is mostly passive income. Aside from the time it takes me to post & engage on social media (about 1 hour/week), the time is takes me to fulfill orders (1-2 times per week, for about 1 hour/week total), and other management and communication duties (an additional 1 hour/week) – Less than 3 hours per week of work for $250? I’ll take that any day!

Here’s how you can get started earning income from Shopify with my success formula:

1. Choose a niche

The absolute first thing that you should do to set yourself up for 4-figure success on Shopify is choose a viable niche. You will boost your chances of success and profitability the more you niche down. So for example, instead of selling “dresses,” can you sell “nautical-print striped dresses?” You can see how that’s so much more specific, and will attract a very unique subset of people.

If you need help choosing a niche product, there’s a great “Find Your Product” Exercise in my “Start Your Shopify Biz Blueprint”  Template.

The more you niche down, and create a highly specific, targeted product, the more success you will find in Step 2…

2. Build a following on Instagram

There’s no way around it: Instagram is a huge channel for sales in 2018. Mobile is becoming a more and more of a traffic source to ecommerce websites, as you can see in this chart from 2015.

As you can see in the table below, Instagram was my single top-contributing sales channel (and let’s not discount “Direct” – direct traffic is any traffic that came directly to your site, meaning the user typed your site into their search browser. It could very well be that their first discovery of the brand came from social media, and Instagram, specifically!)

Of course, building a following on Instagram will take some time – but it is SO important for the rest of this selling strategy (and in general!)

In addition, with Shopify, your Instagram page becomes another direct sales channel, since Shopify has a product integration where you can actually tag products in your Instagram posts, so the user can click through directly and purchase them.

Here’s an in-depth article from Shopify on how exactly to set up your Instagram Sales Channel.

3. Pre-sell your products on Instagram (with this 4 step-formula)

Over the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with a crowdsource/pre-selling strategy on Instagram – I used it to launch two products, and subsequently had my two best months ever (including this one).

1. Post once on Instagram crowdsourcing ideas from your following

I’m disappointed that it took me so long to enact this strategy in my own business, but here’s a great tip for ecommerce success: ask your customer base what products they want you to sell. Seems pretty straightforward, right? Of course, you’ll have to have at least one initial product to build that customer base, but once you accrue a following, you can ask them directly what they’d like to see in your shop, whether it’s existing product customizations, or a brand new product!

This also works well because it helps you customer base feel engaged and like they are a part of the product creation product (which they are!) It gets them subconsciously emotionally invested in the product development, which assists with the remaining steps in the formula.

2. Post once on Instagram with teaser of what was chosen

This is an anticipation-building post: share which product you have decided to sell, but include one more “ask” from your following. Maybe you’re deciding between two final colors? Give them another chance to participate in the production ideation process, and continue to build hype.

3. Post once on Instagram with the product announcement

Once you’ve finalized all product details (but not actually created it yet!) – it’s time to sell. Determine your price (taking profit margins into account), set up your product listing on Shopify, and finalize your purchase URL. Then – it’s time to post! Keep the excitement in your post, using language like “Drumroll please…” or “Special Announcement” or “It’s here! It’s here!” – whatever fits with your brand voice and will get your previously engaged audience excited.

Depending on how the post performs with your audience (and after you accrue some like and comments), you can also boost it to get some extra reach.

Important Tip: You are going to want to include a pre-order deadline in your post. This will help instill urgency and further motivate your audience to purchase. You can also use “limited supply” instead of a date deadline – both will work to create urgency or scarcity, two of the top buying motivators. You can see the big spike on November 12 below – that was from my product posting day on Instagram!

4. Post a reminder of the pre-sale deadline on the day or or day before the deadline

After your product posting day, make sure you post at least one more time right before your deadline for orders. In my case (and the screenshot above), the pre-sell deadline worked really well because I used the deadline as a “must-order by” date for guaranteed delivery before the holidays.

4. Only after you get pre-sales, create/order your product

Pre-selling your product is my BEST tip for finding success (and avoiding big wasted-money traps) selling on Shopify.

I elaborate more on my biggest Shopify mistakes below – check those out to make sure you avoid them. It will save you a lot of time and money!

5. Run at least one other special offer

As a rule of thumb, you should be hitting your list at least every 6 weeks to 2 months with some sort of special offer. If your list can handle it, aim for one per month, but also look at your offer schedule… if you have a HUGE offer coming up that you want to run, give you list and following some breathing room.

Do you want to get selling on Shopify? It’s easier than you think! Download my “Start Your Shopify Biz Blueprint” here.

It’s a Google Sheet planning template that walks you through all the steps you need to follow to start selling a winning product on Shopify (the right way – meaning without sinking a bunch of money up front).

My Biggest Shopify Mistakes

In addition to sharing Shopify success strategies, I also want to share some of the mistakes I made to help you from making the same ones (Hey, we’re all human, right?) Here are a few mistakes that you can stop yourself from making as you embark into the exciting world of selling on Shopify:

Buying product in bulk up front (without proven concept)

One of the first things I ever heard that got me really excited to sell on Shopify was the idea of reselling. I had heard a talk by two entrepreneurs who were making tons of money selling on the simplest Shopify site ever (no bells, no whistles). All they were doing was driving ads to the site, and selling one product: Donald Trump bobble heads (I know, I know… ).

But the secret to their success was how they were sourcing their product – they were using the overseas vendor Alibaba to create their product for very low cost.

My interest was piqued in this idea of reselling from Alibaba – so I pursued it, but I went about it the wrong way (at first!) Once I finally determined my product niche, I started doing research for existing products that would fit my niche. I found some great contenders, and wanted to order a few to try selling online – but the vendors pushed back saying they could only sell in quantities of 100. Naively, I agreed, thinking that I could easily sell 100 products by running some ads, right?

Wrong. I made two mistakes here: 1) I ordered product in bulk before proving the concept, and 2) I assumed ads would help me sell more product. Do not make these mistakes!

I can honestly say that, other than boosting one Instagram post for about $5 in the month of November, I did not spend any money on paid ads. That’s not to say that paid ads can’t help your business (they certainly can! Ads are a great way to scale your business and grow your following, but we’re not getting into that in this post, since ads have historically not been a factor in my 4-figure/month strategy).

Creating product before selling

In general, a very common mistake that burgeoning ecommerce entrepreneurs make when they get started selling online is spending lots of time, energy, and usually, money on creating a product… before they even start selling it.

Repeat after me: pre-selling is the way to go. 

As you can see from my experiences above, and my Instagram pre-selling formula, you can 100% sell a product on Shopify without actually creating the product. Employ these strategies and get starting building your own ecommerce empire – today!