You might’ve seen ads for “shopify” pop-up up on your Facebook feed, or even ads for a store that sells something similar to your interests, like a t-shirt with your favorite TV character, or a mug with a picture of your favorite musician. What ‘shopify’ and all those storefronts are are “ecommerce” sites.
Ecommerce, by definition, are “commercial transactions conducted electronically on the Internet.”
So shopping on the internet. But starting and running an online store is SO much easier in this day and age with all of the tools and services at our disposal. When I first got into this, I set up a store for my partner to run and she is now doing very well for herself. As we speak, she is touring Europe to visit our distant relatives, something that she wouldn’t have been able to do if she had a 9 to 5 job. And the beautiful thing is that while traveling, she is able to work from her phone!
Now these days, her shop doesn’t make anywhere near as much as it used to (she moved away from Facebook), but it still makes organic sales from the hype and email list she built from it. My wife sells portable oil burners to a hippie and gipsy niche she found after a little bit of research. While she is doing ok now, sales will eventually drop and she will have to bring back her Facebook integration.
So, does Shopify really work?
Ohhhhhhh yes. It’s all about finding the right niche, and that’s exactly what Nick did! So We are going to sit down with Nick and have a chat with him to see how exactly he made 100K in just over 3 months. 3 MONTHS! That’s over 1K a day in net revenue.
People have doubted this method for a while now but it simply works if you have the right audience and niche.
What got you into the Shopify method?
I’m an avid learner and came across an awesome course online a few months back that really hit home the benefits of Shopify in a concise way.I recognized immediately that this was what I had been looking for, bought the course, and started my new business venture.
It took me awhile to actually apply what I learned, I also invested in a few other courses about Facebook ads and Shopify. Then at the beginning of February, I launched my first store.
How much money did you spend doing adverts and what kind of CPC were you getting?
Total ad spend to reach my current $128,100 in revenue I’ve grossed as I write this was $18,031. On average my Cost Per Click on winning products is about .50-.60.
How long did it take for the ads to return a positive ROI (Return on Investment)
When I first started my store I spent about $300 in ads over the course of 2 weeks testing products that had little success.
I had my first $100 day on February 29th, which was positive ROI. Then scaled into $1000 days about 12 days later, I started hitting $2K days about 30 days later.
My revenue is usually about 5-7 times my ad spend on average.
Can you talk about the competitiveness in the industry? Did it play a key roll in your success?
I have a general Shopify store, so I’m many niches, they are all competitive. In fact, some of them have very large brands and stores that sell to the same audience.
My key advantage was finding unique items. I call them passion products, the type of stuff people see and love and they know they’re clicking that link to get it. I looked for the type of passion products that weren’t available in many other places, so buying from my store was easy for my audience cause they loved the products.
Did you have many buyer complaints? If do how did you handle them?
I thankfully have a VERY low complaint ratio. In fact, of the roughly 8,700 orders I currently have I’ve had less than 10 complaints.
For the complaints I do have, I will try to resolve the issue as best as possible. If I am at fault then I refund or replace the item. If I’m not, I just explain to people my side of the story.
Mostly I get people just checking on their item delivery. Since I dropship from Aliexpress, shipping is usually about 2-3 weeks. II tell people on the product page and provide tracking numbers, so that deflects about 99% of any delivery complaints.
What Shopify apps are you using?
Currently I only use 3 paid apps
- Notify
- Trackify
- Abandonment Protector
I also use a few free apps
- Shopify Reviews
- Contact Form
- Teelaunch for my custom merchandise
Did you have a large amount of products in the store? If so, did you promote them all?
Large is a very relative term. I have about 60 products in my store right now and most of them are in collections, some of them are random. I don’t promote them all, just looking at the data.
When I started, before ever launching my first ad I added about 20 products to my store just to make it look legit. The funny thing is I went on to get a few sales for most of them because they’re cool products, but I never promoted half of them.
They were just there as filler products to look like a quality online store.
Are the product(s) illegal / trademark (Example: Franchise like Zelda, Mario, The Walking Dead etc..)
Some of my products use other trademarks, not all.
Are you still getting consistent sales or have they slowed down?
Still getting consistent sales. Just had a $13,000 week
What would be your best advice for anyone entering the Shopify Facebook game?
Don’t over complicate the idea of selling products to people with Shopify. It’s all about finding the right product for the right audience. If you do that, people will buy.
Find time in the beginning to learn Facebook ads, set up a quality store that looks legit, and add a bunch of products so people feel like it’s an established store. Then start launching ads and test, test, test.
Don’t overthink it with questions that don’t matter, just get some products out there and start learning by experience. The quicker you test, the quicker you’ll find a winner.
Make sure to look at other Shopify stores and see what they’re doing well. See what they’re selling, see what they’re product pages look like, see what they’re Facebook fan pages and ads look like and model after their success.
In the beginning, it’s all about getting your first sales and making some money to get confident in yourself. So model other people’s success then start to develop your own style.
Don’t be too quick to rush into a niche specific store. The advantages of a general store are huge because you can test anything. Then once you have $50K in the bank and the freedom to think about what you want to do, you can explore more and take bigger risks.
Remember that this is possible for YOU. Just 3 months ago I was starting and looking at people posting screenshots of big earnings, testing ads that weren’t working and wondering how I was going to do the same. Then it all took off that quickly. The same can happen to you too, just keep testing and don’t quit.
Final Words
So there we have it guys, this stuff does work.
As always it comes down to the niche and the audience, I’ve preached it so many times and it’s usually always the case of wrong niche when I see a failed store.
I hope this gives you enough inspiration to go out and give this stuff a go!