WISH I KNEW THESE WHEN STARTING SHOPIFY BUSINESS

1. Content Marketing is Essential

When I first launched my yoga store, I created yoga quote articles. I would tag influencers featured in the article on Twitter. They’d share the report with their audience. And I’d benefit from free qualified traffic to my website that converted into sales.

But this section is actually not really about that. Shortly after I had got my first few sales from these articles, we stopped creating content for my blog. That was a big mistake because we didn’t have a back-up plan to fall on when the store failed about a year later.

Content marketing is one of the most impactful ways to grow a business and keep it alive a heck of a lot longer. I wish I did more than anything to turn the blog into an affiliate site until the next winning product in my niche came around. Since 99 percent of our store’s sales came from one product, I put myself at risk but not building a bigger audience than I can promote too long after the trend died out.

2. Don’t Switch Suppliers to Save Money

While the mandala blanket trend died out around the time our business failed, it wasn’t actually the thing that ended up killing my business. I saw that our ad costs were getting higher, so I wanted to save money on the product. So I found a supplier with a lower price selling the same product. Unfortunately, I hadn’t read reviews or looked at the supplier’s ratings. And this decision hurt me more than I could imagine.

Let’s say the new supplier wasn’t as good. This mistake cost me tens of thousands of dollars. I ended up getting a refund on the cost of products, and the supplier was immediately removed from the platform. However, the most significant loss of money was with our Facebook ad costs, which had been at an all-time high. Facebook doesn’t do refunds for choosing the wrong dropshipping supplier.

3. Sell Globally Immediately

Most people focus on selling to an American audience for most of their ads. And when it comes to “international,” they expand into Australia, UK, and Canada. But the truth is, there are 191 other countries you can sell to. If you’ve secretly always wanted to “take over the world,” dropshipping is the perfect business model to do that. And with ePacket delivery routes expanding over the years, it’s never been easier to build an international brand.

Unfortunately, I learned this lesson a little too late. It wasn’t until we had skyrocketing growth from a small country we had never heard of called Jersey that we started experimenting with other countries. And by then, there were so many other sellers selling the same product as me. If you start marketing internationally early on, you can find countries that no one else is selling to. The reality is for most countries outside the big four. There’s a much smaller number of sellers, making it the most significant opportunity for dropshippers.

4. Take Your Products’ Weaknesses and Show them Positively

The first time you get a negative review on your products, you can’t help but think to yourself, “Oh man, I chose a low-quality product.” And when I got my first few damaging emails, I’d panic and apologize profusely. I’d worry about how many others would complain.

The truth is, the only thing I needed to do was be honest about the product. For example, one of the biggest complaints about the beach blanket I was selling was that the material was too thin. So what did I do? On the product page, I wrote under a bullet point, “thin material for easy folding and to help feel the texture of the sand at the beach.” That way, I set realistic expectations for the product while also showcasing why that negative aspect was actually a great thing. This helped reduce starting Shopify business complaints by a landslide. Look for the benefit that a negative part of a product can have.

5. You Learn from All Your Failures

Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Fail. Fail. Win. That’s basically the formula to success when it comes to making passive income. If you look at all of your dropshipping failures as business lessons, you’ll grow into becoming a successful entrepreneur. There’ll be times when the tasks are painful or costly, but your ability to overcome those challenges will be what makes or breaks you. The best success stories always start as failure stories. Don’t get caught up in how far away you are from your goal of starting Shopify business right now. And don’t question your ability to get to the end goal based on a couple of challenging obstacles thrown your way. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. All that matters is that you push through those failures so you can eventually succeed.

6. The Best Way to Find Winning Products is by Looking at Ads

Hitting the dropshipping jackpot often comes from the success of one explosi0.0ve product. The upside is that you only need to find one product to make it big. The downside is that it takes a bit of work to find the product that’ll go big. I actually found the best outcome of my ecommerce career from a successful Facebook ad. The ad had a ton of comments, friend-tagging, and likes on the post. I then searched for the same product on AliExpress, and the rest is history.

By being more observant about what’s performing well for other brands, you can gain a competitive advantage over other competitors and store owners. It can help you catch the trend before it really explodes. So don’t be afraid to look through bestseller lists and scroll through social media feeds. But more importantly, don’t forget to act fast as in within the next couple hours quickly. The sooner you jump in on the trend, the better off you’ll be.

7. Test Everything

That said, you always want to test things a lot early on. However, as we just mentioned, the focus is important. For example, say you chose Pinterest for your free marketing channel, you might experiment with different photos, keywords, and landing pages (product page, blog post).

Another example of experimentation could be with product ideas. Rather than testing ou starting Shopify business products from 20 different niches, you pick a place and select products within that niche. When it comes to Facebook ads, you might create an ad and test several other countries for the same ad.

So when it comes to experimentation, make sure that you’re experimenting deep instead of wide.

8. Focus on Niches That are Retention- Focused

Retention- focused niche is a niche where you can own and remarket to your customer list for years to come. For example, yoga is a profitable niche where you can retain your audience. It’s a niche people tend to stick with for a long time – same with women’s and men’s fashion, beauty, and specific niche hobbies.

An acquisition- focused niche is where you frequently need to acquire new customers because they move on from the slot—for example, weddings, children’s fashion, and maternity.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t find success with acquisition niches. It just means that the strategy usually involves more upfront work (creating blog content multiple times a week) or more money (paid ads).

The only reason why I’m suggesting retention-focused niches is that most people who are just entering the starting Shopify business market work 9 to 5 jobs and have limited budgets. I’ve also heard from people in different spaces that it really sucks when you build up starting Shopify business and email list only for you to be unable to sell them anything in a couple of years. Read more. Click here!

“People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.” ~ Lewis Cass
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” ~ Lao Tzu
“You cannot score a goal when you are sitting on the bench. To do so, you have to dress up and enter the game.” ~ Israelmore Ayivor

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