For a little over a month now I have been interviewing people who have built and grown an ecommerce store on the Shopify platform. All of these stores are either profitable or unique enough that I thought they deserved a spotlight.
What’s been interesting is the stores I’ve been able to talk to range from people doing a sale or two a day using an automated FBA system to a store that has grown to $300/k a month in sales during holiday seasons (you’d be surprised how far a polite email can get you).
A few common themes already stand out in the highest earning stores so I thought I would share what I’ve personally learnt so far.
It Takes Time
It is super easy to start an online store. In a few days and without spending a cent you can put together a really slick website that looks like an established business. Personally I think that's a bittersweet thing. For one its empowering that anyone can start a business, but it means that if you want to stand out from the thousands (there are 375,000 + Shopify stores alone), you need to be authentic. Being authentic takes time and it means more than just putting up a few Facebook and Google Ads. Facebook ads are great to test and validate and maybe for some new businesses you can find a sweet spot where your ROI with ads works, but there is a lot more value in building up a genuine audience and that is how you become a sustainable business.
Build an Audience
Making a site and finding your product is the easy bit. The entrepreneurs that do well tap into an existing group of people that they really understand. Either they're talking with these people everyday or they're one of these people themselves. One of the stores I talked to used to post her jewellery to a blog everyday, people started requesting more and more and that's how she got her first orders. This is well before she had any kind of storefront. Another was a producer who started packaging his audio samples up. He instantly had a network of people familiar with his work who he could reach out to.
Both of these stores are doing close to $40k/month in sales during their busy months. What are you good at and what kind of networks are you plugged into? I've been working in ecommerce for a few years so I knew some of the problems of other stores which is why I started interviewing people.
When You're Doing Well, You Need to Do Better
The stores that are really doing well don't settle once they have a consistent number of sales. The jewellery store I mentioned just introduced a jewellery of the month club where people can subscribe and get a different piece of her jewellery every month. The producer selling audio samples offered his customers a package deal on samples for a recurring fee and is also selling training seminars.
Having this recurring revenue isn't easy, but it will give you a more predictable source of income which lets you run your business better. Recurring revenue can take many forms as well. Another store founder realised his spice products were much higher quality than what chefs could normally get. So he now has the consumer business which peaks during the holidays as well as a wholesale business where he sells bulks products on a monthly basis which helps even out his cashflow.
I don't consider myself an expert (I'm more of a developer), just sharing my perspective on what I've learnt from people who have proven they know what they're doing.
Full disclosure, I wasn’t planning on posting this until I hit 20 interviews but my site has just been surprise hunted at Product Hunt so to help promote that I thought now would be as good a time as any. I’d like to make sure the site can grow organically before I start adding any kind of advertising so if you’d like to keep seeing these interviews I’d really appreciate your support or feedback. And if you have any questions for me, about getting featured on Product Hunt when you're stuck in gridlock traffic or questions for other ecommerce stores feel free to AMA or send me a message :)
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