Whether you want it to be your full-time job or to have some extra money on the side for your goals, setting up an online store is a great way to go about it.
We run The Savvy Couple Shop that is doing incredibly well at the moment, making us around $2,000/month passively, and we will share our tips with you in this article.
By the end of this article, you will hopefully have some business ideas that you can go ahead with and get started making money on Shopify.
Table of Contents
What is Shopify?
Before we get started, it will definitely help if we go over what is Shopify first!
Shopify is an e-commerce platform on which you can create an online store.
It enables pretty much anybody to set up an online store and create a business from their own home.
Shopify is great because they have so many instructional guides to help you through the process and setting it all up. You are able to customize your online store and get it looking really professional.
What does Shopify Cost?
You can try out Shopify free for a 14-day trial, with no credit card required to do this.
After that, there are 3 options that you can choose from:
- Basic Shopify
- Shopify
- Advanced Shopify
Basic Shopify
Basic Shopify is $29 per month. The main differences with a Basic plan and the others are that you can only have 2 staff accounts, and you don’t have access to gift cards, professional reports, advanced report builder and third-party calculated shipping rates.
The payment fees are higher as well – the online credit card rates are 2.2% + 20p, the in-person credit card rates 1.7% + 0p and all additional fees using payment providers other than Shopify payments are 2.0%.
Shopify
The main plan is simply called Shopify, and it’s $79 per month. The differences between this and the Basic plan are that you have access to gift cards, professional reports and can have 5 staff accounts.
At the point of sale, you also have register shifts, hardware peripheral support, unlimited Staff POS PINs and 1-5 store locations.
The fees are slightly better as well. The online credit card rates are 1.9% + 20p, in-person credit card rates are 1.6% + 0p and all additional fees using payment providers other than Shopify payments are 1.0%.
Advanced Shopify
The Advanced Shopify plan is a whopping $299 per month. For the additional cost, you get 15 staff accounts, advanced report builder, third-party calculated shipping rates and up to 8 store locations.
The fees on the Advanced Shopify plan are 1.6% + 20p for online credit card rates, 1.5% + 0p for in-person credit card rates and all additional fees using payment providers other than Shopify payments are 0.5%.
They also have options for ShopifyPlus and Shopify Lite.
There are no set up fees on any of the plans and you don’t need to enter your payment details to set up a 14-day free trial.
All of the Shopify plans are on a month to month basis unless you sign up for an annual or 2-year plan.
There are 10% discounts available on annual plans and a 20% discount available on 2-year plans.
How to decide what to sell?
You can’t just set up a Shopify store and expect the sales to come flooding in.
It’s important to have a plan before you set it all up as it will cost you to have a Shopify store and you don’t want to lose out on any money.
Have a brainstorming session over the things that you could sell on there. Do you already have a business that you can use Shopify for? Or would you be selling purely on Shopify and directing people to it?
Think about the things that you could sell on there that you think would do well.
I highly recommend doing everything the right way from the beginning by taking Printables by Number.
5 Ways to Make Money on Shopify
We will look at some ways that you can make money on Shopify and start up an online business of your own.
This can be a great way to start a side hustle or even turn into your full-time income.
1) Start a Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping is a great business model, especially if you don’t have a lot of space for any products.
What is dropshipping? Dropshipping is where you get a supplier to produce and ship on demand. Say that you are selling mugs, you don’t want to have a bunch of mugs lying around your home.
Instead, with dropshipping, you get the supplier to produce the mugs when someone has placed an order and ship it out for you. This means that you don’t have to carry any inventory or make lots of trips to ship them all out.
Pros
- You don’t need to hold any physical product
- You don’t need to worry about shipping it all out
- You can run your business from anywhere as you don’t need a physical store
- It can be quite passive income once you have it all set up
- Low start-up fees
Cons
- You will have less control over quality control as you are not seeing the products before they are going out to the customer
- There will be less profit due to the fees
2) Selling Digital Products
Selling digital products to sell within a Shopify store because there’s no shipping that needs to be done on your end.
If you are a blogger this is the perfect platform for you to use to sell products alongside your blog.
We have a Shopify store for our blog which has been very successful, so we highly recommend selling digital products.
Our digital products include a Budgeting Binder, a Monthly Meal Planner, and a Financial Freedom Bundle.
Pros
- Passive income once you have it all set up
- Can sell products to the audience that you have already attracted with your blog
- Adds an additional income stream to your blog that requires little work
Cons
- There is a lower perceived value of a digital product
- It’s a very competitive market, with a lot of other bloggers potentially providing the same products. You will have to stand out a lot more
3) Start a Clothing Line
Starting a clothing line has never been easier to do than now. There are apps out there such as Printful which you can use to design your own custom clothing.
You can get an online t-shirt mockups for your clothing line from places such as Place.it T-Shirt Mockup Generator or ShirtMockup.com.
There are downloadable t-shirt template files out there too, although you will need a basic understanding of editing programs to use these.
You will need to create your own artwork to put on the clothing and make it unique. It helps to have a theme in mind or a specific target audience.
Pros
- You can make money from your creativity and artwork
- People will be wearing your designs in real life, which is pretty cool
- You will save a lot of money because you don’t need to have a physical store for clothes
Cons
- There is a lot of competition out there in this area
- You can’t advertise via foot traffic as you would be able to with a physical store
4) Teach an Online Course
Teaching an online course is one of the most popular and lucrative ways to make money online right now.
You can create a course on pretty much anything and someone will want to buy it! It will of course help if you create a course in a subject that will be really popular.
Have a think about the kind of things that you would be able to teach someone. What do you have a lot of knowledge on, or what do you have slightly more knowledge on than the person that would be taking the course?
It’s important to remember that while you do not need to be a top expert in the field of the course, you should have some solid knowledge on your chosen topic. But don’t let a lack of advanced degrees put you off!
You just need to be able to create a decent course full of information on that particular subject that the students will gain a lot from.
Pros
- It can be a passive source of income once you have it all set up
- You don’t need to have any other sort of business in order to launch an online course
- You already have the knowledge and skills to do this
Cons
- Creating the course will require a lot of work upfront before you launch it
- Sales will depend on marketing and reviews
5) Become a Freelancer
Creating a Shopify store isn’t just for selling digital products that people download or get shipped out to them.
There’s another option that you may not have considered – offering your services as a freelancer.
Freelance work that you could offer in your Shopify store can include things such as freelance writing, graphic design or web development. These are all well-paid jobs.
When you are a freelancer you are in charge of how much work you take on and how often you do it. Setting your services up in a Shopify store can be a great way of taking control of this.
It will also be useful for potential clients to see straight away how much you charge for various services.
Pros
- Easy to set up in Shopify, just make sure that you disable shipping
- This is a great way of building up your portfolio especially if you are just starting out
Cons
- If you are not connecting this to your current business but as a standalone product you will have to do a lot of marketing
Shopify Features
There are lots of features that Shopify offers to make sure that you get the most out of your experience with them.
Storefront
There are over 70 professional themes for you to choose from when it comes to creating your Shopify store. You can also easily customize your storefront if you want.
The online Shopify store will also be mobile commerce ready. This means that your potential customers can use it whilst on their phones.
Shopping Cart
You can accept card payments within Shopify – Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. There are also over 100 external payment gateways that Shopify can integrate with.
You can offer flexible shipping rates or even offer free shipping rates. You can get automatic shipping rates from carriers such as UPS or FedEx.
You’ll also be pleased to know that Shopify will automatically handle your tax rates (depending on where you live).
Store Management
Customers can set up accounts to make things easier for them and to encourage repeat shopping. Alternatively, they can have the choice of checking out as a guest.
You can set up custom fulfillment solutions or connect to some such as Amazon or Shipwire.
There are other features such as customizing store emails and being able to use the Shopify app to manage everything when you’re out and about.
Marketing & SEO
Marketing your Shopify store is really important if you want to get a lot of visitors to your site.
Shopify will help you with marketing on Google by using meta tags and other SEO practices. Your sitemap will also be automatically generated and you can get Google Adwords credits.
Another great option for your customers is that you can generate gift cards and discount codes and promotions.
Products
One of the best features is that you can have different variations of your products on the listings e.g. different colors and sizes. There’s no limit to how many products you have in the store either.
Within the Shopify features you also get access to analytics, the mobile app and have 24/7 support available.
Shopify Security
Shopify advises using a unique password for each account and ideally use a password vault such as Lastpass.
You can also turn on two-step authentication for your account, and your staff members can do this too.
With your web hosting, you get an SSL certificate to keep customers’ information secure. It’s worth noting that Shopify is level 1 PCI compliant.
Final Thoughts on Making Money on Shopify
We personally use Shopify and love it. We started using it after one of our friends recommended it (who makes millions on the platform!) and taught us step-by-step how to get started making money on Shopify.
The potential for earning a lot of money on Shopify is huge and very doable.
There are all kinds of products that you can sell there, and it’s fun to figure out which you want to go for. Hopefully, after reading through this article you will know what is Shopify and how to use it.
There are other options available out there but we highly recommend Shopify for either bringing in some extra income or leaving your 9-5.
