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Making Money With Shopify - Ask Me Anything 2019

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Hello BHW hope you're all having a bless day! I run a marketing agency that focuses on SEO, SMM, and Shopify.

I personally have a lot of experience building and managing shopify stores that bring in $$$$ per month.

I'm here to answer any questions you may have about starting, or scaling a shopify store!

Ask me anything!!
 
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Is Shopify the most suitable solution for dropshipping? Is there any valid alternative?

Which price range should I expect to see when purchasing a custom made theme/template?
 
Is Shopify the most suitable solution for dropshipping? Is there any valid alternative?

Which price range should I expect to see when purchasing a custom made theme/template?

First and foremost if you're using shopify apps to dropship like obrelo you're going to have a tough time. A lot of their products come from china.. no one wants to wait 3 weeks to receive an item when you have amazon as an alternative. So first tip would be to do what we do.. dropship with warehouses in the united states.

Shopify is an all in one option that's why its easy to hop on and start a store. They handle the merchant services and what not for a pretty low price. So as far as alternatives shopfiy is your best bet.

Now on the topic of how much you should pay for a theme or template... it's all contingent on what the theme/template includes. They go for about $250-500 for a solid theme/template that is optimized to generate good sales....

Biggest thing is branding. Niche down on an industry and sell items purely in that industry, build a brand. Those viral stores with everything and anything are pretty much dead unless they've already built a brand.
 
First and foremost if you're using shopify apps to dropship like obrelo you're going to have a tough time. A lot of their products come from china.. no one wants to wait 3 weeks to receive an item when you have amazon as an alternative. So first tip would be to do what we do.. dropship with warehouses in the united states.

Shopify is an all in one option that's why its easy to hop on and start a store. They handle the merchant services and what not for a pretty low price. So as far as alternatives shopfiy is your best bet.

Now on the topic of how much you should pay for a theme or template... it's all contingent on what the theme/template includes. They go for about $250-500 for a solid theme/template that is optimized to generate good sales....

Biggest thing is branding. Niche down on an industry and sell items purely in that industry, build a brand. Those viral stores with everything and anything are pretty much dead unless they've already built a brand.

Thanks a lot for your time. I wonder why this thread isn't getting the attention it deserves!
 
i agree the hard part is to get a 2nd order, customer dont like to wait up to 3 weeks for an item, and they always compare our stores to amazon, i was able to find a new niches with USA suppliers that provide 24 to 48 processing time and up to 5 days for shipping using USPS (trying to keep the low cost), keep that in mind aliexpress will take some time up to 45 days, i use taobao with a freight agent that allow me to have a total service time of 17 days from buying to receiving, the best part its that i inform that to the customer.
 
Thanks a lot for your time. I wonder why this thread isn't getting the attention it deserves!

Oh it will haha :cool:

i agree the hard part is to get a 2nd order, customer dont like to wait up to 3 weeks for an item, and they always compare our stores to amazon, i was able to find a new niches with USA suppliers that provide 24 to 48 processing time and up to 5 days for shipping using USPS (trying to keep the low cost), keep that in mind aliexpress will take some time up to 45 days, i use taobao with a freight agent that allow me to have a total service time of 17 days from buying to receiving, the best part its that i inform that to the customer.

Oh big time! We use a network of US based warehouses and get the product to the client within 5 business days.
 
hello it's a noobie question
how much we realy need to start shopify :) ?
thank you
 
2k/month on revenue, yeah no shit I want to know profits. Also favorite theme

Profits margins are anywhere from 50-75%.

As far as favorite theme goes... we really don't use themes we do custom sites. But if I had to choose one it would be blcokshop, prestige, and retina.

hello it's a noobie question
how much we realy need to start shopify :) ?
thank you

To start up and be profitable you'd probably need around $500. $100-250 for a nice theme.. build up your site. Do basic SEO optimize it. Make sure to brand the store in a way that looks very professional, and corporate... maybe even get an 800 number and post it up on your site.

Then another $250 for facebook ads for the first month. Big key is to not take your profits and buy yourself something nice. Reinvest your profits into more facebook ads and keep scaling. You'll be on your way to a successful store in no time.
 
Let's say I want to code my website for dropshipping (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery) (let's also suppose that I know how to use such programming languages). I want to avoid shopify, WordPress or woocommerce because I need 100% freedom for the website look and functionality. Can I program from SCRATCH a dropshipping website? If yes, what else would I need ASIDE the programming languages I wrote down (and aside domain and hosting)?

Thank you for the thread!
 
I did about 710k USD in Sales this past year, but i've been hit multiple times with Payment holds from multiple Payment processors (90 -120 day hold on all funds). I've been cycling through a few but they've all come up terrible. What Payment processor is a no fuss easy to integrate solution for Shopify Dropshippers?

These are the ones i've tried and overall suck:
Stripe (90 day ban after 2 weeks of use. No drop shippers allowed)
Stripes high risk partner (Forgot the name, Denied regardless)
Authorize. net (3 month wait just to get denied)
Adyen (Zero response in 2 months)
Skrill (Pending approval)
2Checkout (Pending approval)
Payment Pros (Amatuers... 10 month wait to get denied)
PayPal Payments Pro (Denied)

The only one i got working for me consistently is PayPal itself. Any tips?
 
Let's say I want to code my website for dropshipping (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery) (let's also suppose that I know how to use such programming languages). I want to avoid shopify, WordPress or woocommerce because I need 100% freedom for the website look and functionality. Can I program from SCRATCH a dropshipping website? If yes, what else would I need ASIDE the programming languages I wrote down (and aside domain and hosting)?

Thank you for the thread!

Hey there hope all is well! Seems like you nailed it. As long as you can get your website up and running you're fine. 1 thing you'd need to add is a merchant account to process sales and charge peoples CCs.

I did about 710k USD in Sales this past year, but i've been hit multiple times with Payment holds from multiple Payment processors (90 -120 day hold on all funds). I've been cycling through a few but they've all come up terrible. What Payment processor is a no fuss easy to integrate solution for Shopify Dropshippers?

These are the ones i've tried and overall suck:
Stripe (90 day ban after 2 weeks of use. No drop shippers allowed)
Stripes high risk partner (Forgot the name, Denied regardless)
Authorize. net (3 month wait just to get denied)
Adyen (Zero response in 2 months)
Skrill (Pending approval)
2Checkout (Pending approval)
Payment Pros (Amatuers... 10 month wait to get denied)
PayPal Payments Pro (Denied)

The only one i got working for me consistently is PayPal itself. Any tips?

Oh man... the amount of times I have dealt with merchants that screw me is unbelievable. First and foremost congrats on you sales! Amazing work. As far as the holds and denials your best bet would be to go to your bank.. for example Bank of America.. a bank that you have great history with and open a merchant account through them. The payments are made immediately then debited into your bank account the next business day. It is the best way to get around lame ass online merchants that make up their own rules and do whatever the hell they want whenever the hell they want.

If you look at the numbers its disgusting... paypal shut me down and kept $130k of my money for 180 days... now lets do the math...

1000 people get shut down with $100k in their account = thats $100,000,000.00
Now paypal gets interest on their money at lets say 2 percent... that's $2M. now multiple that by 6 months.. they make insane amounts of money just shutting us down and holding our money hostage for 6 months....

I suggests you get in contact with your bank and get a legit merchant account through them. If that doesn't work there's a lot of "High Risk" merchants that charge up the ass but don't care about anything and will give you your money no matter what.
 
If i can ask about droping items to us warehouses - do you blindly buy few items that you want to sell, then order more if product is in profit?
 
If i can ask about droping items to us warehouses - do you blindly buy few items that you want to sell, then order more if product is in profit?

So the drop shipping warehouses I use in the USA don't require me to buy any inventory. So I only post items on the stores sell them then inform the warehouse to ship through our CRM.

20th AMA!! :D

Great way to spread knowledge and learn!
 
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How did you find your suppliers, and how would you look for them if you were starting out?
 
How did you find your suppliers, and how would you look for them if you were starting out?
I live in Los Angeles so I was able to travel to the actual locations of these warehouses and close deals with them. You can also find directories online and contact wholesales/warehouses/suppliers via email or phone. Create a actual working relationship with them.

We do a lot of work for our clients that are branded. So a skincare brand gets their anti aging oil drop shipped from our warehouse we have to have personal ties to the warehouse in order to be able to have them place labels on our clients products, package them correctly in branded boxes and even through in a branded coupon. A lot of people think its easy.. hop on shopify and download obrelo... but if you're trying to grow an actual business there's much more to it than that.
 
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Dont want to steal this thread. But i had a very bad terrible situation with shopify recently. For anyone getting into the eccommerce business avoid shopify. They are great until you actually need them for support / customer service. I had an issue with an app on their marketplace. Just my input. Good luck on your sales op!
 
Dont want to steal this thread. But i had a very bad terrible situation with shopify recently. For anyone getting into the eccommerce business avoid shopify. They are great until you actually need them for support / customer service. I had an issue with an app on their marketplace. Just my input. Good luck on your sales op!

Hey man no worries! That's exactly why I never use apps that my team didn't develop or if I don't know the developer. If you don't mind explaining... what happen?
 
How do you do the branding? When choosing the product for branding what do you look the most? I am pissed off lately with aliexpress with their holidays and I refunded lots of orders, I am thinking to look into USA suppliers even though the product is from China, but the drop shippers I found in here in the US are asking to be a member pay membership fee. From your experience is that how it works? One thing I noticed that if the customer like your product they're willing to pay whatever price if your shipping time is 2-7 days.
 
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