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- General Vs Niche store
- Branding
- Start and setup your own shopify store
- Basic Apps you really need
- How to claim your site and add to google
- Products search - find that 1 winning product!
- Facebook AD Manager & Pixels
GENERAL VS NICHE STORE
KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE, you don't need to over complicate things. Whichever route you go, it does not mean you should be adding hundreds of products to your store.
MEANING YOU SHOULD ONLY FOCUS ON FINDING ONE WINNING PRODUCT
Then revolve around it as you continue to build capital. That's all it takes.
Niche Store
- Fantastic for Single Products / Funnels
- Limited to only that Niche/Industry
- Unable to expand much
- Traffic more likely to convert as your visitors will have better feel of what your store is about
- Can only drive traffic with dedicated niche page or brand page
- Chances of success are lower, unless you have a winning product or you are experienced marketer
- Easier to Brand and cater for singular type of audience
General Store
- Fantastic for testing products
- Expand to any Niche/Industry
- Can have multiple fan pages in different industries, driving traffic to the store along with brand page
- Likely to have more SEO coverage
- Chances of success are higher, due to ability to test different products without starting over
- Harder to brand and you will have to put more work to cater for multiple type of audience
- HAVING A SINGLE FACEBOOK PIXEL IS NOT AN ISSUE HERE. But if you decide, you can have multiple pixels for different niches.
BRANDING
WARNING: Failure To Brand = Failure
Reality: I've seen far too many people with horrible names and horribly inconsistent branding/feel on their sites and social media. Would you use Google today if it was called "Find Stuff Online?"
Understand Branding: Simply put, you could doom yourself by choosing a horrible name and inconsistent branding. Stick with the TLD .com and make sure your site and social channels are all consistent with a theme or feel.
I find branding very important and often people neglect this.
First thing I do is Brainstorm! Use Shopify Name Generator to find some ideas about your brand, then check godaddy or namecheap to see if domain is free to register. A perfect name to me is something that is Brandable and doesn't have any niche or niche specific keywords in it unless you are going for niche store. Than it's fine. For general store stay clear of product keywords, niche specific keywords and words like "deals, cheap, store, shop..." anything tacky that could make your brand sound...cheap.
There are more tools out there than can help your brainstorm:
- BandBucket
- Names4Brands
- MyIp Shopify
Check MyIp for examples and their ranking. Check what they are selling and what their brand is called.
Take advantage of the resources that are out there, find out the examples and then make your own store/brand. When you find your name, check domain name, use TLD domains and check if facebook and instagram are still free. If they are not and you really want to use this name, make facebook/instagram page something like brandname_official. Also when buying domain you don't need to buy SSL Certificates as Shopify will give you one for free.
LOGO
Nothing much to say about logo.
You can do it yourself using photoshop if you know how to or using Canva Online. In Canva it's pretty simple to do it, just choose template and edit to your wishes. You can also use Fiverr or SeoClerk or even MF to find some graphics designer to do your logo with your wishes. It's best to make at least mockup in photoshop/canva if you are going to hire anyone.
IDEAL LOGO
1. Must have at least a 1000 x 1000 px .PNG file
2. Two version, a light and dark version of your logo
3. Must be able to either fit or be adapted to fit for profile image circles (instagram and facebook in particular)
4. Simple. Usually no more than 2-3 colors at most
5. The bigger and bolder, the better
START OF YOUR SHOPIFY STORE
Now that you decide on going General or Niche, have registered your domain, make instagram and facebook accounts it's time to register a shopify store. Using a quick google search you can find some good trials longer than 14 days.
https://www.shopify.com/lifehacker < 21 day trial
https://www.shopify.com/stacksocial < 21 day trial
https://www.shopify.com/kickstarter < 45 day trial
I will not go through how to register on shopify. This should be pretty straight forward. Also I will not cover what each button do. This would be too much to explain, it's best if you just click through everything and see what it does I will also not cover how to edit .liquid files, edit themes and so on as I think this is more of advance stuff. For me at least I don't like to complicate things and I like to keep things simple so any free theme works pretty good.
SETTINGS FOR SHOPIFY
General Tab: Here you change Store Name, Emails and Legal stuff like Address for your store. You can leave blank for Legal Name or Business if you don't have business. Check Timezone and Weight Unit and Metric system. Those are only important things. If you are going for a FREE PAY ONLY SHIPPING method, you will need to have weight unit same everywhere on your site.
Payments: Here you will choose how customers will be able to pay you. Will you use bitcoins, paypal, credit cards? You can check here. Depends on where you live and which payment gateway you can use.
Checkout: You can customize your checkout page here. Checkout is the only page that you cannot edit in .liquid files. After order is paid, I don't have automatic fulfillment checked. Generate or even better if you write your own privacy, refund and TOS.
Taxes: I leave taxes as it is. All prices include taxes already. But you are free do set as you want.
Notifications: Just leave as they are. Only thing that it's worth checking out is Customer Notifications here and email templates that you can edit here
Files: Nothing to explain here, just a hosting for your logos and other files that you need.
Sales Channels: You will definitely want more sales channels than just your store. I recommend add Facebook, Messenger, Pinterest and Wanelo.
Account: Just basic account informations like billing and stuff.
I left Shipping because it's more complex to set up. The reason why shipping is setup this way is to do two different tiers of shipping FREE SHIPPING for all retail priced items + Free Just Pay Shipping business model. By default all retail items are 0.0 for their weight. On the other hand, if you list a product as free, you will need to set it at 0.1 for the weight of all variants. That's why you need to setup weight unit in general tab to be correct. When you open Shipping tab you will see Domestic and Rest of the world.
This is how I set up both:
Also EDIT PACKAGE INFORMATION and set it to 0.0 weight! So when ever you will do "FREE ITEM JUST PAY SHIPPING" method all you need to do is add 0.1 as product weight. Of course TEST before you put this in live store!
Under Online Store -> Preferences you can add and edit your SEO Meta Tags like Title, Description, Add your google analytics script and add Facebook Pixel (more on that below). Remove password when you go LIVE.
| -> Domains you can connect your domain that you buy when you research your branding.
BASIC APPS YOU NEED
- Obrelo - Your app for dropshipping from AliExpress. Will not do into too much details for this as you have many videos already about how to use this. One thing: Don't forget to check weight units to be same as in your store or your settings will be screwed and your "Free Item Pay Shipping" will not work.
- SEO Image Optimizer by Booster Apps - Just click that "Let's Go" button and leave all settings as they are.
- Ryviu (Not in app store) - To import Aliexpress reviews, get some social proof on your site is always a good thing, even if it's imported.
- MailChimp - For your email marketing
Of course there are many other apps that you can add and use. Like KIT your virtual assistant, sale pop, countdown timers... It depends on what kind of store you have and what you really need.
CLAIM YOUR SITE!
Reality: Most people don't do it, cause they're silly and do like free organic money... Which makes no sense.
It's simple process really. Go to Google Webmaster Tools, Sign in and go to "Search Console". Click Add Property and add your domain name to search console. Go through verification, for me it's easier to add TXT record to the DNS configuration. And that's it. Congrats!
After verification you will see search analytics, links that are coming to your site and so on. Not important at beginning , but good thing to look around after a while.
Next go to EntireWeb website and submit your website to every other search engine
PRODUCT SEARCH
Your focus should be on finding ONE winning product and then revolve around it with products to cross/upsells. So don't waste your time adding tons at a time. Only add what you are GOING TO TEST!
There are plenty of ONE product stores/funnels. That's perfectly fine. Don't over complicate it for yourself and waste time.
Use Niche Miner
It's a free service that assists you in finding products sold by marketers. You can use many of the preset phrases to help aid your search. Of course, this could be done manually in facebook, but the search strings can be semi-complicated. I use this to find what's already working out there as well as see if a product has been marketed if at all.
TIP: When you find an AD on Facebook, and if they are using any kind of "short my link service" like goo.gl or bitly, copy this url to your browser and add + at the end. You will see full statistic of how many clicks, which country and so on. Use this for your advantage.
Use AliExpress Best Selling / Hot Products
What I check on Product page of aliexpress:
- How long store is open on aliexpress
- Feedback
- How many sales in total
- Do they offer ePacket
- Have HQ pictures
- If they have VIDS that's even better!
Next check Feedback, if you see that more feedback is from RU, keep in mind that maybe this item will not work for your target audience if you will target USA. Now you have a choice, target only RU and countries around, or test it if it will work for your country where you want to sell.
You can also go to All Categories, Find category of what you are going to sell and SORT items by Orders. More orders product have, better chance you will also sell it.
If you are going to sell clothes, keep in mind that Aliexpress put "Asian Sizes". So you need to tell your customers to buy a one size or even two sizes bigger than they would normally do.
I keep away from all big companies that I would need a licence to sell (Samsung, Apple, Phillips, Toyota, Bosch...). Electronic devices like phones, Automotive category, Shoes, Toys, Power Tools. But this is just me, I have my own reasons why I don't sell, but you can test.
Some of a big industry to tap in: Fishing, Golf, Fitness, Tennis, Home Security is also booming,
Do not limit yourself to only sell to consumers (B2C), you can also sell to business(B2B).
Also use Amazon, eBay, etsy...it's the same research as for aliexpress. Find what people are buying then find a good supplier on aliexpress.
Niche products - Instead of going after "dog lovers", dig deeper and sell specifically to "corgi lovers" or "pug lovers". Also, the deeper into a niche you go, the less competition you will have.
Remember to change your description and titles when importing products to your store!
FACEBOOK ADS & PIXELS
By now you have your store setup, some products, branding, pretty much everything that you need to start. But before you go LIVE you still need to add some things to your store, it's called facebook pixel.
Pixel will help you track your visitors that come from Facebook, collect data for you and help you with retargeting and making lookalike audience for your ads.
1. Go to https://business.facebook.com/
2. Create a business manager (name it whatever you want)
3. Create an ad account and assign yourself to it as admin.
4. Open ad account manager that you created.
5. Create first campaign and select Website Conversions
6. When Facebook prompts you to create your first pixel, create the pixel.
7. Copy and paste the code into a notepad and then disregard the campaign creation.
8. Take the Pixel ID which will usually be to the left of // Insert your pixel ID here. Copy and paste the pixel number into shopify online store > preferences section.
You can check with Facebook Pixel Helper to verify that it's working on your site.
AD POSTS
When making AD's there are alot of tools to help you. One of the best is called Facebook Audience Insights also look on AdEspresso Examples for ideas and of course niche miner.
Go to your Brand/shop fan page and make a post:
1st line: Emoji + QUOTE PEOPLE CAN RELATE TO OR THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION
2nd line: Call to action
3rd line: link to landing page
4th line: comment "insert word" if you agree OR X% OFF! (To trigger chatfuel)
Add photo, video and so on.. BUT DON'T PUBLISH IT. What you will do is "Schedule" your post in near future (2-3 months in future). Now you need to find this post under "Publishing Tools - Schedule Post" Find your post that you made and Click It. You want to grab a Post ID from it url, it would look like something like this: /posts/341844906....
ADs MANAGER
Let's say we are selling a waterproof dog car carrier.
Now Go to Ads Manager. Go to Conversion and click Purchases. I normally go for Purchases. We will sell this in USA and this is who I would target:
- Dog Lovers
- Dogs World
AND MUST ALSO MATCH (Click Narrow)
- Dog Owners
- Pet Products
Of course you can do it other way, this is just an example. Always try to target that specific audience, don't go too broad.
For Placement I normally disable Audience Network. But you need to test this, maybe for you it will work better.
Next when you come to ADs. Click Existing Posts, find that little button that says "Enter Post ID" and post that ID that you grab it above. Enable Facebook PIXEL. Click Confirm and you are ready.
There are much much more options on facebook ads and advertising on Instagram. If you don't want to use Facebook Ads, you can always use Instagram Influencers. I will not go into too much details here.
Just find that good instagram profile with good REAL engagement, DM or email them saying you are looking for shoutout and make a deal. Always track your influencers traffic with UTM tags.
- Branding
- Start and setup your own shopify store
- Basic Apps you really need
- How to claim your site and add to google
- Products search - find that 1 winning product!
- Facebook AD Manager & Pixels
GENERAL VS NICHE STORE
KEEP IT STUPID SIMPLE, you don't need to over complicate things. Whichever route you go, it does not mean you should be adding hundreds of products to your store.
MEANING YOU SHOULD ONLY FOCUS ON FINDING ONE WINNING PRODUCT
Then revolve around it as you continue to build capital. That's all it takes.
Niche Store
- Fantastic for Single Products / Funnels
- Limited to only that Niche/Industry
- Unable to expand much
- Traffic more likely to convert as your visitors will have better feel of what your store is about
- Can only drive traffic with dedicated niche page or brand page
- Chances of success are lower, unless you have a winning product or you are experienced marketer
- Easier to Brand and cater for singular type of audience
General Store
- Fantastic for testing products
- Expand to any Niche/Industry
- Can have multiple fan pages in different industries, driving traffic to the store along with brand page
- Likely to have more SEO coverage
- Chances of success are higher, due to ability to test different products without starting over
- Harder to brand and you will have to put more work to cater for multiple type of audience
- HAVING A SINGLE FACEBOOK PIXEL IS NOT AN ISSUE HERE. But if you decide, you can have multiple pixels for different niches.
BRANDING
WARNING: Failure To Brand = Failure
Reality: I've seen far too many people with horrible names and horribly inconsistent branding/feel on their sites and social media. Would you use Google today if it was called "Find Stuff Online?"
Understand Branding: Simply put, you could doom yourself by choosing a horrible name and inconsistent branding. Stick with the TLD .com and make sure your site and social channels are all consistent with a theme or feel.
I find branding very important and often people neglect this.
First thing I do is Brainstorm! Use Shopify Name Generator to find some ideas about your brand, then check godaddy or namecheap to see if domain is free to register. A perfect name to me is something that is Brandable and doesn't have any niche or niche specific keywords in it unless you are going for niche store. Than it's fine. For general store stay clear of product keywords, niche specific keywords and words like "deals, cheap, store, shop..." anything tacky that could make your brand sound...cheap.
There are more tools out there than can help your brainstorm:
- BandBucket
- Names4Brands
- MyIp Shopify
Check MyIp for examples and their ranking. Check what they are selling and what their brand is called.
Take advantage of the resources that are out there, find out the examples and then make your own store/brand. When you find your name, check domain name, use TLD domains and check if facebook and instagram are still free. If they are not and you really want to use this name, make facebook/instagram page something like brandname_official. Also when buying domain you don't need to buy SSL Certificates as Shopify will give you one for free.
LOGO
Nothing much to say about logo.
You can do it yourself using photoshop if you know how to or using Canva Online. In Canva it's pretty simple to do it, just choose template and edit to your wishes. You can also use Fiverr or SeoClerk or even MF to find some graphics designer to do your logo with your wishes. It's best to make at least mockup in photoshop/canva if you are going to hire anyone.
IDEAL LOGO
1. Must have at least a 1000 x 1000 px .PNG file
2. Two version, a light and dark version of your logo
3. Must be able to either fit or be adapted to fit for profile image circles (instagram and facebook in particular)
4. Simple. Usually no more than 2-3 colors at most
5. The bigger and bolder, the better
START OF YOUR SHOPIFY STORE
Now that you decide on going General or Niche, have registered your domain, make instagram and facebook accounts it's time to register a shopify store. Using a quick google search you can find some good trials longer than 14 days.
https://www.shopify.com/lifehacker < 21 day trial
https://www.shopify.com/stacksocial < 21 day trial
https://www.shopify.com/kickstarter < 45 day trial
I will not go through how to register on shopify. This should be pretty straight forward. Also I will not cover what each button do. This would be too much to explain, it's best if you just click through everything and see what it does I will also not cover how to edit .liquid files, edit themes and so on as I think this is more of advance stuff. For me at least I don't like to complicate things and I like to keep things simple so any free theme works pretty good.
SETTINGS FOR SHOPIFY
General Tab: Here you change Store Name, Emails and Legal stuff like Address for your store. You can leave blank for Legal Name or Business if you don't have business. Check Timezone and Weight Unit and Metric system. Those are only important things. If you are going for a FREE PAY ONLY SHIPPING method, you will need to have weight unit same everywhere on your site.
Payments: Here you will choose how customers will be able to pay you. Will you use bitcoins, paypal, credit cards? You can check here. Depends on where you live and which payment gateway you can use.
Checkout: You can customize your checkout page here. Checkout is the only page that you cannot edit in .liquid files. After order is paid, I don't have automatic fulfillment checked. Generate or even better if you write your own privacy, refund and TOS.
Taxes: I leave taxes as it is. All prices include taxes already. But you are free do set as you want.
Notifications: Just leave as they are. Only thing that it's worth checking out is Customer Notifications here and email templates that you can edit here
Files: Nothing to explain here, just a hosting for your logos and other files that you need.
Sales Channels: You will definitely want more sales channels than just your store. I recommend add Facebook, Messenger, Pinterest and Wanelo.
Account: Just basic account informations like billing and stuff.
I left Shipping because it's more complex to set up. The reason why shipping is setup this way is to do two different tiers of shipping FREE SHIPPING for all retail priced items + Free Just Pay Shipping business model. By default all retail items are 0.0 for their weight. On the other hand, if you list a product as free, you will need to set it at 0.1 for the weight of all variants. That's why you need to setup weight unit in general tab to be correct. When you open Shipping tab you will see Domestic and Rest of the world.
This is how I set up both:
Also EDIT PACKAGE INFORMATION and set it to 0.0 weight! So when ever you will do "FREE ITEM JUST PAY SHIPPING" method all you need to do is add 0.1 as product weight. Of course TEST before you put this in live store!
Under Online Store -> Preferences you can add and edit your SEO Meta Tags like Title, Description, Add your google analytics script and add Facebook Pixel (more on that below). Remove password when you go LIVE.
| -> Domains you can connect your domain that you buy when you research your branding.
BASIC APPS YOU NEED
- Obrelo - Your app for dropshipping from AliExpress. Will not do into too much details for this as you have many videos already about how to use this. One thing: Don't forget to check weight units to be same as in your store or your settings will be screwed and your "Free Item Pay Shipping" will not work.
- SEO Image Optimizer by Booster Apps - Just click that "Let's Go" button and leave all settings as they are.
- Ryviu (Not in app store) - To import Aliexpress reviews, get some social proof on your site is always a good thing, even if it's imported.
- MailChimp - For your email marketing
Of course there are many other apps that you can add and use. Like KIT your virtual assistant, sale pop, countdown timers... It depends on what kind of store you have and what you really need.
CLAIM YOUR SITE!
Reality: Most people don't do it, cause they're silly and do like free organic money... Which makes no sense.
It's simple process really. Go to Google Webmaster Tools, Sign in and go to "Search Console". Click Add Property and add your domain name to search console. Go through verification, for me it's easier to add TXT record to the DNS configuration. And that's it. Congrats!
After verification you will see search analytics, links that are coming to your site and so on. Not important at beginning , but good thing to look around after a while.
Next go to EntireWeb website and submit your website to every other search engine
PRODUCT SEARCH
Your focus should be on finding ONE winning product and then revolve around it with products to cross/upsells. So don't waste your time adding tons at a time. Only add what you are GOING TO TEST!
There are plenty of ONE product stores/funnels. That's perfectly fine. Don't over complicate it for yourself and waste time.
Use Niche Miner
It's a free service that assists you in finding products sold by marketers. You can use many of the preset phrases to help aid your search. Of course, this could be done manually in facebook, but the search strings can be semi-complicated. I use this to find what's already working out there as well as see if a product has been marketed if at all.
TIP: When you find an AD on Facebook, and if they are using any kind of "short my link service" like goo.gl or bitly, copy this url to your browser and add + at the end. You will see full statistic of how many clicks, which country and so on. Use this for your advantage.
Use AliExpress Best Selling / Hot Products
What I check on Product page of aliexpress:
- How long store is open on aliexpress
- Feedback
- How many sales in total
- Do they offer ePacket
- Have HQ pictures
- If they have VIDS that's even better!
Next check Feedback, if you see that more feedback is from RU, keep in mind that maybe this item will not work for your target audience if you will target USA. Now you have a choice, target only RU and countries around, or test it if it will work for your country where you want to sell.
You can also go to All Categories, Find category of what you are going to sell and SORT items by Orders. More orders product have, better chance you will also sell it.
If you are going to sell clothes, keep in mind that Aliexpress put "Asian Sizes". So you need to tell your customers to buy a one size or even two sizes bigger than they would normally do.
I keep away from all big companies that I would need a licence to sell (Samsung, Apple, Phillips, Toyota, Bosch...). Electronic devices like phones, Automotive category, Shoes, Toys, Power Tools. But this is just me, I have my own reasons why I don't sell, but you can test.
Some of a big industry to tap in: Fishing, Golf, Fitness, Tennis, Home Security is also booming,
Do not limit yourself to only sell to consumers (B2C), you can also sell to business(B2B).
Also use Amazon, eBay, etsy...it's the same research as for aliexpress. Find what people are buying then find a good supplier on aliexpress.
Niche products - Instead of going after "dog lovers", dig deeper and sell specifically to "corgi lovers" or "pug lovers". Also, the deeper into a niche you go, the less competition you will have.
Remember to change your description and titles when importing products to your store!
FACEBOOK ADS & PIXELS
By now you have your store setup, some products, branding, pretty much everything that you need to start. But before you go LIVE you still need to add some things to your store, it's called facebook pixel.
Pixel will help you track your visitors that come from Facebook, collect data for you and help you with retargeting and making lookalike audience for your ads.
1. Go to https://business.facebook.com/
2. Create a business manager (name it whatever you want)
3. Create an ad account and assign yourself to it as admin.
4. Open ad account manager that you created.
5. Create first campaign and select Website Conversions
6. When Facebook prompts you to create your first pixel, create the pixel.
7. Copy and paste the code into a notepad and then disregard the campaign creation.
8. Take the Pixel ID which will usually be to the left of // Insert your pixel ID here. Copy and paste the pixel number into shopify online store > preferences section.
You can check with Facebook Pixel Helper to verify that it's working on your site.
AD POSTS
When making AD's there are alot of tools to help you. One of the best is called Facebook Audience Insights also look on AdEspresso Examples for ideas and of course niche miner.
Go to your Brand/shop fan page and make a post:
1st line: Emoji + QUOTE PEOPLE CAN RELATE TO OR THOUGHT PROVOKING QUESTION
2nd line: Call to action
3rd line: link to landing page
4th line: comment "insert word" if you agree OR X% OFF! (To trigger chatfuel)
Add photo, video and so on.. BUT DON'T PUBLISH IT. What you will do is "Schedule" your post in near future (2-3 months in future). Now you need to find this post under "Publishing Tools - Schedule Post" Find your post that you made and Click It. You want to grab a Post ID from it url, it would look like something like this: /posts/341844906....
ADs MANAGER
Let's say we are selling a waterproof dog car carrier.
Now Go to Ads Manager. Go to Conversion and click Purchases. I normally go for Purchases. We will sell this in USA and this is who I would target:
- Dog Lovers
- Dogs World
AND MUST ALSO MATCH (Click Narrow)
- Dog Owners
- Pet Products
Of course you can do it other way, this is just an example. Always try to target that specific audience, don't go too broad.
For Placement I normally disable Audience Network. But you need to test this, maybe for you it will work better.
Next when you come to ADs. Click Existing Posts, find that little button that says "Enter Post ID" and post that ID that you grab it above. Enable Facebook PIXEL. Click Confirm and you are ready.
There are much much more options on facebook ads and advertising on Instagram. If you don't want to use Facebook Ads, you can always use Instagram Influencers. I will not go into too much details here.
Just find that good instagram profile with good REAL engagement, DM or email them saying you are looking for shoutout and make a deal. Always track your influencers traffic with UTM tags.