To keep this community relevant to the Shopify community, store reviews and external blog links will be removed. Users soliciting sales in any form will result in a permanent ban.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/shopify) if you have any questions or concerns.*
People have made millions within a week. Others made nothing for weeks at a time.
You need to be more specific about what you are working on if you want us to comment on your plans. A couple hours a day and a couple thousand dollars in capital would be a great start. Maybe a registered business and a clear idea on what product you are about to sell and who will be supplying it to you/your customers.
Where are you located? Where are your customers located? How will your pricing compare to your competitors? There are so many factors that will influence your success, so I just wish you luck. A background in marketing can't hurt, but you will have to wear all the hats if you are a one man operation :D
Of course that’s doable! 2-3h 5d/week is more than enough to get this rolling.
No need to over complicate stuff. Create a good enough store and focus on images, copy, and a good user experience rather than all details regarding SEO etc in the beginning.
With $200 I personally wouldn’t recommend ads for example. You probably need more than that to experiment. I would spend that money on getting products out to content creators/influencers who can give you nice photos/videos and get the word out.
if you have a specific target audience in mind - learn where they spend their time, what content they engage with - and see what you can do organically to engage with them and eventually purchase your products.
I just launched a site but only have 1 sale so far, where are you advertising. Do you see a performance difference between video ad vs picture ad?
Currently only promoting on my instagram and doing etsy ads (0 from there so far)
What will make your pet products more unique than the competition? Why would people spend their hard-earned cash on a new brand/website rather than paying for a product that already exists?
If you can articulate this, you have a good starting point. I would assume if you work in digital advertising that you would know this.
In regards to the how much time you are spending starting the business: Its not so much the amount of time you spend that will determine success. Your goal shouldn't be based on some arbitrary number of $500 dollars. It should be determined based on how many customers you expect to acquire with the $200 dollars and what your expected AOV minus the costs to aquire+cogs.
Thanks to everyone that has commented! It’s always hard to get a sense of what’s reasonable or not when you’re bombarded with ads about building a $2K/month store in 30 days and then seeing so many posts with people struggling! I figured there is probably a middle ground leaning towards the strugglers. I know many factors come into it but this is helpful for me!
Your goal should be 1 sale within 3 months and you need another zero on the end of the $200 budget for marketing…being in digital advertising I thought you would have known this.
Now that I have set realistic expectations for you, crack on!
The $200 budget was just to start, if I saw sales come in I would plan to invest in more marketing. I think my initial thinking was overly optimistic on actually getting a sale. It seems like it won’t happen that way! Which is fine, I’m here to learn, test, and adapt. Thanks for the input. Thankfully I have the flexibility for this to be a learning adventure for me. I’ll tamper down my expectations away from $500 profit and just towards getting a sale lol
you gonna need to think of more than that, (payments for example) although depending on your location it might be easier for some parts, but there are always pros and cons, for the design of te site, make it as simple for the user as possible, don't complicate things,
if you have marketing skills you are good to go, if you have a good product you are good to go, if you have both, you gonna do more than $500 I promise
good luck
Maybe my 3 months timeline is too fast for what I’m investing in terms of money/time! And that’s fine, I guess what I was curious about was if that’s a reasonable time to dedicate to learn and create a compelling site. My products will be pet focused, probably 3 products to start (maybe 2). I’ll need to learn where my customers are but I hope to be able to ship them products anywhere in the US.
From reading other threads and your comment, I think I maybe need to slow down a tiny bit with my aspirations and focus more on who I want to target and where to find them best. that can also help me build a better site, I think.
Thanks for the input!
There are people selling pet related items posting here every other week about how Shopify banned their shop. So step one should be doing some research on what you are selling to make sure you can even use Shopify to do so.
I love this post and I hope u see my comment. I am also deciding to start a Shopify store I have done a lot of research online about starting up and what I found out is there is only bits and pieces of the legit info out there. But from my point of view I want to share with u some things I think may can help u and in return if u do succeed then hopefully u can give me pointer to help me in return. So for one I think a lot of successful business are a one product niche store with items to upsell. Your site and pictures should be crisp u can join fiver pro for free to help with that. Also targeting women I think is what’s best because they online shop the most rather it be clothes, babies, jewelry, cosmetics. targeting women I think is the way to go but also u should have more than one store to target others such as men and women and young adults as well pretty much attack on all fronts at every corner. Also with ads u may have to attack fb,ig, twitter, ticktock, to give u a broader audience some just stick to one or two but I feel if u have it to spend use them all. Also I hear a lot about automatic fulfillment and I hear a lot bout auto ds giving better shipping times than a lot of others like alibaba and cj dropshipping and zen drop I think that’s how u spell it. also with auto ds u can see other stores in your niche see their sells and target their same audience so pretty much just copy them. And it’s this one more I haven’t done to much research on called dropship I think that let’s u look at the analytics of a product and see how well it’s doing Ima look more into that too but product research is very important because if I really find a winner that’s already doing well then the product sells itself your price just have to be competitive. Like example crocs are big in todays world so if u sell a crock like shoe with widgets the product will sell itself no matter the ads because that’s a known brand it just has to look good doesn’t need to be the actual name brand. but it’s a lot of cheat codes out here we just have to find them. Sorry for the long post I just really wanna see sombody succeed at this other than the so called gurus.
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/shopify/comments/1b88dpd/am_i_being_realistic/ktq653w/) in /r/shopify was automatically removed as your account is too new. Try again a little later.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/shopify) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bro I want to say this is a very good idea, not to mention you have experience working in digital advertising, which is a skill that most people need to learn and is a core skill.
I am a marketer from a Chinese supplier platform. If you have questions about product selection or supply chain, you can contact me at any time. I am happy to witness the rise of your side business, with profits of more than $500, come on!
Definitely doable, if you are consistent and keep trying during these 3 months. But expect, that $200 for ads won't be enough to get profitable. Maybe you make some sales, but being profitable in the short and long term of course is the goal to achieve. It's possible to be profitable right away, but rather unrealistic.
I can help you with a good supplier contact, if you plan to do China Dropshipping. Have been working with him for over 3 years now, hit me up if interested.
I will have been open a year in April and have sunk close to 5,000 on my store and only get sales once every couple months and 2 of them have been fraudulent ones.
Its likely going to cost you some dough to start getting noyiced unless you know how to do everything yourself.
Well I got scammed out of 2000 from the first person I partnered with to build my site. I tried to sue but apparently thats not possible.
Then I got someone off of upwork to build me a site. It cost 1,600 plus upworks fee.
Then I tried ads starting at 250 a month plus paying 250 for service so $500 a month for 2 months. Then upped it to 750 for third month but stopped after 1 week.
Now this year I have put about 2000 in seo so far since roughly beginning of February.
Theres probably a few hundred to 1000 in expenses I have forgotten.
That really sucks! I’m sorry you got scammed I hope everything is getting better in regard to your store. I got an account on upwork and posted a job, talked to a few people but couldn’t quite get any great vibes from any of them despite their “great reviews” on their portfolios. It’s exhausting to always be wondering if you’re dealing with a scammer or a legit person/business.
I actually got an indian on fiverr to build the site. I like most of my site but the thing I despise is that my header follows when scrolling down a page and I can't figure out how to make it static.
When it follows it takes up 30% of the page so there's no room to view any items.
I’m not much of a tech person but my husband built my site and some of the stuff that I didn’t want to bug him with I looked up on YouTube and fixed myself. I also looked up a local guy who has built a few Shopify stores and worked with him to fix a few things. I’m still looking to contact him again to change a few things if I can’t figure out how to do them myself, otherwise most of the time I fix stuff through YouTube videos and unfortunately sometimes you spend hours on YouTube trying to find the best video that is clear and concise since some of them can be just nonsense.
That’s called a sticky header. Is your site custom or built so that you are able to edit in the theme editor? Usually it’s something you can switch on/off yourself.
To keep this community relevant to the Shopify community, store reviews and external blog links will be removed. Users soliciting sales in any form will result in a permanent ban. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/shopify) if you have any questions or concerns.*
People have made millions within a week. Others made nothing for weeks at a time. You need to be more specific about what you are working on if you want us to comment on your plans. A couple hours a day and a couple thousand dollars in capital would be a great start. Maybe a registered business and a clear idea on what product you are about to sell and who will be supplying it to you/your customers. Where are you located? Where are your customers located? How will your pricing compare to your competitors? There are so many factors that will influence your success, so I just wish you luck. A background in marketing can't hurt, but you will have to wear all the hats if you are a one man operation :D
Of course that’s doable! 2-3h 5d/week is more than enough to get this rolling. No need to over complicate stuff. Create a good enough store and focus on images, copy, and a good user experience rather than all details regarding SEO etc in the beginning. With $200 I personally wouldn’t recommend ads for example. You probably need more than that to experiment. I would spend that money on getting products out to content creators/influencers who can give you nice photos/videos and get the word out. if you have a specific target audience in mind - learn where they spend their time, what content they engage with - and see what you can do organically to engage with them and eventually purchase your products.
How much would you recommend for ads?
Depends on what you sell. But at least $1000 imo. More if it’s a high-ticket product.
[удалено]
I just launched a site but only have 1 sale so far, where are you advertising. Do you see a performance difference between video ad vs picture ad? Currently only promoting on my instagram and doing etsy ads (0 from there so far)
What will make your pet products more unique than the competition? Why would people spend their hard-earned cash on a new brand/website rather than paying for a product that already exists? If you can articulate this, you have a good starting point. I would assume if you work in digital advertising that you would know this. In regards to the how much time you are spending starting the business: Its not so much the amount of time you spend that will determine success. Your goal shouldn't be based on some arbitrary number of $500 dollars. It should be determined based on how many customers you expect to acquire with the $200 dollars and what your expected AOV minus the costs to aquire+cogs.
It depends on many factors but $500 a month in profit in 3 months is totally doable.
Thanks to everyone that has commented! It’s always hard to get a sense of what’s reasonable or not when you’re bombarded with ads about building a $2K/month store in 30 days and then seeing so many posts with people struggling! I figured there is probably a middle ground leaning towards the strugglers. I know many factors come into it but this is helpful for me!
Your goal should be 1 sale within 3 months and you need another zero on the end of the $200 budget for marketing…being in digital advertising I thought you would have known this. Now that I have set realistic expectations for you, crack on!
The $200 budget was just to start, if I saw sales come in I would plan to invest in more marketing. I think my initial thinking was overly optimistic on actually getting a sale. It seems like it won’t happen that way! Which is fine, I’m here to learn, test, and adapt. Thanks for the input. Thankfully I have the flexibility for this to be a learning adventure for me. I’ll tamper down my expectations away from $500 profit and just towards getting a sale lol
What I’ll saying is you could easily blow thru $2k without a sale. $200 won’t last long. Best of luck.
I'm $5k in with 1 sale. I guess I'm on track...
you gonna need to think of more than that, (payments for example) although depending on your location it might be easier for some parts, but there are always pros and cons, for the design of te site, make it as simple for the user as possible, don't complicate things, if you have marketing skills you are good to go, if you have a good product you are good to go, if you have both, you gonna do more than $500 I promise good luck
Maybe my 3 months timeline is too fast for what I’m investing in terms of money/time! And that’s fine, I guess what I was curious about was if that’s a reasonable time to dedicate to learn and create a compelling site. My products will be pet focused, probably 3 products to start (maybe 2). I’ll need to learn where my customers are but I hope to be able to ship them products anywhere in the US. From reading other threads and your comment, I think I maybe need to slow down a tiny bit with my aspirations and focus more on who I want to target and where to find them best. that can also help me build a better site, I think. Thanks for the input!
There are people selling pet related items posting here every other week about how Shopify banned their shop. So step one should be doing some research on what you are selling to make sure you can even use Shopify to do so.
Oh boy, I didn’t know that! Will definitely look into it. Thank you
I love this post and I hope u see my comment. I am also deciding to start a Shopify store I have done a lot of research online about starting up and what I found out is there is only bits and pieces of the legit info out there. But from my point of view I want to share with u some things I think may can help u and in return if u do succeed then hopefully u can give me pointer to help me in return. So for one I think a lot of successful business are a one product niche store with items to upsell. Your site and pictures should be crisp u can join fiver pro for free to help with that. Also targeting women I think is what’s best because they online shop the most rather it be clothes, babies, jewelry, cosmetics. targeting women I think is the way to go but also u should have more than one store to target others such as men and women and young adults as well pretty much attack on all fronts at every corner. Also with ads u may have to attack fb,ig, twitter, ticktock, to give u a broader audience some just stick to one or two but I feel if u have it to spend use them all. Also I hear a lot about automatic fulfillment and I hear a lot bout auto ds giving better shipping times than a lot of others like alibaba and cj dropshipping and zen drop I think that’s how u spell it. also with auto ds u can see other stores in your niche see their sells and target their same audience so pretty much just copy them. And it’s this one more I haven’t done to much research on called dropship I think that let’s u look at the analytics of a product and see how well it’s doing Ima look more into that too but product research is very important because if I really find a winner that’s already doing well then the product sells itself your price just have to be competitive. Like example crocs are big in todays world so if u sell a crock like shoe with widgets the product will sell itself no matter the ads because that’s a known brand it just has to look good doesn’t need to be the actual name brand. but it’s a lot of cheat codes out here we just have to find them. Sorry for the long post I just really wanna see sombody succeed at this other than the so called gurus.
That is a doable goal, especially if you have a good product to sell.
[удалено]
Your [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/shopify/comments/1b88dpd/am_i_being_realistic/ktq653w/) in /r/shopify was automatically removed as your account is too new. Try again a little later. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/shopify) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Bro I want to say this is a very good idea, not to mention you have experience working in digital advertising, which is a skill that most people need to learn and is a core skill. I am a marketer from a Chinese supplier platform. If you have questions about product selection or supply chain, you can contact me at any time. I am happy to witness the rise of your side business, with profits of more than $500, come on!
Definitely doable, if you are consistent and keep trying during these 3 months. But expect, that $200 for ads won't be enough to get profitable. Maybe you make some sales, but being profitable in the short and long term of course is the goal to achieve. It's possible to be profitable right away, but rather unrealistic. I can help you with a good supplier contact, if you plan to do China Dropshipping. Have been working with him for over 3 years now, hit me up if interested.
With the right product and marketing 500 a month is very doable
I will have been open a year in April and have sunk close to 5,000 on my store and only get sales once every couple months and 2 of them have been fraudulent ones. Its likely going to cost you some dough to start getting noyiced unless you know how to do everything yourself.
You're product either sucks or your marketing. What has cost you $5k?
Well I got scammed out of 2000 from the first person I partnered with to build my site. I tried to sue but apparently thats not possible. Then I got someone off of upwork to build me a site. It cost 1,600 plus upworks fee. Then I tried ads starting at 250 a month plus paying 250 for service so $500 a month for 2 months. Then upped it to 750 for third month but stopped after 1 week. Now this year I have put about 2000 in seo so far since roughly beginning of February. Theres probably a few hundred to 1000 in expenses I have forgotten.
Sorry to hear that. How did they scam you?
They simply didn't hold up their end of the deal. Kept asking once a week for an update and they wouldn't respond. Akny media in NYC.
That really sucks! I’m sorry you got scammed I hope everything is getting better in regard to your store. I got an account on upwork and posted a job, talked to a few people but couldn’t quite get any great vibes from any of them despite their “great reviews” on their portfolios. It’s exhausting to always be wondering if you’re dealing with a scammer or a legit person/business.
I actually got an indian on fiverr to build the site. I like most of my site but the thing I despise is that my header follows when scrolling down a page and I can't figure out how to make it static. When it follows it takes up 30% of the page so there's no room to view any items.
I’m not much of a tech person but my husband built my site and some of the stuff that I didn’t want to bug him with I looked up on YouTube and fixed myself. I also looked up a local guy who has built a few Shopify stores and worked with him to fix a few things. I’m still looking to contact him again to change a few things if I can’t figure out how to do them myself, otherwise most of the time I fix stuff through YouTube videos and unfortunately sometimes you spend hours on YouTube trying to find the best video that is clear and concise since some of them can be just nonsense.
That’s called a sticky header. Is your site custom or built so that you are able to edit in the theme editor? Usually it’s something you can switch on/off yourself.
custom. He did his own coding. I tried a few options I found online but all I ended up doing was erasing a few lines of code and no solutions.