My partner, Tim, had been after me for about a year talking about selling floor tape online. He knew that I had been dabbling in affiliate marketing for about 2 years and kind of learning the ropes. One weekend in June I decided to give Shopify a try. It was so easy. I bought a domain on GoDaddy for $10, used a free trial on Shopify and a free coupon for Google Adwords. Within a week we had our first order. It was so exciting. That first order paid for the first month of expenses and we were off to the races with a $10 investment.
What are the key factors that have helped your store be successful?
The beauty of the business is that it has grown steadily from when we first launched. We didn't do any market research at all and that is what I like about Shopify. I literally built the first site on a whim one weekend at the request of my partner. I spent $10 on a domain and used the 30 trial of Shopify to get started. Our first order came and gave us the capital we needed to fund everything. We poured that money into Google Adwords to drive more traffic and the rest is history. We are a dropshipping business so we have no inventory. It is a great side business.
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
My recommendation would be to go for it! You have very little risk. And the apps that Shopify has now are endless. I have started several other stores that have failed. But all I lost was time. It is a great model.
Any Closing Remarks?
Go for it. Try new sites and new apps. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. We have two new sites that we have built and are up and running right now (antifatiguestore.com and rackguardstore.com) but there are others that we built and shut down when we realized we couldn't capture the market or other problems. With Shopify it is very easy to stand up and a site and give it a try. RetentionGrid is one of my favorite apps. The visual picture it gives of our customers is amazing and the folks there have taught me a bunch about marketing. We also use Zopim, eCommHub, Yotpo and BoldApps