Consumers are shifting at an unprecedented rate to online shopping, and Shopify, as an e-commerce platform, is the destination for many. Whether you have a small business and are considering expanding your online presence or you want to start your first business online, Shopify stores offer you an exciting opportunity to make money.
Many potential sellers wonder, “how much can you make on Shopify?”
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We will provide an answer to this question in this advanced guide. Shopify is a renowned e-commerce platform that allows merchants to sell whatever products they have online through an in-built interface, enabling you to access their digital storefront on any device with a mobile-first focus.
Setting up and operating a Shopify store is straightforward. The platform allows sellers to upload photos of their products and monitor their inventory quickly. Most of the top Shopify dropshipping stores and big brands use Shopify to host their e-commerce business.
Additionally, if you have a physical store too, you will benefit from the company's point-of-sale (POS) app to sell your products in person while having an online store, the app unifying both worlds. Indeed, Shopify allows you to manage your online and brick-and-mortar store inventory efficiently, as well as all the other digital aspects of your e-commerce business.
Shopify Plans and their Pricing
In determining how much you can make on Shopify, knowing the different plans, their specificities, and their costs are also important. Like many e-commerce sites, Shopify also has different levels of pricing structure. Each tier provides varying services that support the business's needs within the platform, helping store owners to start and grow their businesses over time.
Shopify Lite
This plan is perfect for merchants beginning to sell products online and who have basic needs or people selling in-person (via Shopify POS lite). This plan costs USD 9 per month and allows you to include the “buy” button on your website, for example, on your WordPress blog. Shopify Lite also integrates with your Facebook page, enabling potential customers to buy products from this platform.
Basic Shopify
This plan is bigger than Shopify Lite with many features. Basic Shopify costs $29 monthly and provides businesses with the opportunity to create an online Shopify store that hosts unlimited products.
It also provides a POS solution and Shopify Payments, their payment gateway charging 2.9%+$0.30 as a transaction fee for online purchases and a 2.7% fee for in-person purchases. These fees decrease your margins when selling.
But how much can you make on Shopify? We will figure it out a bit later in this guide. The “Basic Shopify” plan is what you need if you are just getting started in your eCommerce journey.
You have more transaction fees than in the next “Shopify” plan and access to less analytics, but you have all the tools you need to start selling while keeping your expenses low. When “asking how much can you make on Shopify”, you want also to decrease your costs to maximize your profitability.
Shopify
This plan has a monthly subscription cost of USD 79 and provides you with all the features of the Basic Shopify plus gift card support, 5 staff accounts instead of 2, and a better performance report for tracking sales.
So if your business is growing, you have a bigger team, and you want to access to more analytics, this plan is for you. For example, knowing exactly which products people add to their cart is very convenient. This standard “Shopify” plan shows you the data you need to better focus your efforts and grow your sales.
Advanced Shopify
The Advanced Shopify plan at USD 299 per month is suitable for larger businesses with high sales and more complex needs. It’s best for scaling businesses that need advanced reporting capabilities.
In addition to the previously mentioned features of other plans, Advanced Shopify allows your business to have 15 staff accounts, enhanced sales reports, fewer transaction costs, more inventory locations, and international pricing so you can set different product prices for different regions or countries.
How Much Can You Make on Shopify: Five Ways to Make Money on Shopify and Approximate Figures
You can sell all kinds of physical or digital products and services on Shopify. Let's discuss different ways to make money with this eCommerce platform and how much money you can make.
Open an e-commerce Shopify Store
If you already know what you want to sell, you can easily set up your online store on Shopify and start selling. The e-commerce Shopify store allows you to sell anything from hand-crafted goods and services you provide to reselling something you sourced from a supplier, as top Shopify dropshipping stores do without touching any product.
The Shopify platform lets you add products easily so that potential customers can easily access them.
Depending on your marketing strategy, a healthy e-commerce store on Shopify can earn you thousands of dollars every month. There are no rules; many store owners have no sales, most earn a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month, and some have income in the tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As always in entrepreneurship, many try, and few succeed. But when you are successful, the sky is the limit. The success of your store also depends on your product, your marketing strategy, quality photos, how professional your store looks, and many more aspects.
Create a Shopify Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping has become a buzzword in recent years. This business model allows merchants to process orders made on their sites without purchasing or storing any inventory. With top Shopify dropshipping stores, you do not need to have a warehouse or keep inventory; you sell products you get from suppliers.
In other words, you are an intermediary between the supplier or manufacturer and the end customer. On the one hand, you help suppliers to sell their goods. On the other hand, you allow customers to discover products that they need or want and that they would probably not have had the opportunity to discover without your marketing efforts.
You need to focus your efforts on marketing once you've found the right product and your store is optimized. It is your marketing outcome that will define your success or failure and in particular, your customer acquisition cost, which you must keep as low as possible. Or at least work to maximize your customer's lifetime value.
You can try to build top Shopify dropshipping stores by professionally outlining your product catalog, optimizing your pricing strategy, and passing the orders to your dropshipping partner through your Shopify account without touching any product.
Additionally, you will most probably use the Oberlo app for your dropshipping store. Shopify bought this startup a few years ago, and now it’s the app everyone uses to source dropshipping products from AliExpress.
How much Money You can Make with Dropshipping
With the right supplier and an established brand, you can make as high as $100,000 in a year dropshipping on Shopify. Very few dropshipping stores reach more than $1M/year in revenue. Successful top Shopify dropshipping stores have made this kind of money on the platform.
However, don’t believe everything you see on Youtube. Lots of gurus show you extravagant numbers from their Shopify stores, but it’s very easy to fake numbers by creating draft orders on Shopify or changing the HTML source code of their page.
You never know, especially since no one will show you their store for fear of being copied, given the absence of barriers to entry in dropshipping.
Just because someone shows you dream numbers and refreshes their Shopify dashboard page on camera doesn't mean it's a real number. Only numbers on bank accounts matter.
Become a Shopify Affiliate
You can also earn money on Shopify without selling anything. Similar to Amazon, Shopify also offers an affiliate marketing program in which you earn money for every successful referral visiting the Shopify platform from your affiliate link. It means that you will increase your earnings if you bring more sellers to the Shopify platform.
Successful affiliate sellers capitalize on their huge social media following. Be aware of people pushing you to a higher plan too if you want to open your first Shopify store. If you’re just getting started, the Basic Shopify plan at $29/month is exactly what you need, nothing more. The higher plans fit growing and scaling businesses.
Become a Shopify Partner
Individuals possessing certain IT skills, such as experts in HTML, CCS, Ruby on Rails (backend framework using the Ruby programming language), and Liquid (the open-source template language created by Shopify) can partner with Shopify and potentially make a significant amount of money.
On the one hand, you can create stores using Shopify for your customers and earn recurring revenue. On the other hand, you can also create apps on the Shopify App Store and keep 100% of revenue for the first $1M/year of revenue, with Shopify taking 15% of commission after that threshold.
You can also create themes for Shopify and earn revenue from that. Shopify rewards partners who help strengthen their ecosystem. After all, if Shopify is the most valued publicly-traded company in Canada, it's because it brings a lot of added value to the market.
Become a Shopify Expert
Tech-savvy people knowing Ruby on Rails, Liquid, and Web languages can make money by being Shopify experts. Other stores may need your services and pay amounts ranging from $500-$2500 or more per store. You would act as a developer in the Shopify ecosystem, helping brands customize their store to meet their particular needs.
Top Shopify Dropshipping Stores
This article also examines inspiring examples of top Shopify dropshipping stores that started with nothing and rose into multi-million-dollar companies within a relatively short period.
These stores have transformed passions into business households with websites that have been dropshipping for a long time. Dropshipping stores are popular with Shopify, although this industry is still young.
Here are some of the successful top Shopify dropshipping stores:
1 – Inspire Uplift
For a long period, Inspire Uplift has had tremendous success on Shopify and is regarded as one of the top Shopify dropshipping stores. Inspire Uplift was invented in 2015 as “Hype Dojo” and later rebranded as Inspire Uplift in 2017, operating as a top Shopify dropshipping store.
In the recent past, this USA-based company has witnessed an increase in its revenue to an estimated $4,79M – $9 59M monthly in 2020 from problem-solving gadgets to women's products. It looks like they are now using a custom-built store, not Shopify anymore.
Products and Niche
Inspire Uplift is a store that offers over 700 products, most of which are gadgets that solves various problems for women. Their products have quality pictures, some taken by experts, and others come from AliExpress.
Additionally, their products also have good reviews and, on occasion, product videos. They keep their prices cheap by capitalizing on large purchases to improve profits, focusing on acquiring new customers.
Store Design and Apps
Inspire Uplift uses Kagami Theme with a similar design to Amazon.com. Their simple product page clearly shows the products and links to their Facebook Page, boasting over 6 million likes.
Their site also displays the best customer reviews, appearing below the product description. Inspire Uplift was also using Loox Product reviews and various Shopify apps to improve customer conversation and trust.
Their top marketing pages are Facebook and Pinterest, which have more than 10 million followers combined.
2 – HYGO Shop
This dropshipping store was launched in December 2017 and, by 2020, was generating an estimated sales of $2.43M to 4.86M monthly. They sold problem-solving gadgets to men and women of whatever age.
The sheer amount of monthly revenue shows how much you can make on Shopify. However, in late 2021 it looks like they closed their initial store, only selling their well-known viral videos used on Facebook Ads.
Product and Niche
They had over 1600 listed products with many best-sellers, including the Quick Makeup Bag, known for storing and retrieving makeup, contributing to their staggering revenue. Every week, HygoShop uploaded several new products as they searched for new best-sellers, making them one of Shopify's most successful dropshipping websites.
HygoShop used to show most of its product ads with in-house-made viral videos explaining the features and benefits of the product
Store Design and Apps
HygoShop was considered one of the beautifully designed stores on Shopify. Their page design was relatively simple, showing products and discounts.
They boosted their profits by offering discounts called quantity breaks for individuals that purchase more than one unit. Like Inspire Uplift, they also used the Shopify app (Loox Product Reviews) to build customer trust and increase order value.
Additionally, they had strong ties with their US suppliers, enabling them to grow in the region exponentially. HygoShop used to market through Klaviyo to maintain customer loyalty and ReConvert to encourage buying for customers who added products to their cart but abandoned it. Nevertheless, they used Facebook extensively for their marketing.
3 – Odditymall
It is one of the first-ever created dropshipping stores and blogs, launched over eight years ago. Odditymall was launched in 2013 and has grown as a company making approximately $1.1M-$2.35M monthly from their dropshipping business alone (odditymall.com is their blog which they also monetize through affiliate links).
Interestingly, they use their huge traffic to sell AliExpress and Amazon products through affiliate links on their blog. It means they earn double; from dropshipping and Amazon Affiliates.
Product and Niche
Most of their best-sellers are toys, novelty gadgets, and a mix of problem-solving products. The store presents a quirky theme and funny gifts, most of which have the novelty factor.
Two of its best-seller problem-solving products include Watermelon Slicer and a Silicone Flower vase. Odditymall’s products are relatively cheap, capitalizing on high sales volume and attracting new customers to boost profit.
Store Design and Apps
The store has a simple design with product gifs and videos accompanying descriptions. These images and descriptions enable them to close a sale without overly relying on paid marketing.
4 – Indestructible Shoes
This niche dropshipping store rose to fame after creating its viral dropshipping Facebook video campaigns. Their revenue rose to approximately $1M-1.96M monthly in less than one year. Indestructible shoes‘ quick rise in the industry makes them one exciting dropshipping story of all times.
Though they started off selling one product on Shopify, their collection has tremendously grown ever since.
Product and Niche
Indestructible Shoes prides itself in selling indestructible shoes. They claim their shoes are puncture-resistant (military grade), light, steel-toed, and flexible. Most of the products on their Shopify store are found on AliExpress and sell at almost half the listed price.
Indestructible Shoes also offers considerable discounts than regular retail stores and also offers different shoe sizes.
Store Design and Apps
Indestructible Shoes have designed the store with an improved Turbo theme. This style fits well with their products, featuring a clean, eye-catching sneaker design.
Additionally, they have review quotes below product titles, proving product quality, thus helpful in promoting their goods without using several marketing tools.
Their online products also have a custom-built feature that allows customers to explore each product’s capabilities and examine the pictures.
This section, coupled with product videos and reviews, is useful in enlightening an informed buyer to improve conversion. Indestructible Shoes have trademarked the name as their brand and have threatened to file a lawsuit against any businesses involved in drop shipping their shoes.
Trademarking a brand could potentially ward off competition, helping the brand flourish.
5 – Motrendy
Motrendy justly finds its place in this list as a noteworthy Shopify store, selling classic problem-solving gadgets with viral potential. In one year, their sales have risen to approximately $0.6M-1.21M per month.
They specialize in editing viral videos and product gifs, while they regularly upload a new product to test these videos selling ability.
Product and Niche
Motrendy Shopify store boasts over 600 products across seven product categories, including tools, pets, smart homes, kitchens, car accessories, outdoors, and toys. The product variety provides them with a large pool of options for products that sell.
Their sales are also driven by unique thumbnails, cheap prices, and product descriptions. They use a catchy marketing tool, “More is better,” to encourage customers to buy more for better prices. Moreover, they improve their sales volume through the retail point-of-sale software.
Store Design and Apps
Though not as glamorous as the others we have discussed, the design of this store works well for sales conversion. The conversion rate is also enhanced by product gifs, large buttons, and clear product descriptions on the store. Motrendy also offers substantial discounts, promoting multiple sales, thus improving order value.
Conclusion
Shopify has a wide range of avenues that you can adopt and make some extra cash. Some have opened e-commerce stores to sell their products and services, while some are making money by establishing a top Shopify dropshipping store. Other ways to increase how much you can make on Shopify include becoming a Shopify affiliate, partner, and expert.
Dropshipping business seems to be thriving exponentially on Shopify if the figures of top dropshippers are to be considered. Some of the top gun Shopify dropshipping stores include Inspire Uplift, Hygo Shop, Motrendy, Odditymall, and Indestructible shoes.
Be aware, however, that success is not guaranteed and that you will need to put in a lot of effort, have a good marketing strategy, and have a dose of luck to be able to achieve success with Shopify or in e-commerce in general.
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