What Is Shopify? Now Home to 1,000,000 Business Owners

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Chances are if you’re considering selling online, you would have probably heard about Shopify. So, what is Shopify and what can this tool help your business with?

Shopify is a cloud-based and hosted eCommerce company, that will allow you to easily create a professional-looking store, display your products and take payments from your customers. In sum, Shopify has everything you need to start selling online, anywhere!

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You may have stumbled across a video on youtube for someone that talks about Shopify, and his success story; how was he able to make thousands or even millions from this particular platform.

You end up telling yourself that this is fake and impossible. Well, the good news is that this is real, and Shopifyis the leader in the eCommerce industry, but the trouble is, not many people understand how it works.

Let’s have a real talk. 2020 is not just a new year, it’s the beginning for a whole new decade, and as we advance in this smartphone era, we can barely see someone who is not on the internet on a daily basis.

The internet has conquered every single home and device, and the reason for giving the above example is that the total number of people who use Youtube is 1,300,000,000, which is equal to China’s population, the largest city in the world.

More than 300 hours of videos are uploaded to Youtube every single minute. Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day, and these stats are increasing day by day.

Nowadays, while retail is dying, entrepreneurs are flocking towards online businesses, because it’s way easier to create an online store, rather than a brick and mortar store.

In this article, I will be taking you through an amazing company, which is the home for 1,000,000 business owners.

So, let’s dive in!

What Is E-commerce?

It’s the activity of electronically buying and selling products on online services or over the internet.

Global retail e-commerce sales are projected to reach $27 trillion by 2020! Isn’t that impressive?

E-commerce has different models:

1. B2C: Business To Consumer

When retail sells a product to an end consumer directly.

2. B2B: Business To Business

When a business sells a product/service to another business. A good example when a company like Clickfunnels sells its software-as-a-service (SAAS) to another company.

3. C2C: Consumer To Consumer

When a consumer sells a product or service to another consumer. An example of this is when someone sells his old furniture on eBay for other consumers.

4. C2B: Consumer To Business

When a consumer sells his products or services to a business or organization. An influencer runs a shoutout for business and offers exposure to their audience in exchange for a fee that can be a good example!

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets you start, grow, and manage a business.

Create and customize an online store, sell in multiple places, including web, mobile, social media, online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops.

You can use this drag and drop platform to build an online store and start selling to all customers around the globe.

Shopifyis completely cloud-based and hosted, which means you don’t have to worry about upgrading or maintaining software or web servers. This gives you the flexibility to access and run your business from anywhere with an internet connection.

People who blog use WordPress, to host their domains, articles, and work. But Shopify is used for selling online, as it will act as your hosted e-commerce solution. This will allow you to easily create a professional-looking store, display your products and take payments from your customers.

While other e-commerce platforms limit you with how many products you can list on your online store, Shopify does not!

The reason they do so because the more products and images you upload, the more server bandwidth your store is eating, which may slow down the web host’s services.

Shopify allows you to upload unlimited products, items, and images, even with their least package.

Imagine you have a brick and mortar store, and you are selling apparel, it has a capacity, at some level there would be a limitation in the number of products you have. Well, that’s not the case when it comes to selling on Shopify, you can list thousands of products, with different variants (Colors, sizes, etc…).

What Are The Advantages Of Shopify?

1. They are supportive of dropshipping, they provide a variety of integrations to make the process easier and smoother. They have an app store, some apps are free some are paid, but they will surely raise up the functionality of your store.

2. It’s very easy to set up a store through a drag and drop builder, you don’t need to do any coding, they do the hard work for you, you simply edit the storefront, adding products, editing the navigations, buttons, pages and you are good to go.

3. Shopify has the capabilities to handle your sales, marketing, and payments.

4. It tracks, processes, and manages all your payments and orders, allowing you to focus on building a brand.

5. You are allowed to add your own domain.

6. In the admin panel, you can find a whole range of reports and features that help you know more about your Shopify store performance.

7. Free features and tools are available for you to use. From a list of free themes to choose from to everything, you need to sell and grow your retail business (logo maker, business name generator, slogan, terms and conditions generator, QR code generator, business card maker, invoice generator, shipping label templates, privacy policy generator, gifts certificate, image resizer, refund policy generator, exchange marketplace, and more).

8. Shopify wants you to succeed. That’s why they have their own blog where e-commerce experts share their best tactics. That’s why they created Shopify Academy, free e-commerce courses where you can learn at your own pace.

9. Anyone who has tried or worked with a server before knows very well that servers crash at the wrong times. They usually crash on big events like Black Friday. Unlike Woocommerce and other eCommerce platforms, Shopifyis a cloud network, which allows you to run your business with ease, without your website being down at any time.

10. Shopify plans are very affordable and helpful. If you are starting out, you need no more than the basic package, and you can upgrade upon your will, as your business grows.

11. Low Barrier to Entry. I’m not telling that it’s easy, but it’s a lot easier than it was to build an online business 20 years ago.

What Are Shopify Cons?

1. When building a Shopify store, what you’re really building is a business, not a passive income stream. And starting a business isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do. Figuring out how to use Shopify and build a profitable store takes months of experimentation.

It can take a while to know where every section of your store is located in the admin. But for the most part, Shopify is intuitive. It just takes some practice.

2. Shopify has so many great features and apps that make running an online store easier than building something custom from scratch. The problem is that it’s actually up to you to make your store a success.

Related: How to start an online Shopify store with 7 simple steps? (Open in a new tab)

You need to have the right mindset pushing you to learn. You need to have the marketing chops to promote your business better than the competition. Your success is in your hands, not Shopify’s.

In What Countries Can I Use Shopify?

You can use Shopify in nearly every country in the world.

Do I Need To Be A Designer Or Developer To Use Shopify?

No, you don’t need to be a designer or developer to use Shopify.

Customize the look and feel of your store with the online store builder and themes. Luckily, Shopify offers a variety of free themes that you can use, or you can get yourself a professional theme. It’s totally up to you

Shopify has its own app store. You can add features and functionality to your store with apps, with no coding needed.

If you need extra help, you can contact their support team, or visit the Shopify Expert Marketplace to search for and hire a certified Shopify expert.

Which Languages Does Shopify Support?

The customer-facing parts of your Shopify store, including eCommerce website, blog, checkout, and emails can be in any language if the theme supports it. Learn more and explore our themes.

The admin of your Shopify store is currently available in English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Can I Use My Own Domain Name With Shopify?

Yes, you can use your own domain name with Shopify.

If you have an existing domain name, you can connect it to Shopify from your store’s admin. Learn more about connecting an existing domain to a Shopify store.

If you don’t have a domain name yet, you can either buy one through Shopify or a third-party provider.

How Much Does Shopify Cost?

Try Shopify free for 14 days, no credit card required.

After your trial expires, choose a pricing plan that suits the size and stage of your business.

What Do I Need To Start Selling On Shopify?

To start selling on Shopify, you’ll need a Shopify plan and products to sell.

Get started by signing up for Shopify. Then set up your store and add your products.

If you don’t have products to sell yet, dropshipping might be a good option for you.

Where Can I Learn More About Shopify Dropshipping?

When I stumbled across dropshipping for the first time, I’ve watched thousands and thousands of Youtube videos, which got me overwhelmed! I’m saying that because each entrepreneur is doing it his way, and taking it from his own perspective.

Getting overwhelmed is not what you actually want, because no action will be taken.

What I’m trying to say is, the biggest investment that you would make is in yourself, so make it WORTH it.

When learning about dropshipping particularly, rely on a trusted source to take the responsibility of educating you.

Shopify wants you to succeed on its platform. That’s why they have their own blog where eCommerce experts share their best tactics.

Also, that’s the reason behind creating Shopify Academy, where you can get free eCommerce courses and at your own pace.

Shopify has so many customer support reps who will happily answer any questions you have.

There are even Facebook Groups created by Shopify users who want to help new store owners succeed. The support ecosystem at Shopify is massive. There’s always someone willing to help you grow.

Here in EcomDimes, we are on a simple mission: help as many entrepreneurs as possible raise and grow their own online business.

With that being said, we have created a sweet little free course that talks about the basic fundamentals of Shopify Dropshipping, which helps you set up an online store in a matter of hours.

It will pop up anywhere on your screen, grab it!

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Conclusion

Being in this smartphone era gives us endless opportunities right under our fingerprints.

With Shopify, you can create a nice-looking online storefront in a matter of hours and start selling to the globe. Shopify has a massive ecosystem and has proven itself in the eCommerce industry.

Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, dropshipping is a very popular business model in 2020 because it doesn’t require a lot of capital to start, and with few simple steps, you can have your store up and running.

While the free trial lets you use most of Shopify’s features, you can’t sell anything until you become a paid monthly user.

If this is for you, you can get started in as low as a month, yeah I’m positive that you need no more than the basic package when starting out.

Overall, Shopify will be ideal for you, whatever you want to sell online.

Start by testing its waters, you don’t need to provide your credit card details for the purpose. Sign up for a trial account, surf the panel and see how things work.

Finally, dropshipping is updating and upgrading each day, you can’t simply wait until you master it, you don’t need to learn it all. Get into it, and learn as you go along.

Check out some success stories of Shopify. (open in a new tab). Anything you want to create is possible if you focus and work diligently to achieve it. I hope you can be the next Shopify success story.

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it“

Because you, our readers are precious to us, we’ve come up with this amazing course, that can teach how to launch your own Shopify store without paying big bucks to some guru! Do not forget to grab your seat, It’s FOR FREE!