Owning a Shopify store is super exciting. You get to create your own products and sell them! What could be better?!
But lurking around the corner, in the crevices, there are 7 mistakes that Shopify Store owners make and they just don’t know it. If you have a store and you’re not making money, here’s a couple reasons why!
Mistakes Shopify Store Owners Make
1. Shop Owners Give Up Too Soon
Success doesn’t always happen overnight. If you give up too soon, you might just be missing out on success. Some Shopify stores take a while to take off, so you don’t want to give up so soon. Having been an entrepreneur for 22 years now, my #1 rule has always been to give a new business adventure at least ONE YEAR.
While you’ll definitely make money with Shopify in the meantime, do NOT quit before one year. EVER! In any business adventure. At the year point, that’s JUUUUUUUUST when you start getting your bearings and fly. If you give up too soon, you COULDA had a great business, but you left too early to ever know. 🙁
Give It Time
If you are a beginner and have only been in business for a few weeks, you don’t want to throw it all away. This is one major mistake made in the Shopify business. Set a few goals for yourself and see if you accomplish your goals in that time period.
If something isn’t working, tweak. Tweak and tweak and tweak some more.
In my shop, some products were just not selling. I had a thought, “What IF it’s my pictures?!” I had my printables all straight and block-y and square. Once I tilted the printables on the picture just a hair, those ads started selling. Sometimes a slight change in your store design is necessary. Just test everything and you’ll get there!
Sometimes, it’s the littlest detail that is the difference between a thriving, successful shop and a dead one. In my Million Dollar Shop® course, I teach all about what to do and what NOT to do. Definitely check it out. If you want to succeed with your digital products Shopify store, you cannot miss this life-altering course!
Let it Take Off
Most businesses don’t take off overnight. Give it time. Keep doing what you’re doing to get the word out there and then watch your business slowly snowball. Your business will take off when you least expect it and you’ll be so happy you were patient and kept working it.
2. Undervalue Your Time, Energy, and Mind
A big mistake that Shopify store owners make is undervaluing your time, energy, and mind. When you are starting a store, you’re always willing to do more for less. Of course, it’s going to take time to get your store set up and running, but you shouldn’t undervalue your time, energy, and mind.
Underpricing Your Products
When you undervalue yourself, you underprice your products. While you don’t want to overprice your products, you don’t want to underprice them. You want to make sure you are charging enough. Your time is valuable and this needs to be reflected in the price of your products.
Recently I coached a friend and I told her she was undercharging and to raise all her prices. Here’s what she said:
Finding the sweet spot can be a little difficult, so just play around with it a bit. Set prices, then promo to about 100 people. See if they bite. If they don’t, you know your pricing is off.
Talk to friends and customers. See what they expect to pay. Do some legwork. What are others charging in their Shopify stores? You can see a lot of other Shopify stores here in my VIP Products Facebook group.
Then just keep testing it till you hit the sweet spot. For me, I started my very first binder at $47 with 25% off. For my first digital product, it did really well. I sold over 50 copies during launch on Shopify. I was super happy about it and knew I could do more, so I hurried and added more products and that very first month, I made $52,060.
It has been unreal!
Now I price my binders at $57 (I upped them $10) and business is good. Lucky for me, I found the sweet spot right away. You might not, but I tell you one thing…it’s worth finding!!! 🙂
Avoid Burnout
Also, when you undervalue your time, energy, and mind, you have a greater chance of burning out because you’re working harder than you should and you don’t feel appreciated. When someone feels burnt out, they don’t produce high-quality work and your business suffers. Price what you’re worth, what YOU’D pay for something, what is a fair market price. You deserve to make money for your hard work.
3. Comparing Yourself to Others
Look to others for inspiration, but if you are straight comparing yourself, you can make yourself miserable. You are your own person, unique and different and there’s ALWAYS going to be someone who’s doing better than you. That doesn’t mean YOU suck just b/c THEY are doing good. You can’t compare yourself to others like that.
Don’t Expect to See the Same Results
If you do absolutely EVERYTHING I teach in my Million Dollar Shop® course, you will see fantastic success, yes, but you most likely won’t see MY success. The most anyone else has ever made under my coaching is $24k their first month on Shopify. I made $52,060 my first month.
One thing you have to remember is that I literally been doing this for 22 YEARS! The longer you stay AT something, the better you get and there’s the hope in that. Keep with it. The longer you do ANYTHING, the better you get! 🙂 But don’t expect to see fifty thousand dollars your first month on Shopify. I’m a rare case and you need to understand that.
Don’t Consider Yourself a Failure
If you are typically a business owner that is kind of negative, you may struggle with this. However, it’s important to not consider yourself a failure. Even if you grow SLOWER, it’s still GROWTH!!!!!!
Did you get that?
So what if it takes you 5 years to get somewhere instead of one. Point is, you got there! 11 years ago I was homeless. My ex-husband abandoned us, started going off the deep end, having a bunch of affairs, etc. Me and the kids ended up living in a homeless shelter after he got physically violent with me.
Did I ever imagine myself to be here where I am today? Having made 8-figures in revenue online as a single mom? No way!!!
That’s the point. You have no IDEA what COULD happen if you stick with something and don’t let anything stop you from going after what you want in life. This is YOUR life. YOUR dream. Don’t tell me you can’t make it. I was homeless and I bet you anything, you have more than I did when I was starting out. If *I* can make it, with the world stacked against me, so can you!
So you grow slow. No problem. You’re growing and that’s all that matters. Keep going. Keep pushing. Take the steps you need to and fly!
5. You May Need Help
While it’s fun to think you can do absolutely everything yourself to save some money, it’s actually BETTER to hire some things out. No one is good at EVERYTHING. Hire out the things you’re not so good at.
Proofing takes me an hour, but I hire it out and my assistant can proof in 30 mins. It makes more sense having someone else do it b/c that’s what she’s perfect at.
Starting a Shopify store is a lot of work at the beginning to build your empire and it may come down to you hiring someone. Although it may cost you money, it’s not a bad thing if you do need to hire someone.
Make sure you don’t try to do everything yourself because if you do, you will just burn yourself out and not grow as fast.
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
Don’t get frustrated with yourself when things aren’t moving really fast or in the direction that you want them to go. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your business. You’re building an empire. A very large empire.
It won’t happen over night. I started my shop with 1 product. Then 3. Now I have 174 at the time I’m writing this. My store is massively huge and I love it. It’s my baby! 🙂 But again, I started with ONE!!!
6. Not Investing In Yourself and in Your Business
Another major mistake Shopify store owners make is not investing in themselves and in their business. You’re only as good as the tools that you use.
Invest in Equipment
When it comes to running a business, you may need to spend money and invest in some equipment. While this may seem detrimental at first, if you invest wisely, it will actually help you make more money in the long run.
Be willing to invest in your business in smart ways, like getting that training you need. If you sell printables, you need to have a good quality printer.
You need the $79/month Shopify plan after you have at least 10 products and are making $500/month profits. It has better reports. You need those reports to make good financial decisions.
A good rule of thumb is to always invest 75% of your PROFITS the first year of any business adventure you start, BACK into the business.
Most people don’t like that. And that’s WHY most people fail!!! Again, I been doing this 20+ years here. I’ve quite literally seen it all. Across the board, you need to invest.
Do you need to invest 75% of your Shopify profits? No. You don’t. You can get away with 25%, but most businesses should be 75%, so don’t be afraid to spend. Get the tools you need. For me, the biggest chunk of investing in my shop is going with ConvertKit for my newsletters and Leadpages for my lead pages.
As you can imagine, ConvertKit is a pretty penny for me, as I currently have 81,903 people on my newsletter list. But it’s worth every penny too! My email list is how I get many of my sales!
Don’t Be Afraid to Learn
Investing in yourself means not being afraid to learn. If you’re starting a Shopify store, unless you have the ability to pick up patterns on a very high scale basis, you need to invest in the Million Dollar Shop®. If you want to get customers willing to hand over their debit card numbers, you need to set it all up in a way that makes them comfortable to do so. There’s no way of going around this. The course is an absolute must for 99.9% of Shopify owners that sell digital products.
Now if you sell tangible goods, I may not be the best choice for you and if you’re looking for dropshipping help, forget it. Most of that is scams and never, ever worth your time, no matter WHAT the so called guru’s say. It’s a can of worms you don’t wanna touch!
7. Low-Quality Shop
Another mistake Shopify store owners make is having a low-quality shop. You truly need to invest in high-quality products/programs to make high-quality products. It may take more time to put together and learn, but in the end, it will be worth it because your customers will love it. They know the difference. You can’t trick them, so don’t try. Just be completely honest with everything you do in all your business dealings and sell high-quality products!
Take Your Time
Take your time creating high-quality products and don’t rush through everything. Your store won’t do well if you rush because people will know. I get SOOOO many emails and reviews in my shop saying they can totally tell I have taken the extra time to truly care about my printables. It’s true. Sometimes, I will do an extra hour’s worth of work just to make something perfect. No cutting corners. Only high-quality.
You can still work quickly (batch your work, etc.), just make sure you check the quality of the product.
Don’t Sell Cheap Products
If you’re selling printables, you MUST use professional software (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements). I have a course that teaches you all about how to create printables using Photoshop Elements.
You definitely do NOT want to use programs like PicMonkey, Canva, Powerpoint, MS Word, etc. to create printables you want to sell. You can use those programs for free printables, but when people PAY for printables, they expect high quality, professional prints.
If your printables don’t print on your customers printers, they will get mad and you’ll spend more time cleaning up a mess and doing refunds, or losing repeat customers. Just don’t do it!
Customers Aren’t Coming Back
Remember a low-quality shop WILL result in your customers not coming back. This is a big mistake and not one that’s easy to undo. Once you lose a customer, it’s for life! Take your time and build a shop and a product that keeps those customers coming back, something they fall in love with and can’t get enough of. 🙂
Do you have any tips or tricks to share from your experience with Shopify?
