You may heard the Shopify before and knew a lot of Shopify pro.Do you know what’s Shopify? Is Shopify legit?Is Shopify free?
Shopify is a Canadian eCommerce platform, providing services for creating website for selling online. It’s legit, but not free. Many people use Shopify to build drop shipping sites to make money online from home. It’s one of the great ways to make money on Shopify.
Shopify offers free trial, you can sign up for free Shopify trial. You will need to learn how to do your Shopify website building, sell in Shopify and how to use Shopify for making profit.
Here is a free Shopify tutorial for setting up a Shopify store, only 3 simple steps:
Things you need to do before start:
- Store name
- Your Shopify logo
- Email and address for sign up
- Credit Card or PayPal account
- Products + pictures + pricing + inventory
Step 1: Shopify Store Set Up
1.1 Sign up for Shopify
1.2 Name your store
1.3 Understand Shopify admin
1.4 Connect your domain with the store
1.5 Create an email under your domain
Step 2: Choose a catchy theme & customized your store
2.1 Install the theme
2.2 Create main menu, footer & pages
2.3 Change the logo, banner
2.4 Create a track order page
2.5 Create “Return Policy”, “Term of Service”, “Privacy Policy” and “Shipping policy”.
2.6 Upload products, picture, price, inventory
2.7 Add shipping methods
2.8 Set Email newsletter
2.9 Install Shopify app
2.10 Email newsletter
Step 3: Choose Shopify plan & payment gateway
3.1Choose your Shopify plan
3.2 Set up your payment gateway
Things you need to do before start:
How to name your business is a start. You may use the Shopify name generator to choose name for business. Here is the link: https://www.shopify.com/tools/business-name-generator
What’s domain meaning?
Domain definition is that domain name is the address on the internet. It’s unique.
Another way is using the domain providers to get the domain search and check the domain availability, and then come up with a business name:
https://www.instantdomainsearch.com/domain/generator/
https://www.godaddy.com
https://www.namecheap.com/
https://www.hostpapa.com/domains/
For the Shopify logo, you can use online free Shopify logo maker, such as Canva. It’s easy to make a stunning logo instantly.
Step 1: Sign up an account on Shopify
1.1 Sign up for Shopify
Use your email to register an account, and verify your email address.
You can apply for more than one store on Shopify with the same email address, make sure you turn off the VPN before you start signing up with Shopify. You can sell products all over the world.
When you enter your Shopify site, you can add it to your bookmark this tap. You can sign in Shopify by one-click.
1.2 Understand the Shopify Admin
When you access my Shopify login, you will see the Shopify administration, or panel.
It includes 6 main important sections:
- Order: It allows you create orders and manage all the orders here.
- Products: this if for editing your products and collections, inventory management for Shopify.
- Analytics: check your store data here, including total sales, store conversion, traffic source, social source, etc.,
- Marketing: view your marketing date, including overview, campaigns and automations.
- Sales channels–Online Store: you can edit your theme, posting, pages, menu, footer, header etc.
- Setting: update your store information, setting your payment, shipping, billing, sales channels, location etc.
1.3 Domain & Email
A good domain is the first step to your branding.
4 Tips to select a perfect domain for your store:
- Keep it short and easy to read
Long domain name is difficult to remember and not easy to type.
- Use your keywords
- Choose .com domain extension
- Make it unique
In terms of the domain, you may buy it on Shopify or you can buy it from domain providers. If you already bought it from domain provider, you need to connect your existing domain with store. And you will need to point your domain to Shopify.
The price of the domain varies, it depends on the domain name you choose. But ordinary domain costs around $5 each year. You will need to pay the domain at least one year. You may check the price on domain sites, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Domain.com etc.
Before you connect your existing domain to Shopify, you will need to change the DNS. Go to the domain provider, change A record and add Shopify IP address. Check the following step images.
After you point your domain to Shopify, click “connect existing domain”, enter the domain you want to connect, and click “verify connection”.
Step 2: Choose a catchy theme & customized your store
2.1 Add the theme
You may check some Shopify web examples first, you may search it on Google
site:myshopify.com + (keywords in your niche). It will show all a list of Shopify website examples. Go through these stores, you will know the Shopify storefront examples you like. And you may read some Shopify success story before you start.
Three ways to get a theme:
- Shopify free themes
Click on “Explore free theme”, you will see some free Shopify themes. If you have limited budget to start, you may consider choosing the free theme.
- Shopify paid theme, the price is about US $150.
Before you buy a theme, we recommend you read these tips:
- List all the features you want.
- View the demo site to make sure it has the features you want. It would save your time customize the theme.
- It’s a up-to-date theme.
- Select a responsive theme. This means the design can be compatible with laptop, Ipad, mobile phone etc.It would be easy to use on multiple devices.
- Upload theme you got from your designer or from the third-party, such as Themeforest.net. The theme there is high-quality with affordable price around US$30. You would download the theme when you bought it. The theme needs to be in ZIP file on Shopify.
2.2 Create main menu, footer & pages
Add the main menu of your store, basically we need “homepage, about us, contact us, shop”, you can add the menus you want according to your needs.
Tap the “Navigation”, click “Add menu item”, you can quickly add the menus.
If you want to create a page for “contact us” “about us” or “FAQ”, you will need to go to “Online store” — “pages”.
2.3 Change the logo, pictures
If you want to change the logo, tap the “Online store”— “Theme”— “Customize”
Also, you can change theme related stuff here, such the theme text color, background etc.
You can hide the sections if you don’t need it. Just click the eye button beside the section.
2.4 Create a “Order Track” page
This allows your customers to track their order like this:
Here are some options here:
Using paid apps, such as Aftership,Shippo.
Free provider: 17 track
Two steps to use the 17 track to do this:
- Click “Online Store”— “Pages” — “Add Pages”
- Click “Show HTML” button
- Copy & Paste the code I gave below and “Save” it.
Code: (copy and paste all the codes below marked in grey)
<! –Tracking number input box. –>
<input type=”text” id=”YQNum” maxlength=”50″/>
<!–The button is used to call script method.–>
<input type=”button” value=”TRACK” onclick=”doTrack()”/>
<!–Container to display the tracking result.–>
<div id=”YQContainer”></div>
<!–Script code can be put in the bottom of the page, wait until the page is loaded then execute.–>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”//www.17track.net/externalcall.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
function doTrack() {
var num = document.getElementById(“YQNum”).value;
if(num===””){
alert(“Enter your number.”);
return;
}
YQV5.trackSingle({
//Required, Specify the container ID of the carrier content.
YQ_ContainerId:”YQContainer”,
//Optional, specify tracking result height, max height 800px, default is 560px.
YQ_Height:560,
//Optional, select carrier, default to auto identify.
YQ_Fc:”0″,
//Optional, specify UI language, default language is automatically detected based on the browser settings.
YQ_Lang:”en”,
//Required, specify the number needed to be tracked.
YQ_Num:num
});
}
</script>
2.5 Create “Return Policy”, “Privacy Policy”, “Term of Service”, and “Shipping policy”.
You use create from the template offered by Shopify privacy policy generator on your dashboard, just click “setting” at the left bottom side— “legal”— “create from template”, you will see the screenshots below.
Check the privacy policy example and other example first, make some change when necessary.
Then you will get all the Shopify privacy policy, term of service, shipping policy done.
Or you can just type “legal” on the dashboard search bar.
2.6 Upload products, picture, price, inventory
If you buy products from AliExpress, you may use the Oberlo to upload the products.
AliExpress is a eCommerce site owned by Alibaba group, you can buy products at low MOQ at low price. MOQ meaning minimum order quantity, you can order 1 product from Chinese seller. And then you resell it to your customer.
There are 5 online platforms for buying from China.
What is Oberlo?
Oberlo is an application owned by Shopify, it allows sellers to import products from suppliers to Shopify store and ship to your customers. Just few clicks you can upload the products from Oberlo to Shopify. It offers free Oberlo Chrome extension too.
Here is the process of using Oberlo:
Be sure that you provide the informational products with high-quality images.
- Sign up a free account on Oberlo with your email address, and get Oberlo login in.
- Connect your Shopify with Oberlo, and add your store domain
- Install Oberlo app
- Import products from AliExpress & customize all the products
If you already found the products on AliExpress, you can add the products by links or ID. You may need to change the Shopify pricing, product description etc.
If you don’t have it yet, you may click the search, it will access to AliExpress directly. You can choose products there.
2.7 Set up the shipping rate
Click on the “manage rate’, you may set free shipping or different shipping cost for different countries.
2.8 Set Email newsletter
Subscriptions on Shopify is a tool to collect emails for your business.
Easy way to do is choosing the theme which has the sign-up section. You would check the “customers” section on the dashboard, it shows you the email list you corrected.
You may use this to send the promotion, email with Shopify for the future marketing campaign.
Mailchimp for Shopify is a good choice for your email newsletter, you can integrate Mailchimp with Shopify. Shopify Mailchimp can save you time and money for Shopify subscriptions and email automation.
2.9 Install Shopify Apps
Shopify apps is similar to website plugs, you can call it Shopify plugin if you like.
Choose some apps or Shopify plugins that can help optimize the process of managing and growing your business.
Here we recommend you install this three free apps: Dianxiaomi, Free trust badge,
If you source products from AliExpress, you may consider install the “Dianxiaomi”, it’s a free ERP software. You will easily order from Chinese sellers, keep tracking with your orders, and manage the inventory.
If you want to install the “Dianxiaomi”, just click the “Add app” from the Shopify apps store section on your dashboard, then install it, it will directly access to the “Dianmixiao” webpage. You will need to sign up first, then add your store there.
2.10 Trust badge
Add Trust badges on your store to increase the conversion, choose a trust badge png and upload to store.
Or you may go to the Shopify apps store to find trust badges to install. It offers some free trust badges, and it would be added to the store footer or the checkout page.
Step 3: How to choose Shopify plans
3.1 Choose Shopify plan
How much does Shopify cost?
The Shopify cost depends on the Shopify plan you choose. The Shopify pricing range from $29 to $299 per month. The transaction cost is from 2.4% to 2.9%. It offers Shopify plus for large enterprise, the price of Shopify plus stars at $2,000 each month.
There are three Shopify plans: Basic Shopify, Shopify and Advanced Shopify. They have different features, the fees for Shopify. you can select the one suitable for you. Of course, as a startup, you may start with the Basic plan, you can upgrade it to other plans if you need.
If you have Shopify partners, you can set staff accounts for them, so they can use Shopify partners login to the store admin.
You can pay the plan via PayPal or Credit card, also you may select the annual, monthly payment, 2 years or 3 years.
3.2 Set up your Shopify payments gateway
Go to the “setting”, click on “payment”, select the payment way you want. It would be Shopify with PayPal, Shopify with Stripe, Alipay Global etc.
Conclusion:
We already knew how to use Shopify build a website and get dropshipping stores. Now it’s time to dive in to keep it up and make money online.