Can Shopify make you rich? Or are all of these “guru’s” online trying to scam you in order to sell you their expensive courses that would make them rich?
How much can you make with Shopify? What are the main ways of making wealthy with it? And is Shopify worth it?
These questions and more I will be answering in this short article in order to help you make an educated decision whether to start a Shopify business or not.
Without further ado, let’s jump in!
Can Shopify Make You Rich?
Shopify itself as a platform cannot make you rich, but you can use it in order to start your own business and become rich if you put the time to learn and apply one of the business models that can be applied on Shopify.
Many have become rich millionaire with Shopify after using it for one of the many methods of creating wealth with Shopify that you will learn about later in this article.
But that requires learning the business model, the marketing methods that allow you to use that model in order to make money, and then apply it consistently and improve as you go in order to get rich with Shopify.
Shopify is not a get-rich-quick scheme or a “push button” that you sign up for and expect it to make you rich overnight and without any effort.
How Much Can You Make on Shopify?
To give an average estimate, let’s divide the total revenue of all Shopify stores in 2021 of around $307 billion by the number of the stores that were built on Shopify of around 1.7 million stores, assuming that all of these stores were active.
That gives us the average of around $181,000 per store in year 2021 alone, or around $15,000 per month per store in the same year.
(source)
Now that does not mean that you can create a Shopify store today and in one year from now you would have made 181 thousand dollars in sales.
How much money you can make on Shopify is different from one person to another depending on the model they follow in order to make money with Shopify, the size and type of their market or niche and products, and their efforts and their production cash flow management abilities.
Some companies like Gymshark make hundreds of millions per year with their Shopify store, while other stores run by solopreneurs might make few thousands or less in their first year.
But here’s the nice thing:
Gymshark is one of the companies that was started by a teenager solopreneur back in 2012, who worked hard on optimizing his business and improving on his products in order to meet the expectations and acquire a big size of the market.
It’s up to you, your strategy, and your commitment if you want to become rich with Shopify stores.
Shopify is a tool that makes things much easier on the technical side so that you only put your time and energy in managing your business and serve your audience.
5 Main Ways to Get Rich through Shopify (with Examples)
There are many different ways of making money with Shopify, but the main 5 ways that people make wealth on Shopify stores are the following:
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Dropshipping
This is the simplest business model that you can run a Shopify store with, and it is the most popular business model that Shopify merchants follow.
Simply, dropshipping is selling physical products that you don’t own and you don’t have to hold inventory for.
You find a supplier who sells a certain product at a low price, you list the product on your store and add your margin and marketing costs, you market the product to your audience, and when you get sales and receive money from customers, you then pay the supplier their price of the product and the shipping cost and ask them to ship the product directly to the customer.
You pay for the marketing from the margin and keep what remains as a profit.
This is a very low-risk model that makes the cost of starting a Shopify store very low.
But because of these same reasons, it attracts a lot of people who never ran a business in their life, and those who think that they can sell any low quality product to their audience, which prevents their business from becoming profitable on the long term and they finally give up.
Another issue is that all other dropshippers have access to the same products you sell, and this makes it easier to increase the competition and saturate the market with a certain product, which means that you need to constantly find new products to sell.
And there are many other reasons why most of dropshippers fail.
But the ones who treat their dropshipping Shopify store as a business and work on providing value to their customers through selling useful and quality products, and through the good customer support, are the ones who can get rich with Shopify.
Some example of the big dropshipping Shopify stores that made their owners rich are: Inspire Uplift, Odditymall, Bluecrate, and more.
You can check my guide on how to sell on Shopify without inventory in order to start your dropshipping store today.
Print on Demand
This is very similar to dropshipping as you don’t have to hold inventory of the products you sell, but here, you can sell completely unique items with your touch on their design, which means that you can sell at higher margins and stay away from competitors who would try to sell the same product at a lower price like it is with dropshipping.
This makes it easier to create wealth with Shopify with a fewer number of products that you sell on your store.
You take one of the products that a POD supplier sells (t-shirt, mug, hoodie, leggings, phone case, …etc.), put it on your store, add your design to it (text, graphic, or a mix), list it on your store with your margin, and advertise it to your audience.
And when you get an order, you pay the supplier their price and shipping cost, they print your design on the product and ship it directly to your customer, and you keep the margin that covers the costs of advertising and design, in addition to your profit.
This model might take a little bit more work and cost in order to create unique designs to add to the products you sell, but you can make up for that by charging prices with a higher margin compared to dropshipping as you sell items with unique designs, especially if you know how to target people with certain passions or add emotions to your designs.
One example of a successful Shopify print on demand store is Gearbunch that made around $4.5 million in sales in 2017 alone selling print on demand leggings, yoga pants, and sports bras mainly.
Selling Your Own Physical Products
Maybe you have a physical store where you sell certain products and want to offer them for purchasing online.
Or maybe you have developed, or you have an idea of developing a certain product and don’t have the capital to invest in a physical store or don’t want the hustle of running a physical store and the continuous expenses like rent, electricity, water, …etc. that are associated with it.
If this is the case, then Shopify is a great platform that you can use in order to get rich selling your own physical product to the largest number of customers and ship to almost everywhere.
And there are already tens of thousands of Shopify merchants that sell their own physical products, which could be small and medium businesses that already have a brick and mortar business like bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores, or could be entrepreneurs who sell few products only online.
Such products could be handmade items like artifacts, paintings, photographs, …etc., or could be new or tech products such as electronics, wearable devices, foodware and drinkware, …etc.
One example of businesses who used Shopify to sell their products online is Fitbit that sells smart watches for athletes and people who practice sports in general, who had more than $1.1 billion in revenue in 2020.
And sometimes, you don’t have to invent something new, but you can start with dropshipping a certain product, and if you find that it is selling well and it has the potential to keep selling for long time, then you may ask the manufacturer to create a branded version with minor modifications for you and sell it on a brandable store, like how BlendJet founders did by improving on the already existing portable smoothie blender.
Selling Digital Products
You can use Shopify to get rich by selling digital products such as ebooks, diet plans, software programs, video courses, online workshops, and more.
The great thing is that with digital products, you can create the product once and keep selling it without having to keep creating additional units like it is with the physical products, which allows for big profits and makes it possible to get rich on Shopify with a fewer number of customers and fewer number of sales.
One example is Alo Moves that uses Shopify to sell video yoga courses by some of the most known instructors.
Selling Services
Last but not least, you can use Shopify to sell services and get rich through the process.
These could be selling consultation services by listing your services on a Shopify website, allow customers to book a certain hour or more and pay you in advance, and then you can set up the consultation to take place over Zoom or Skype.
You can also use it to sell services that require your presence and active work like photography services for parties.
Or, you could sell services that don’t require live meetings such as: creating personalized diet plans, web design based services, graphic design, book keeping, content writing and editing, video production and editing, …etc.
The nice thing is that with these services, you can scale your business as you can hire others as freelancers to do the work for you, and you put the final touches before sending it the client in order to ensure the highest quality so that you get repeated customers.
One example is ProofreadingServices.com that uses Shopify to sell proofreading services.
5 Tips to Really Make Wealth on Shopify
The above five ways of getting rich with Shopify can all work, not for every body, as there are some important things that are not related to the products or services themselves, but you need them if you want a Shopify store to make you rich, such as:
Be Clear on Whom You Want to Help
This is what we call a niche, which is the audience that you want to help through the products and services you sell in order to get rich on Shopify.
Shopify can’t make you rich just by selling any product or service to anyone on the internet.
You need to sell products and services that will either help people solve a certain problem, improve on a certain situation, or stuff that would make them feel good.
And to be able to do so, you need to have a certain group of people in mind, in order to find a line of products or services that you can offer to them and make them buy from you.
Having a niche makes it much easier to research and find good products to sell, find ways to target your potential customers, create a brandable store that connects with your potential customers and increases conversion rates, get the customers to come back in the future to buy more from your store without having to continuously advertise to them.
Of course, you can still succeed with a general store, but you need to sell general products that appeal to a wide range of people like stuff related to housekeeping, cooking, stuff useful to all men or to tall women.
Increase Conversion Rate, AOV & Customer LTV
Successful businesses, online and offline, make their profit over the lifetime journey of a customer, and not on one small purchase per customer.
And if you want to succeed on Shopify and get rich, you need to start focusing on increasing three things:
- The conversion rate through increasing the sales on your Shopify store by turning more visitors into paying customers.
- The average order value that you can increase by offer related items as cross-sells and upsells to what the customer is buying, or by offer quantity discounts.
- The lifetime value of customers by re-advertising to the existing buyers through paid ads or email messages in order to come back and buy more stuff.
The overall result is selling more products with a lower advertising cost, which increases your profits and your chances to making wealthy with Shopify.
Treat Your Shopify Business as a Business
Many Shopify store owners don’t succeed because they thing that they can just set up any store and sell any products to all people and get rich overnight, but that’s not how Shopify makes you rich.
You need to treat your Shopify store as a real business, because it is a real business.
This means that you need to make your store brandable by choosing a brandable domain name, optimize the home page, category and product pages, and navigation in order to provide a seamless user experience and increase trust so that visitors become paying customers.
Also, you need to put in the work on continuous basis by blocking certain hours on daily basis in order to do specific tasks, and you need to monitor and manage your store’s cash flow properly in order to be able to increase your revenue and profit before becoming rich on Shopify
Shopify is not a push button or an ATM to withdraw money from. It’s a robust tool that makes your life much easier in order to manage your business online with the lowest cost on infrastructure and least headache on technical hassle.
Think and Act Long-Term
Rich people don’t create wealth overnight, but through taking small steps that would gradually increase their wealth and through taking the measures that would cause the snowball effect to increasing their business’s value, revenue and profit.
And if you want your Shopify business to make you rich, you have to act on long-term basis.
This means not giving up quickly thinking that you can become rich on Shopify in the first month or year selling one product.
You need to test different products, different marketing channels, different ad copies, different marketing and sales channels, until you find what works, and then you need to optimize and scale by monitoring and optimizing your marketing campaigns and sales process.
And as I explained earlier, you need to focus on increasing the conversion rate, AOV and customer LTV if you want to get rich with a Shopify business.
Focus on Your Customers
You cannot grow any business, online or offline, if your customers are not happy with their experience with your business.
You need to focus on creating the best possible experience to your customers by offering the best products and services, offering easy communication before and after the purchase, and connect with your existing customers the right way through retargetting with paid ads or emails in order to keep them engaged and loyal to your business and brand.
Only this way, you can increase the lifetime value of a customer and become really profitable and rich with your Shopify store without having to keep spending all of your profit on acquiring new customers.
And you can even let your existing customers market your store for you for free to their friends and relatives if they were happy with their shopping experience on your Shopify store.
You are in the business of helping people, not in the business of selling products and services.
There you go!
With these tips, you now have more chances than most of the new Shopify merchants of becoming successful and getting rich with your Shopify store.
Treat your Shopify business as a business that helps people, and as a quick way get rich selling junk to people who don’t need it, think and act long-term, and keep your customers happy.
Conclusion – Is Shopify Worth it?
Absolutely, Shopify is worth it if you want to get rich by helping your audience through selling products that solve their problems, improve on their existing situation, or make them feel proud or happy.
A lot of Shopify store owners don’t become rich not because of the platform, but because of their wrong approach where they think that Shopify is a magical push button to create money on demand, while the truth is that Shopify is one of the best tools that you can use in order to build a successful and sustainable online business at the lowest possible cost and without any technical knowledge.
Shopify cannot make you rich, but it can make getting rich much easier if you use it the right way to build your business for long term success.
I hope that my article has given you an honest answer regarding the possibility of making money and getting wealthy through Shopify.
If you still have any question or need any help, please, let me know in the comments’ section below, and I will do my best to help you out 🙂