Shopify is getting bigger.. Much bigger.

Yep.. We have owned our own domain name for years. Just never used it much until a few years ago and now will be using it as we re-open our shop.

Using Shopify as a host won’t mean anything. No one even will know that Shopify or any other Host, Wix, Volusion, InMotionHosting [our domain host BTW], or any other host is connected to your store. Your reputation is yours and yours only.

On our site their will not be any mention of the name of Shopify other than a payment gateway.

mike at MDCGFA

SixBit Shopify IS OUT OF BETA and it is integrated into the new major SixBit update that came out day before yesterday. Both our rigs are updated and working in harmony :-). We are working on re-opening our Shopify Store this week and will get everything in our Ebay and Etsy store cross listed into our own store then go live again.

Our store was live when we were on WonderLister but when, after 5 years of WL, we jumped software ships and migrated over to SixBit we closed our Shopify store until SB got their interface out of BETA.

Shopify has a built in Payment Gateway, one of their own and of course you can use others.

They have tons of courses and training on every subject for “How To Do”, you can think of and it is all free. They call it “Shopify University”. That is where I started when I first opened our store a few years ago.

Yep, Shopify through its recent purchase is joining the ranks of Amazon with its own distribution centers but unsure how all of that is going to roll out and how it will be offered to store owners.

Jay is also correct in that Shopify is, currently at least, only a “store hosting” site. They give you all the tools to build a web store / web site and all the tools to teach you how to market it, design it, SEO all the titles, descriptions, allow you to have a BLOG to daily post, your own email marketing and interfaces with every known social media group there is. But they do not market or present you as a store owner to any buyers. You must build your own traffic, visitors, lookers, watchers, in other words “people that are potential buyers”.

But for $29.99 per month that is a lot of tools to create an independent online e-commerce store AND TO HAVE A SAFE, place to park a complete clone of your store. For $29.99 you have a complete duplicate of your store, only prettier, nicer, fancier than any Ebay or Etsy store, placed in a “vault” for safe keeping. But don’t leave it just at that, why not spend some time marketing it.

And buy the way you can back link every one of your items back to your Ebay store, if you want, and have anyone who does find a particular item in your store, they click on the “Buy it on Ebay” link and they jump right to your Ebay listing. But why in the world would you really want to do that and end up paying the FVF.

Shipping is handled through Shopify, payments go directly into your banking account, less shipping.

It is just a whole other world. This is also where most of our artwork will be listed, sculptural, large paintings, limited edition art prints, etc. We have never put much of anything on Ebay. We can curate a Shopify Store very closely to the way we had our antique booths set up, every store is highly customizable, you can include videos of working pieces, oh just so much more. But again, not a platform that will bring people into itself as Shopify and then have an internal “Search Box” for the general public to come there and search for specific objects.

You have to market yourself, be found yourself on social media, have your well written copy, text, photos, found on the web on Google, then entice web surfers to click on “your personal images, links, blog articles, etc. and they will be taken “To Your Store” directly in our case MDCGalleries.com and they won’t even care that we are on Shopify. That is just where our private domain name is stored and hosted. It is a “Business Shell” for you to build your own sales.

I know and have book marked many artists web sites who started on Ebay and Etsy and after building their email list of followers and admirers, moved to Shopify under their own domains and do much better on their own and make a whole lot more. I watch many of their stores every week and marvel at how well they are doing on their own.

Shopify is like your landlord. You go and rent Jay’s new store front on main street and then go inside on the first day Jay gives you the keys. You spend 4 weeks decorating the insides, painting your themes on the walls, setting up shelves, then hauling your items into the store and placing it all on the shelves. Then on a Monday you hang a sign on the door that says, “Open for Business”. Well guess what? You won’t have one customer or one sale, until you do what? Market yourself and your new business.

You will need to network, buy ads in the local newspaper, attend fairs, join the local Chamber of Commerce, pass out thousands of business cards and brochures, get on a local radio show, have a Grand Opening and have the media there, etc., etc. Well it is the same on when you build a store on Shopify.

What we have done on both WonderLister and SixBit is unlike Ebay, is we have accumulated the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of every single person who has ever bought anything from us for years and years. WL & SB collects all of that from Ebay and Etsy and unlike Ebay, we have it captured forever.

The buyers on Ebay, are “Ebay’s Customers first and yours second. Ebay owns your store indirectly and you only are a V.P. of Operations. They can also fire you and you won’t be running your store any longer. They own your store, how you operate it, what will allow you to do or not do and most of all they don’t care if the buyers come to you or your competitor, because they really see the buyers as their customers. You didn’t bring them in, Ebay did. If you are not attractive as a seller or the buyer doesn’t like your item or store, then Ebay “Presents” them with a hundred more alternatives.

So while waiting on SixBit to get Shopify out of BETA we have been planning our postcard mailing campaign to our thousands of customers whom we have their home addresses, planning our e-mail blast campaigns, getting photos and short worded articles on various subjects lined up for our daily Blog posts, which our domain comes with due to WordPress and the built in Blog which is all interfaced into Shopify. And in a few weeks, we will have re-built our own domain brand named store and we will start the process of trying to build traffic.

Every order we will from an Ebay or Etsy sale we ship will include a postcard introducing our new store by our name, not Shopify’s [who cares about where we have “OUR” store hosted. We will special discount coupons enclosed, timed campaigns, SixBit will be thanking every customer automatically for their recent purchase but we will not ever mention Ebay or Etsy’s name ever again. We will be trying to drive every person who has or will be buying from us to our web site instead.

The whole new “distribution center thing” of Shopify can only end up being a “service” that can be made available to us sellers because we own our stores and Shopify only stores our electronic digital data for us. Maybe they will offer the shipping for us from their D/C as a paid service and as such may have some rules, but if we can still handle our own same day shipping, we have ourselves covered.

Just another early morning opinion and as always, that and $.50 will get you a quarter of a cup of coffee.

mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.

You can opt in to having Shopify process credit cards or use your own cc processor. You can also set up PayPal payments, Amazon Payments, etc.