Selling on Shopify

[Mark S]

This question is directed to Mike in Atlanta, but hopefully we can get some discussion going.

My question is this: When Wonder Lister finishes the enhancements to cross list to Shopify, do you think it would be “worth it” to cross list over there? By “worth it” I mean I would expect this to be somewhat similar to Bonanza or TrueGether. Just a sale here and there without much effort. Now I know there are the SEO freaks that get fantical about sending traffic to there store and I may do that later but not now.

My thinking is that I would like to get my own store going, but not put a lot of time into it. Just let it grow over time and put in time when I have it.

Could I accomplish this with the Lite $9 per month subscription from Shopify? Is it really a “simple” job to do this?

Mark

[Joe]

This is a good question, I’m interested in this as well.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hey Guys:
First wonderLister is coming along with the Shopify module. I did a transfer of 1053 Ebay listings over to the Shopify Store this weekend. They are all live. It took a few hours to make the complete move. Then yesterday was running a few tests for WL team and found an issue they are working on now. In the “upload to Shopify” tab everything went fine except on any item that had multiple quantities, the Shopify store only picked up a quantity of 1 instead of the multiple quantity. Luckily we only have about 50 or less items that have a quantity of more than one.

This is a Shopify issue not a WL issue, so the enginners are talking with Shopify to work out having the multiple quantities picked up by Shopify.

But at this point, when I click a listing line and right click send to Shopify, everything goes. The photos, the Condition section and my copy, the decsription area, and within the description area all of the item specifics. Behind the scenes the shipping box size and weight goes in and calculated shipping seems to be showing. BUT we still have BETA TESTING to be done. It is not for public consumption yet. But I can work with it at this point.

No word on the status of the Etsy interface. I just haven’t asked lately, but will ask and report back.

Now to the use of your own domain name and the use of your own store. Shopify is a web site, e-commerce platform. It does not bring any customers at all to the platform. It is a parking place and merchant gateway [credit card payments] for your inventory. You have to do ALL OF THE MARKETING AND DRIVE ANY AND ALL VIEWERS AND SEARCHERS TO YOUR SITE.

Thus you have to have SEO knowledge, you have to have pre-pared your listing to have correct keyword placement, [i.e. the first five words of a title needs to be high ranking Google Adwords]. You need to know how to use Google Analytics, have an Instagram account and attach it to your store, A Facebook Marketing page, a Pinterest account and have it linked to your account. You need to have meta tags defined and WonderLister has a field for this, don’t think Ebay does, and it helps to have named everyone of your photos with a short title that contains a couple of key words.

The answer is yes, we have been doing this for about a year and a half pre-paring for the day we go directly live with our store. We still have design work to be done on our HOME landing page and BLOG pages to create. But atleast for now our store can be directly reached by typing our name into the URL line. If you try a Google search, you will find our store name but it will mostly link back to our Ebay store. we have not submitted to Google yet to crawl our store. We wanted all 1,000 items to be listed before we did that. But we did that all this weekend.

Next you have to have a site map. Luckily Shopify does this automatically. But you have to do your own third party verification and once verified, submit your domain / shopify store to Google to request for a review. If you have done your SEO properly google will accept your domain and then schedule your store to be “crawled” by the spiders and “Bots”. This is the stage we are currently at. We hope to submit this week.

Then everytime we list on Wonderlister a new item, it will also get automatically sent to Twitter and to Shopify. From Shopify we have it set up to then send [manually] by clicking the Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook Icon to share on those places. And from here we will be on our way to building our own traffic which we will monitor those stats from within Google Analaytics [which we already have an account for].

Once Google approves your web site and schedules your first “Crawl”, it can be from a few weeks to I have read as much as 2 to 3 months, but usually 3 to 4 weeks. Then Google’s bots will revisit your site periodically. as long as you have fresh content [sound familiar guys], and new listings, they will keep rescheduling you for a re-visit at future dates. If you let your store go stale and not updated, then at some point they will either drop you out of their revisit schedule or do so a whole lot less frequently.

From these visits, and the back links from all the social media sites, that is where all of your “organic traffic” begins to build and you began to create an Alexia Ranking for your site. as your Alexia Ranking graws, so will your placement in Google increase. Where you rank in those listings will depend on how good you are and have been on preparing your web site, knowing how to key word place, what keywords are the most frequently searched [which comes from Google analytics. This is why I have always signed my SL posts with my domain name at the bottom. Google picks those up because a “bot” crawls Scavengerlife and picks up that as a key word.

So it is a lot of work but worth it in the LONG RUN. We have several artists that we have watched for years and watched how they transition off of Ebay over to their own stores and have done so much better and make full time incomes in the neighborhood of J & R store.

Yes you “may” get an occasional sale like Bonanza or truegther, but without any traffic at all the chances are slim to none. At least on Bonanza and Truegther there is some traffic being generated. When you create your Shopify store, you will see “NO TRAFFIC” and there will not be any until you create it yourself. Sorry for the bad news, but Shopify is not a list it and forget it. It is a list it and then work at it hard because the ultimate goal is to REPLACE EBAY at some point. You get to keep all the money so you can sell less on Shopify to arrive at the “same Net” as Ebay, but you still have to sell. And that comes from SEO, Optimizing, working social media, building your brand and logo recognition on many other channels.

One nice thing about Shopify is that they have a Strong Support Section and also have their Shopify University. This offers at no cost a complete coverage of how to build a site, SEO systems, key word optimization, wiritng HTML codes, Marketing strategies and tons more.

Shopify is having an Atlanta training workshop here in Atlanta that is like the old Ebay local getherings they used to have. Sort of like a mini Ebay open only for Shopify. They have several days of classes, one on one meet-ups with Shopify staff, they will help you build your store, SEO traing and help. We got over invitation a couple of days ago.

So, if you just move your inventory over to Shopify and then don’t go at it as hard if not as doubly hard as you do your Ebay store, it will just sit there and not one person will find, you or visit your store much less buy anything from you. We sat for 3 months last year with out one visitor, but that is because we were ready to “publish” and go live. This we are approaching and starting this month.

Hope this sheds some like on your questions and curiousity about Shopify.

Here are some links to the Shopify Ecommerce University which will explain what all it covers in it’s online courses and videos.

https://help.shopify.com/en
https://www.shopify.com/videos/content-marketing

Also one thing to also remember. There are several big sites that do what Shopify Does. Wix, Volusion, Big Commerce, etc., etc.

Well, all said and done, that’s one man’s opinion and that and that $.50 I always mention still only buys you a third of a cup of coffee.

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine art in Atlanta <<< for the SEO Gods! 🙂 🙂

• This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by MDC Galleries & Fine Art.

[Mark S]

Mike,

Thanks for the explanation. I like what you end up with. However, the “cost” that it takes to get there is more than I can handle at this point. In my mind, it is more important to be independent of ebay, not the savings of the fees. Yes, the savings of the fees would be great, but complete independence would be better – provided that you could make a similar profit each month.

However, since the “cost” is too high for me now, I will have to wait. But one day when I have the time, this would be a great adventure. Please update us on how your adventure with Shopify is going in the coming months.

Mark

[T-Satt]

Great to know Mike. Keep us informed on your Shopify side. This is an area I would like to get into in about 18 months. I want to get the front end (sourcing) settled first before I try to get more backend (Shopify, Mercari, Poshmark) outlets hooked in. Our short term (12 month) goals are hugely invested in getting better on the front end, and our long term goals as well….

[Author]

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