Maybe you’ve been wanting to start a store, but don’t know where to start or what platform to choose.
Maybe you’re scared to start a store because you don’t know how you’ll possibly be able to drive traffic to it and become profitable.
Maybe you already have a store and can’t understand why you’re not making anything but chump change in it.
Maybe you’ve spent some time on your store and seen only crickets in traffic.
Maybe you are interested in testing dropshipping using the Shopify platform.
Maybe you’ve tried other platforms like Etsy, ebay, Amazon, Creative Market, the list goes on and on and have seen a little bit of money, but know there’s more out there for you.
Whatever your situation is, you’re in the right place!
Sarah Titus Empire Building Success Story
When I first started this journey of selling printables on Shopify, the landscape looked completely different. There were no roadmaps, no courses, and certainly no one else teaching how to sell printables on Shopify (my course was the first).
Back then, Shopify was strictly for physical products. The digital downloads app wasn’t invented yet. I had to go through a third-party app, but that app was super wonky and always went over my resources because I made too many sales, so my bill for just that app alone was outrageously expensive at several hundred dollars a month! 😊 It definitely ate into profits, for sure.
It was tough to navigate Shopify for digital products too because everyone had to enter in their shipping information. There were no options to say nothing was shipped, and there was not even a free button in checkout. They HAD to enter in a credit card even if the order was absolutely free (think: freebie promo), which hurt sales because who wants to enter in those sensitive details when you’re getting something FREE?! I wouldn’t want to.
But I had a vision.
I realized that if I could figure out how to make this platform work for digital files, it would change the game. So I rolled up my sleeves, and built my system from scratch, working closely with Shopify and their team to make the upgrades necessary to help me run my business more efficiently and effectively.
Over the years, they’ve done an AH-mazing job and it is now a GREAT place to sell digital products on!!! Although, I did just have a massive problem a couple months ago and their advanced tech team worked tirelessly for weeks to solve it and now it’s awesome! They really are an impressive company who goes out of their way to make the buying experience top notch!!! 💎
It’s been a wild ride going from the first person to teach printables on Shopify to seeing the strategy I developed become the industry standard. Wow! It’s still amazes me to this day. 🤩
I’ve been so blessed to teach thousands of women how to do this, including most of the top sellers you see in the market today.
Today, I want to share the results of that leap of faith—how I earned $52,060 in my very first month on the platform I pioneered for digital sellers.
As you can imagine, opening up my own Shopify store back then, very quickly changed my entire life, and while I’m not promising massive amounts of money your very first month, what I AM saying is that most people don’t realize the POWER having your own Shopify store has.
Having my own Shopify store has completely changed my life. My first month on Shopify, selling printables, I made $52,060, but it didn’t stop there. To date, I’ve made well over $23 MILLION dollars in revenue in my shop! Insane, right?!
Let’s dive right in…
Today, I’m going to be talking about my 👉 exact steps 👈 of how I earned $52,060 my first month on Shopify.
Update: The $52,060 was just a launching point for me, I went on to make $30M in revenue now in my blogging and Shopify business (without paid advertising). You can check out all the income reports here.
How I Earned $52,060 My First Month on Shopify
Most of you know that I’ve been selling on ebay for over 28 years now. Back before they were even CALLED ebay. 😊 I was just a teen back then, but really realized the power of selling things online. It was a whole new world for me. An exciting world.
But there are several things I’ve always LOATHED about selling online.
- I HATE to ship products.
- I hate keeping track of inventory.
- I hate keeping everything perfectly organized to sell.
- I hate not being able to find something right as it sells.
- I hate following someone else’s rules.
- I hate when they CHANGE said rules and I have to go back through all my ads and completely redo all of them to comply.
- I hate feeling like I have no ownership over the store. Like I’m powerless.
- I hate not having the capability of making certain sales the way I want them to be, instead of working with the basic tools they give me.
- I hate being at the MERCY of a customer who does something shady and leaves bad feedback and everyone thinks it’s ME who has done something bad. Or competitors who leave negative feedback to ruin you (yep, it’s happened!)
So, while there’s a lot of good things about selling on a platform like eBay or Etsy, there are also a lot of bad things you MUST accept in order to sell on someone else’s “turf.”
I sold on Amazon, I’ve sold on Creative Market, I’ve sold on ebay, I’ve sold on a membership site, I’ve sold on a stock photo site, and I’ve sold on Shopify.
For me, out of all the options I’ve tried, Shopify is, HANDS DOWN, the best way to go.
It happened one night, in the middle of the night on June 1, 2017. I was creating a product and I had the option to put the product somewhere. I was with a membership site at the time called Podia and loved them, but this product I was creating (a Blogging Binder) didn’t FIT the Podia platform very well.
I remember debating in my head.
- Do I start a store?
- If so, which one?
- I’ve never ran my OWN store before.
- I’m NOT technical. How do I solve the problems when they come up?
- What do I do?
I was mulling all this over in my head when I said to myself, “I’m just going to go for it. I’ll open a store. If it sucks, it sucks, but I can at least try.”
Those words still make me cry every time.
I simply put a “SHOP” link in my navigation bar on my website on day 9 of having my store.
That was it. Nothing else at all.
I started noticing super quickly, that I was getting 100 visitors a day to my shop just from my blog. I had one product. My store was completely empty and there were all these people coming to look. I was astonished by the amount of people so quickly checking it out.
My first 8 days, I didn’t make any money. I didn’t advertise or tell anyone about my store in any way, shape, or form.
Day 9, I put the SHOP link on my blog, SarahTitus.com, and got 101 visits, no money.
Day 10, 85 visits, $81 in sales.
Day 11, 97 visits, $5 in sales.
Day 12, 146 visits, $30 in sales.
Day 13, 578 visits and $1,454 in sales (without any promoting to any social media or paying for ads). In fact, I didn’t start promoting on social media until November 12, 2017. I pinned one ad on Pinterest. Since then, 5 months later, I still haven’t pinned but maybe 15-20 ads this whole time, and I’ve never paid for ads.
Day 13 is when I knew I hit on something major.
THAT’S when I started really knowing that this could work and I could earn money with Shopify.
$1,454 in ONE DAY!
I….WAS….SHOCKED. Literally and utterly shocked.
From then, I went on to start making significant money in my store.
Day 14, 306 visits, $280 in sales.
Day 15, 176 visits, $22 in sales.
Day 16, 115 visits, $17 in sales.
Day 17, 107 visits, $0 in sales.
Day 18, 97 visits, $7 in sales.
Day 19, 165 visits, $10 in sales.
Day 20, 252 visits, $380 in sales.
Day 21, 163 visits, $45 in sales.
Day 22, 120 visits, $42 in sales.
Day 23, 152 visits, $22 in sales.
Day 24, 104 visits, $10 in sales.
Day 25, 113 visits, $0 in sales.
Day 26, 150 visits, $60 in sales.
Day 27, 734 visits, $3,484 in sales.
Day 28, 275 visits, $549 in sales.
Day 29, 1,200 visits, $34,114.25 in sales.
Day 30, 510 visits, $9,000 in sales.
That’s how I earned $52,060 in revenue my first month on Shopify! My first month having the store (June 2017), I made $52,060 and got 7,233 in traffics.
Most of my free work time went to the opening and learning of the new store (I always just work 1-2 projects at a time so I’m not scattered all over the place. I’m NOT good at multi-tasking!!!)
Conversion rates that first month were between 8%-23% on the promotional emails I sent to my list (at that time, I had 35,868 newsletter subscribers). One email, believe it or not, got 1,524 clicks (per ConvertKit) and 1,399 of those clicks, purchased, which comes out to be a 91.79% conversion rate.
I would interject here that ConvertKit says I got 1,524 clicks in ONE day, but according to Shopify, the highest amount I received all month was 1,200. The stats between ConvertKit and Shopify are off a little bit. I’m not sure as to what measurements each company uses for traffic analytics, but wanted to mention the discrepancy for transparency reasons.
But seriously 91% conversion rate, that’s like unheard of! Average conversion rates are between 1%-3%! Obviously, I priced the product too low and have upped a few prices in the store pretty quickly after. After I upped the prices, they still sold like normal, so I feel I’m still really fair in prices.
Here’s what my products and sales looked like this month:
Please keep in mind these totals are gross, not net, though the profits are pretty stinkin’ awesome too! 😊
Here’s my massively HUGE free printables library where I draw people into to fall in love with my printables: 5,500+ free printables.
My top 5 selling products this month are:
Want to build a Shopify store in a way that gains you trust and gets the sale?
People aren’t just going to hand over sensitive information like a debit card number to just anyone.
Listen, I’ve been in the banking industry for over 10 years.
I’ve run ecommerce businesses for over 28 years, and I am the girl who STARTED everyone selling printables ON Shopify. 💯
No one was selling printables on Shopify before me! Shopify was for physical products only when I started. I’m the perfect person to teach you all about selling printables on Shopify because I was there right from the start! I literally was the first to pioneer it. 🥰
If you wanna learn all about how to set up your shop in a way that gets the sales, you HAVE TO download my Shopify Binder. People have paid $4,395 for this information as a package deal (I kid you not!), but right now, I have it at a very, VERY low cost. It won’t be this low forever, in fact, it won’t ever be this low again. I’m working on turning it into a course that will cost at least $1,000, so grab it here now while it’s so cheap!!! ❤️
And be sure to check out my 30 Days to Creating a Thriving Printables Business here to answer any pre-questions you have to see if this path is right for you.
